Survey says Yes to VRE Saturday Service and Fare Hike

During the VRE Operations Board meeting on Friday, November 17, 2023, in Woodbridge, the state’s only commuter railway, presented the results of an internal survey showing 94 percent of respondents favor Saturday service and a majority are willing to pay higher fares to get it.

VRE CFO Mark Schofield said that implementing Saturday service would lead to an additional $1 million in operating costs in FY2025. However, the railway’s overall operating costs are expected to decrease by $1.4 million due to other reductions.

https://www.potomaclocal.com/2023/11/18 ... -increase/

I would be interested to see the raw stats of the survey: how many people were polled, how many responded, how they responded (paper? app? Web site? Phone call?), and when they responded. I believe the 94% figure but my undergrad statistics class reminds me that it is not difficult to massage raw data into the desired figure.

I did some Googling to see if I could find any old articles or postings about any surveys that the MTA conducted prior to the start of MARC’s weekend services but I couldn’t find any. It would be interesting to compare any survey results from that time period with these survey results.

TheOneKEA wrote: ↑Sun Nov 19, 2023 5:39 pm I would be interested to see the raw stats of the survey: how many people were polled, how many responded, how they responded (paper? app? Web site? Phone call?), and when they responded. I believe the 94% figure but my undergrad statistics class reminds me that it is not difficult to massage raw data into the desired figure.

I did some Googling to see if I could find any old articles or postings about any surveys that the MTA conducted prior to the start of MARC’s weekend services but I couldn’t find any. It would be interesting to compare any survey results from that time period with these survey results.

It started in 2013... hmmm... *checks saved logs* ...no, there was some planning back in 2007 et al for weekend service, but no surveys were pushed out. It got announced in November of 2013 and started early December.

An internal survey: what does that mean? About 10 years ago VRE asked its existing (weekday, rush-hour) passengers whether they would use weekend service and got a low positive response. As far as I could find out, VRE did not ask people who were not already VRE customers, but weekend patrons might be a different group of people and might pay higher (one-way) fares compared to the weekday commuters. I wonder who was asked about weekend service in this internal survey.