Commuters Urged to Try Mass Transit
With "Ride Home Rewards," eligible mass transit users can book free rides if they need to leave work early or stay late unexpectedly.
By Hank Silverberg
MANAGING EDITOR AND CORRESPONDENT
Email Hank
Many people shy away from mass transit, worried they will not have a ride home if have leave their job early due to an emergency or work past their usual commuting time.
Virginia has tried in recent years to make the use of mass transit easier, including by introducing programs that will provide free emergency rides home.
This week, labeled “Transit Week” by the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation, all such programs will be consolidated into the “Ride Home Rewards” program for communities from Stafford County south.
The new program will not affect the “Commuter Connection” free ride which has been in operation for decades in Northern Virginia.
To be eligible for the new Ride Home Rewards program, commuters must register with the ConnectingVA app and then take at least six mass public transit trips in the month after registering.
Public mass transit options in the Fredericksburg area include Virginia Railway Express; Amtrak; carpools and vanpools; Fredericksburg Regional Transit (FXBGO!) buses, which serve Stafford, Fredericksburg, and Spotsylania; and OmniRide buses between Stafford and Washington, D.C.
The rules have been standardized system-wide. For example, the reimbursement methods are now the same everywhere in the system.
People who work in Stafford, Spotsylvania, Caroline, and King George counties, plus the city of Fredericksburg, are among those eligible for this reworked program, which now covers most communities in Virginia south of Stafford. Eligible employees can book a free emergency ride in the event that they need to leave work earlier or later than usual due to any of the following reasons:
unexpected illness
unscheduled overtime
sickness of an immediate family member (child, spouse, parent)
carpool or vanpool leaving early
The free emergency ride home does not apply to trips due to bad weather, natural disasters, transit service disruptions, sober rides, or medical emergencies.
The rides are provided by Uber, Lyft or taxi service between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. on weekdays, though users can schedule the free ride for later in the evening if they learn during operating hours that they will have to stay at work late.
The service is not available on state or federal holidays.
Ride Home Rewards can be used six times per year or a maximum of two times per month.
People who log their mass transit or vanpool trips between September 15-19, as the remodeled program gets underway, are also eligible for regional prize drawings to win free bus passes.
Learn more at connectingva.org or visit connectingva.drpt.virginia.gov/ride-home-rewards for full Ride Home Rewards guidelines.
All of this is part of the state’s efforts to reduce congestion, lower emissions from traffic, and expand alternatives to driving solo.
Local Obituaries
To view local obituaries or to send a note to family and loved ones, please visit the link that follows.
Support Award-winning, Locally Focused Journalism
The FXBG Advance cuts through the talking points to deliver both incisive and informative news about the issues, people, and organizations that daily affect your life. And we do it in a multi-partisan format that has no equal in this region. Over the past year, our reporting was:
First to break the story of Stafford Board of Supervisors dismissing a citizen library board member for “misconduct,” without informing the citizen or explaining what the person allegedly did wrong.
First to explain falling water levels in the Rappahannock Canal.
First to detail controversial traffic numbers submitted by Stafford staff on the Buc-ee’s project
Our media group also offers the most-extensive election coverage in the region and regular columnists like:
And our newsroom is led by the most-experienced and most-awarded journalists in the region — Adele Uphaus (Managing Editor and multiple VPA award-winner) and Martin Davis (Editor-in-Chief, 2022 Opinion Writer of the Year in Virginia and more than 25 years reporting from around the country and the world).
For just $8 a month, you can help support top-flight journalism that puts people over policies.
Your contributions 100% support our journalists.
Help us as we continue to grow!
This article is published under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND. It can be distributed for noncommercial purposes and must include the following: “Published with permission by FXBG Advance.”