VRE continues ridership growth, while MARC ridership drops

More commuters have turned to the Virginia Railway Express this year than last, all while the commuter railroad set its highest ridership record this month

"VRE ridership has continued to grow at a time when other regional and national public transportation agencies are seeing a downward trend," noted VRE CEO Dale Zehner

VRE saw a three percent growth in riders during the first quarter of 2009, while commuter railroads in 12 states, including Alaska, California, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Texas and Utah, saw drops in passenger numbers, according to the American Public Transportation Association

http://www2.insidenova.com/isn/news/loc ... wth/50585/

davinp wrote:More commuters have turned to the Virginia Railway Express this year than last, all while the commuter railroad set its highest ridership record this month

"VRE ridership has continued to grow at a time when other regional and national public transportation agencies are seeing a downward trend," noted VRE CEO Dale Zehner

VRE saw a three percent growth in riders during the first quarter of 2009, while commuter railroads in 12 states, including Alaska, California, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Texas and Utah, saw drops in passenger numbers, according to the American Public Transportation Association

http://www2.insidenova.com/isn/news/loc ... wth/50585/

Good for VRE, but I doubt MARC ridership dropped that much. Even after gas prices fell, a year or so ago, MARC ridership still continued to grow steadily and has continously set ridership records during the past few years. According to the most recent APTA ridership reports MARC ridership grew from 32,000 (per day) to 32,700 from Q2 2009 to Q3 2009 (Q3 includes the summer, typically the season with lowest ridership). VRE ridership increased from 15,700 to 15,800 over the same period. However MARC ridership was a drop from a record 33,100 in Q3 2008 (VRE ridership was 15,600 the same period).

If there is any reason why one is doing better than the other, I would say it is this;

VRE offers Trains throughout the day in both directions on both its routes, works with Amtrak, offering seats on their services on the same lines, have a great student discount program.

Marc on the other hand only runs bi directional trains on the Penn line as far as I know, and only runs a good service during the morning and evening rush, services on the Brunswick line run into DC in the morning and out again in the evening, not giving any option to do the opposite commute (for whatever reason), ticket prices are also not nearly as good value.

The Camden line also has 3 reverse flow trains in the morning and one in the evening. MARC also works with Amtrak offering some regional seats to Penn line riders (and serving Penn line stations in the case of disruptions). As far as "not as good value", MARC fares haven't gone up in years, unlike VRE fares which are going up every time you look.

Matt_S wrote:If there is any reason why one is doing better than the other, I would say it is this;

VRE offers Trains throughout the day in both directions on both its routes, works with Amtrak, offering seats on their services on the same lines, have a great student discount program.

Marc on the other hand only runs bi directional trains on the Penn line as far as I know, and only runs a good service during the morning and evening rush, services on the Brunswick line run into DC in the morning and out again in the evening, not giving any option to do the opposite commute (for whatever reason), ticket prices are also not nearly as good value.

Well, for one, VRE is not really "doing better" than MARC, and they just fired Amtrak as their contractor so they're definitely not working with them, not as much anyway. MARC also has a student discount program (the same as Amtrak, Student Advantage) which I have used in the past.

As HokieNav said, over the past year or two VRE raised fares 4 times, MARC hasn't touched fares in probably over a decade (not that I neccessarily agree with that). Also as mentioned there are bi-directional trains all day on the Penn Line (unlike either VRE line), and in rush hour on the Camden Line. At one point there was also bi-directional service on the Brunswick Line (the train that was involved in the '96 MARC/Amtrak collision was a reverse flow train). It isn't really practical for the Brunswick Line to have two-way service, because: 1. the major job centers Silver Spring and Rockville, are also served by the Red Line, 2. the equipment is needed for midday Penn service, 3. there's already enough trainsets for good rush hour service.

MARC looked pretty good on the penn linefriday morning to me.
But that was my first time on the MARC so what do i know?

I've always found Maryland drivers to be very adverse to public transportation, even the MARC train to some extent. While it's def seen as acceptable for all classes of people, I think that a lot of people were eager to dumb the train as soon as gas went down.

gprimr1 wrote:I've always found Maryland drivers to be very adverse to public transportation, even the MARC train to some extent. While it's def seen as acceptable for all classes of people, I think that a lot of people were eager to dumb the train as soon as gas went down.

I'm not sure about that. Maryland is a transit-heavy state. I fully expected MARC ridership to decrease drastically after gas went down, but it barely took a hit and hasn't gone below 30,000 daily since. The trains I took got more and more crowded. My evening train especially regularly had a lot of people standing after Silver Spring--something previously only seen on the Penn Line. The peak of ridership was during the gas crisis, but it didn't fall precipitously after (on MARC or Metro).

According to census.gov Maryland has the 6th (5th excluding DC) highest percentage of residents who use transit in the country (8.5%) in 2008. Three years ago the state was 4th, behind DC, NY, and NJ.