VRE survey says: Timeliness is good but riders want more availability

This year’s Virginia Railway Express survey shows that riders who responded are happy with on-time performance but they also have some concerns.

Click to enlarge. Source: Virginia Railway Express

The top issue for the 6,300 riders who took part in this year’s survey was cost.

VRE’s new CEO Doug Allen noted in a summary that respondents could have been impacted by the fact that around the time of the survey—May 9—the board voted to increase the fare by 3 percent.

Almost all of the categories got higher marks—on a scale of zero percent to 100 percent.

Two categories got lower marks. One of them was “level of fare for quality and value for service,” which dropped from 63 percent to 61, according to the survey.

On the plus side, the respondents gave on-time performance a high mark.

“Eighty five percent of those responding rated OTP as excellent or above average, the highest rating we have ever received in this category,” according to VRE’s report on the survey. Four other categories received record-high ratings.

Here are a few more interesting nuggets from the survey:

• More than half of the respondents said traffic on the roads was their top reason for riding VRE.
• Almost half of the riders in the survey buy their tickets online at CommuterDirect.com.
• Riders want Wi-Fi.
• The respondents would like to see more service and seats.

VRE will consider the issue of seating at Friday’s board meeting, during which it could vote on whether to add rail cars to trains, one on the Fredericksburg line and possibly two on the Manassas line.

Currently, Fredericksburg’s peak train 303/302 has seating capacity of 810. It typically has 107 riders who have to stand. The additional car would add 260 seats.

If the board votes to add the cars, they would be added on Oct. 1.

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