Virginia Railway Express plans to offer much more service in just a few years, according to its new leader.
CEO Katie Choe, who started work in January, is making her goals clear.
“My main priority as I’m walking in, is to successfully transition VRE from the commuter service that it is today to a full regional rail system,” she told the VRE Operations Board in February.
That’s the broad goal outlined in VRE’s System Plan 2050, a strategy it adopted last year to guide it for the next 25 years.
Some changes are expected to take effect much sooner, by 2030.
Choe detailed those at last month’s VRE Operations Board meeting.
They include:
- Increasing the number of peak period, reverse direction trains from one to three on the Manassas Line, and from one to two on the Fredericksburg Line.
- Boosting the number of off-peak trains from one to three on the Manassas Line, and from one to two on the Fredericksburg Line.
- Increasing the total number of daily trains from 32 to 52.
- Boosting the number of Express Trains from one to nine on the Manassas Line, and one to four on the Fredericksburg Line.
- Adding new weekend service, with six round trip trains on the Manassas Line, and seven on the Fredericksburg Line.
“Four years is only 48 months, which is not very far. It’s not that many board meetings. We’ve had this discussion about how to measure this. It is very, very much on the horizon, and so we need to make sure that we are all on track,” Choe said.
As work toward these goals gets going, Choe said VRE needs to better serve the people who currently use it.
“We need to improve the reliability and quality of our service,” she said. “This is all about retaining the riders that we have, because we can’t grow our ridership if we move backwards in this transition period.”
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