VRE cracks down on fare evasion, other offenses

New to the Washington area and its notorious commutes, Cheryl Rouland was eager to find the easiest way to get to work in Southeast Washington after moving to Manassas in June. She tried Virginia Railway Express.

But while riding the train home from L’Enfant Station one day, Rouland received a $100 fine for fare evasion. She was dumbstruck, she said, because she had bought a roundtrip ticket that morning.

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Rouland was cited because she had failed to validate the afternoon portion of her “two-ride” ticket, which under state law is considered riding the train without payment.

“I thought if I bought the two-ride it was going to save me a validation step,” said Rouland, 49, a technical writer from Cleveland. “I was not sitting on a train trying to cheat a train system out of a ticket.”

Rouland’s case is part of a crackdown on fare evaders on VRE, which also is targeting passengers who ride the train outside of their designated zones or use counterfeit tickets, a violation that carries a fine of up to $500.

VRE loses $100,000 to $120,000 a year to people who cheat the system, said spokesman Mark Roeber, who added that fares make up more than 60 percent of the system’s revenue. State law mandates that all fines be returned to the commonwealth.

VRE riders have been required to have their tickets stamped with the time and date at kiosks since the commuter rail service formed in 1992. Because riders can openly board a train, validating tickets is the only way to know that they have paid for their trip, Roeber said. Signs posted at every VRE station tell riders to validate their tickets before boarding.

Strict enforcement began soon after VRE dropped Amtrak and hired Keolis Rail Services America to operate its trains, Roeber said. The number of court cases related to validation offenses has increased since Keolis took over in July 2010. Last month, which marked the first full year of Keolis’s contract, there were 19,000 riders and 176 VRE cases, compared with 16,000 riders and 73 cases under Amtrak in July 2009.

Some Amtrak conductors strict­ly enforced the rules, but “tolerance for writing tickets was lower,” Roeber said.

VRE’s “CEO addressed the issue numerous times with Amtrak but didn’t have the same receptive feedback with Amtrak as we did with Keolis,” he added.

Despite the crackdown, some riders continue to get warnings.

Peter Gillis, 48, was fined in June when he forgot to validate his 10-trip pass. Since then, he has witnessed two other riders get off with warnings.

“That kind of miffed me a little bit,” said Gillis, who lives in the Gainesville area. “It’s just like a speeding ticket: Sometimes the cop will give you a ticket, sometimes he won’t.”

Most violators pay their fines and move on. And then there are riders like Rouland, who is boycotting VRE.

Rouland now takes an Omni­Link commuter bus from Manassas to the West Falls Church Metro station. She rides the Orange Line to L’Enfant and switches to the Green Line for the last leg of her commute to Southeast.

Rouland’s new commute adds 30 minutes to her travel time each way, but “it doesn’t faze me,” she said.

She keeps a spreadsheet of the money she spends on OmniLink and Metro. She plans to send her log to VRE officials after one year to show them how much revenue they have lost. Between her and her son, whom she enlisted in the boycott, Rouland expects to spend about $5,000 a year on bus and Metrorail service.

This month, Rouland tried to challenge her ticket before an Alexandria General District Court judge. She was found guilty and ordered to pay $181, including court costs.

“I just moved here, and they sucked away my whole first day’s wages,” Rouland said after court.