Virginia Railway Express commuters had a rough morning trip on Thursday when a breakdown delayed riders by two hours and caused a cascade of problems into the evening. Adding to the pain: The snarls came just over a week after another round of failures tied up riders for hours on the same line. On Wednesday evening, the commuter train’s chief had pledged “to raise the bar on our on-time performance.”
Now the already beleaguered riders are even more mad.
One rider asked the chief executive officer in an online chat on Thursday why riders should bother to use the service.
Others questioned the VRE leadership and the agency’s decision to switch from Amtrak to Keolis as the system operator.
Some seemed resigned to the problems, but pleaded for Wi-Fi and cafe cars to help weather the delays.
“Will it get better? Yes. Will it be overnight? No,” CEO Dale Zehner told riders. “Everyone at Keolis and VRE is working to mitigate these delays as quickly as possible.”
Zehner said he is taking full responsibility for the problems, though he had few answers Thursday as to what caused the latest failure.
VRE officials initially warned riders that its 5:45 a.m. train on the Manassas Line would face about a 15-minute delay, according to a VRE alert sent at 6:14 a.m. But it wasn’t until 7:38 a.m. that a rescue train was finally coupled to the stalled one.
The coupled-up trains didn’t arrive at the Alexandria station until 8:26 a.m., nearly two hours after the first train was supposed to get there.
Those problems forced VRE to cancel one evening train and double up cars on another, which was expected to cause more delays.
Last week, a train engine failed on the same line, then a brake malfunctioned on a 50-year-old rescue train, leaving 1,600 commuters stranded 20 miles outside of Washington and causing at least a two-hour delay.
Part of the problem is the aging locomotive fleet that pulls the train cars from Fredericksburg and Manassas into the District and back each day. The agency is working to replace them, and Zehner said a new one should arrive on Monday, then additional ones every few weeks. By July, the system should have 20 new locomotives to swap out the entire fleet, he said.
