I am writing in response to the Oct. 29 editorial ["For stops past VRE, elect Skinner & Pitts"].
I believe your editorial staff is either misinformed or misleading readers with the following statement: "The Spotsylvania Technology center, which aims to attract lucrative federal contracts, says that a VRE station would allow Northern Virginians to come here to work while continuing to live there."
In fact, VRE runs only one way during commuting times; that is, VRE runs only north in the morning and only south in the afternoon and evening. That would not work for commuters of Northern Virginia.
In fact, unless things have changed on I-95 from nine years ago--when I used to commute from Northern Virginia through the Fredericksburg area to southern Maryland--I found that traffic was nowhere near as heavy going south on I-95 in the morning versus going north on I-95, and vice versa in the afternoon.
The biggest strike against Northern Virginians commuting to the Fredericksburg area is the fact that, at least for federal employees, the further you get from Washington, the fewer the higher salary grades there are. That is, there are fewer GS-13 and higher positions outside of D.C. than there are in D.C.
Because the private sector needs to compete for employees with the federal government, I would expect that the situation is similar for private-sector employees.
As someone who currently uses VRE to commute to D.C., although I am not a Spotsylvania resident, I would like to see Spotsylvania join VRE. However, I felt obligated to point out obvious misinformation.
Paul Probus
King George