Virginia Passes New VRE Ticket Law
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Virginia Passes New VRE Ticket Law
From VARP’s On Track newsletter, summer 2009
In spring 2009 the Commonwealth of Virginia enacted legislation requiring passengers to have a validated ticket in order to ride Virginia Railway Express trains. Despite 17 years of warnings from VRE, the existing law did not require passengers to validate their tickets; it only made it unlawful “to board or ride a train” of a Virginia transportation district if a “person has failed or refused to pay the posted fare.”
The modified law makes it unlawful if a “person willfully and with intent to defraud (i) fails to pay the posted fare published by the transportation district (ii) fails to properly validate a ticket, (iii) uses a fraudulent or counterfeit ticket, or (iv) uses a validated ticket outside the designated zone of the paid ride.”
VRE says that it has “zero tolerance” for “any passenger who boards the train without a valid ticket (for whatever reason) … Disputing the citation can only be done by going to court.”
