VRE Repairs, Tardiness Fuel Ridership Drop

VRE lost Mark Melnyk in March. He had enough of mornings stuck on the tracks and afternoons when his train didn't show up on time.

So Melnyk turned to the unthinkable: He got back in his car and onto I-95.

Instead of riding free on VRE -- his employer picked up the tab -- he started paying $300 a month for gas and waking at 4:30 a.m. to try to beat the worst of rush hour.

"At least by driving I know I can get there," said Melnyk, who commutes between Fredericksburg and Fort Belvoir.

The loss of passengers such as Melnyk cost VRE $500,000 in revenue. Of the agency's $62.8 million budget for this fiscal year, $24.8 million is drawn from ticket sales, and $38 million comes from federal, state and local governments.

VRE's backslide is a sudden derailment to traffic-fighting goals, transportation officials said.

"We invest a lot of time and money into taking people out of their cars and giving them reliable options," said Pierce R. Homer, Virginia secretary of transportation. "When people make a choice to not do that, we have to take a look at the quality and timeliness of our services."

When Homer looks at VRE's service problems, he sees myriad "operational challenges," many of which stem from the complex arrangements needed to make the trains run. The rails are owned by CSX Corp., of Jacksonville, Fla. VRE pays CSX more than $3.8 million a year for the right to use the tracks, but increased train volume on the two-track corridor means that passenger service can get stuck behind freight cars that are slow, late or stalled.

"It's difficult when you're sitting on a passenger train to see all that freight going by," said Jay Westbrook, a CSX liaison who manages the company's relations with VRE. "But we have a network that extends hundreds of miles in each direction. We make every effort to clear a path" for VRE.

Another frequently mentioned source of VRE frustration is CSX's heat-restriction policy. High summer temperatures can lead to kinks in the steel rails, so train travel is routinely slowed to 40 mph on the Fredericksburg line if the mercury rises above 85 degrees.

"Our heat policy is not to take chances with safety," Westbrook said.

VRE officials said the restrictions are not applied on the Manassas line, most of which is owned by Norfolk Southern Corp. That line had an on-time performance of 86 percent in fiscal 2006 and has remained fairly stable since 2001.