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Chamber of Commerce survey shows support for Spotsylvania County joining Virginia Railway Express, but a majority of respondents live outside the county Date published: 12/17/2008
By DAN TELVOCK Only 208 of Fredericksburg Regional Chamber of Commerce's 1,100 members participated in its survey gauging support for Spotsylvania County joining Virginia Railway Express. An overwhelming majority of the respondents want the Spotsylvania Board of Supervisors to approve joining the commuter rail service. But most of the Chamber members who voted do not live or work in the county. Chamber Executive Director Bob Hagan said the results may not be a deciding factor when the Board of Supervisors votes early next year, but regionwide opinion should have some influence. "We do think if our jurisdictions are going to play well together, it is important to know what other parts of our region think about actions that are about to be taken," he said. A majority of Spotsylvania voters supported a 2005 bond referendum that included $12 million for a VRE station, but there are no plans to build one. That bond referendum also included millions of dollars for road-improvement projects. Despite the bond vote, a majority of Spotsylvania supervisors has been unwilling to join VRE. Some of the reasons given are the 2 percent gasoline tax, unreliable train service, subsidizing a service that about 1,000 county residents use, and terms in the contract that don't make it easy to cancel VRE membership. Portions of the 2 percent gas tax would go to VRE operations, but the remainder can be used for transportation projects in the county. County staff has estimated that several million dollars would be left over after the county pays its share of VRE operations. Hagan, who is a VRE supporter and a former Spotsylvania supervisor, said he is happy with the number of respondents, but felt the Chamber could have gotten more participation if the survey deadline was extended beyond a week. "We wanted to go into the new year with some idea of how our membership felt about this," he said. The Chamber represents businesses in Fredericksburg and the counties of Spotsylvania, King George, Caroline and Stafford. Fredericksburg and Stafford are VRE members. At least four Spotsylvania supervisors would need to support joining VRE; only three have publicly stated they do. Supervisors Emmitt Marshall and T.C. Waddy have said they will never support the rail service; Supervisors Gary Jackson and Jerry Logan are undecided. "Any information related to VRE and what the public opinion is, is of interest to me," Logan said. "I am more interested in what Spotsylvania residents think about it." Dan Telvock: 540/374-5438
Read more stories about Spotsylvania Date published: 12/17/2008
BTW, the lots at both Leeland Rd. and Brooke were both federally subsidized, as well as every Park and Ride lot in the area, so the same rule (cannot restrict who parks there) applies to them as applies to the federally subsidized VRE lots in Fredericksburg.
DeanFetterolf, if you had kept up with the discussions on the VRE web site, you would already know that what you are proposing (towing cars from VRE lots) won't fly because if federal transportation dollars were used to build those lots, the localities cannot restrict who parks there. In Fredericksburg, they have already kicked out non-subsidy jurisdiction riders from lots where there were no federal transportation dollars used to build. Now, Spotsy riders can only use the federally subsidized lots.
There are somewhere around 120,000 people in the county
since last census. !000 people are estimated to ride the train.
Why can't Spotsy levy it's own 2% tax on gas and spend it on
roads nstead of a train less than 1% of the people ride?
just cause Stafford and Fredericksburg made the mistake of joining onto the loosing venture known as VRE. As you point out the Stafford per rider Subsidy has gone up 415% sounds like a great reason for Spotsy not to join. Wasn't some of that money supposed to go to roads. Guess you got suckered into that one. I guess you'd have to run every tag to sort out the Spotsy ones to tow, but you won't find mine there. I like to be on time so I don't use VRE,
Stafford, Fredericksburg and Spotsy prices. Keep it simple, compare say Wawa to Wawa, Valero to Valero, Shell to Shell...you get the idea. You will find that Spotsy price are about equal to HIGHER than the othe rtwo localities. Yet those retailer do not have to pay the per gallon VRE tax! Folks in Spotsy HAVE beeen supporting the VRE for years, the money has just gone into somebody else's pocket! THAT is something that deserves an investigation, IMNSHO.
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