there's talk of an independent state-venture Norfolk-Richmond-Lynchburg-Roanoke-Bristol train. Big story in the local paper while I was home for Thanksgiving. Could be all talk, for all I know, but it sure sounds nice.
Go to the Va DOT web site. I think this is not just old news, but a dead issue. www.drpt.state.va.us Look around and you will see the various projects being done or talked about. Last thing I saw on Bristol service was that the projected ridership was so small that it was not worth doing.
VDOT is still
touting this, though TDX's website says things are
stalled in the Richmond legislature for now. But its most current political information is from 2006, and the prominent cover story on on the State/Local section of Lynchburg's paper (with current developments and quotes from state officials) makes me think it's very not "a dead issue". (Don't have a copy of the article handy, though my parents might; it was from just before Thanksgiving.)
The same article said Amtrak was doing (or was committed to doing in early 2008) a feasibility study on a WAS-LYH train which would have state funding.
At the risk of spinning this topic off into a Virginia-centric focus (admins, feel free to wipe this out or separate it into another topic if you deem it necessary), I think I should probably chime in and give what I believe is an accurate "state of the tracks" right now concerning passenger rail in Central Virginia.
Right now, we have two agencies operating scheduled service in Virginia: Amtrak (Cardinal, Crescent, Regionals, Silvers, Carolinian, etc) and Virginia Railway Express (Commuter trains between DC and Fredericksburg/Manassas). This effectively makes a basic upside-down V shape in the state, with the point of the V centered at Alexandria, VA and the two arms extending down to Petersburg/Newport News and Danville/Clifton Forge, as outlined in this screen grab from Google Earth:
Now, for about 15 years now (man, I can't believe it's been that long), the
TransDominion Express initiative has been pushing for service across much of the central portion of the state, as outlined in
this map from their website:
The new passenger trackage on that map is obviously between Bristol and Richmond, and the map is outdated with its stop in Farmville (much to my disappointment, as Hampden-Sydney, my alma mater, is located there) since NS has abandoned the historic High Bridge just west of town.
Now, in the past two years that TDX stretch between Lynchburg and Washington has been quietly ignored by the TDX folks (to put it nicely) in favor of focusing on a Bristol-Lynchburg startup service (primarily because of a Bristol-based Congressman who's been leading the charge). It's my opinion (and just my opinion) that that focus on Bristol-Lynchburg is what may very well doom the service from ever getting started; to put it bluntly, there's just not enough people and money in that area as compared to the Lynchburg-DC corridor (especially between CVS and WAS).
As a result, a new group has spun off to focus on a Charlottesville-DC service, and that group is called
CvilleRail, and was the focus of that recent newspaper article. The group is very much in its infancy right now, and is just getting started on lobbying. At least one of the founding members was formerly on the TDX board and went to CvilleRail when it became clear that the TDX was focusing on Bristol and not DC/Richmond.
VRE, meanwhile, has been exploring service expansions along is Manassas line to Gainesville and Culpeper/Charlottesville, and along the Fredericksburg line to Richmond, but again, it's a matter of money and building new yard facilities.
So that's where we stand today in central Virginia: a lot of talk, and absolutely nothing happening.
MISC notes:
-Amtrak, for a long time according to NARP and VARP (Virginia Association of Railway Patrons), has wanted to run a daily Cardinal between CVS and WAS/NYP, but the state hasn't offered any funding. I also believe it would have to be a push-pull operation since Y-ing in CVS seems to be an impossibility. CvilleRail is looking at how to make this happen, but again, I'm not holding my breath.
-Charlottesville/Gordonsville/Mineral/Richmond have been asking for reinstatement of passenger service along that corridor, but those tracks are so deteriotated now that there would need to be some major improvements before that happened (interesting trivia note: the last passenger train to run on that stretch recently was the Auto Train last year when there was a major service interruption along its normal route north of Richmond; it ended up diverging onto that old line to Gordonsville and switched onto the Cardinal route to Orange/Culpeper/Manassas/Alexandria and then reversed back down to Lorton; I wish I could have seen that!).
-Petersburg to Norfolk has also been thrown out there, but again, just talk.
-VARP has posted a nice write-up on what Virginia could look like:
Full article here.
-Rafi
