VRE CEO: Queueing on Trains

• Editor's Note: The following comes from an email distributed through Virginia Rail Express' Train Talk email. The message is from VRE CEO Dale Zehner and it is unedited. 

I often get the question from people who are new to VRE, “Dale, what is queuing?”

The answer is that queuing is the action of forming a line.  In VRE’s case, queuing is lining up to detrain for your station, well ahead of time.  Unfortunately, when the queue starts a station or two ahead of time, we end up with riders struggling to get past the line to detrain at their station.

Many years ago, on the Fredericksburg Line, we started a “standing means detraining” campaign, which was successful when it was put into use.  Essentially, the strategy is to clear the path at a station so that everyone who needs to get off the train can.  To put it plainly, when a train is in the station, it will be assumed that anyone standing is attempting to detrain, and that once everyone has detrained, the aisles should be clear.  Once the train has departed the station, the next group of riders is permitted to stand.  If people are observed standing in the aisles as the train is at a station, the doors will remain open and the train will not move.

This is a policy that we had not implemented on the Manassas Line or with Keolis until recently.  However, with the number of people on train 329, we decided that this would be a good pilot train before rolling out to the entire system.  We have received a lot of feedback, both positive and negative, on this policy.  We are in the process of tweaking and refining it to get the policy to a place where it can be universally applied.

Does this mean that the conductors should be enforcing this policy when there are no seats? No.  This means that once there are enough seats for everyone still on board the train that the policy should be enforced, after Burke Centre on the Manassas Line and after Rippon on the Fredericksburg Line.  Northbound, this can be an issue as well, especially for Crystal City riders trying to get around the L’Enfant riders.

For those of you who prefer to queue, remember that not everyone wants to, or is able to, stand for 10-15 minutes on a moving train.  Allowing everyone the opportunity to detrain at their station means that everyone will get home on-time.