A proposed fare increase for Virginia Railway Express might be a tough sell for a system still recovering from major train delays and decreasing ridership.

The suggested 2 percent increase is one of the recommendations made by a VRE task force on how to bridge an expected $7.7 million budget shortfall in fiscal year 2008. If approved, the increase could bring in as much as $432,461, according to the task force.

But VRE has only recently emerged from steady declines in ridership, widely attributed to frequently delayed trains. At its worst in July, only about half the trains were within five minutes of their scheduled times, according to data provided by VRE. Those delays were caused by a combination of track work on a major line and regulations that required trains to slow down on hot days, according to VRE spokesman Mark Roeber. He said ridership saw a 3 percent drop between fiscal years 2005 and 2006.

Though ridership is recovering and delays have substantially lessened in recent months, the suggestion it should now be more expensive to ride the suburban Virginia rail lines could prove problematic.

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“That’s exactly what’s on everybody’s mind,” said Fairfax County Board of Supervisors Vice Chairwoman Sharon Bulova, who also sits on the board of one of the two bodies overseeing VRE. “You’ve got riders that have suffered through track work that has slowed the system down, and then on top of that, to hit folks with fare increases would not sit well. We don’t want to see ourselves losing more riders.”

The concern over the proposed increase, Roeber said, is justifiable.

“We’ve struggled to get ridership back,” he said. “We’re going through the process of re-proving ourselves again that we’ve really made a commitment to get service back to where they expect it to be.”

Other officials in Prince William and Arlington counties declined to comment because they had not yet seen the proposed budget measures.

In addition to the possible rate hike, the VRE task force is proposing to defer a storage expansion project, reduce station security and cut contributions to the insurance trust fund. Roeber said those changes, and others, may or may not be adopted.

The budget shortfall is a result of lower revenues from the decreased ridership, increased insurance premiums, new debt and escalation costs in contracts, according to a Fairfax County report.

The VRE Operations Board is set to vote on adopting the 2008 budget on Dec. 15.

wflook@dcexaminer.com