Virginia Railway Express ended 2011 with its best on-time performance in its 19-year history, a turnaround for the agency whose trains were once late so often that riders fled the system.
The commuter train service that connects suburban Virginia workers with their D.C. jobs had 92.9 percent of trains arrive on time in 2011, according to a new agency report.
It was the first time both lines met a longtime goal of having more than nine out of every 10 trains on time. The Manassas line logged a 94.5 percent on-time rate and Fredericksburg netted 91.1 percent for the year.
“It is a significant improvement,” said commuter Steve Dunham, who has been riding VRE’s Fredericksburg line since 1996. “Over the years I’ve racked up a lot of what I call VRE vacation: times when the train was delayed and I was really late to work and had to use vacation time.”
Still, he said, a 90-plus percent on-time rate still means a significant number of the trains he rides each week come in late. But the delays seem shorter, he said, making him only about 10 minutes delayed instead of the 30 minutes he had previously weathered.
The service had struggled to keep trains to their schedules in the past, so much so that it lengthened the published travel time for some trains in 2009. At its worst, in July 2006, only about half the trains were within five minutes of their scheduled times. Riders left the system for more reliable options.
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Now, with the turnaround, riders have been rushing back to VRE.
Ridership topped 20,000 trips for the first time last February, and then reached that number for many days during the year. The popularity has grown so much that some willingly stand the whole trip in packed trains.
The train service even posted record ridership numbers in December, a month that typically has had some of the lowest ridership because of vacations and holidays. Overall ridership for the month grew 10 percent compared to December 2010.
The ridership boom has been so extensive that the agency has tried to find ways of reducing demand, by subsidizing tickets for riders to use Amtrak instead.
The agency is proposing to raise fares 3 percent. That comes as federal transit benefits have dropped from a maximum of $230 per month to $125. But VRE’s Chief Executive Officer Dale Zehner has said he doesn’t expect the loss of transit benefits to reduce ridership.
