A state study to examine the potential cost of extending passenger rail service into Southwest Virginia remains on track.
The Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation is expected to begin the study during fiscal 2018-19, to assess other potential destinations west of Roanoke, including Bristol and the more heavily populated New River Valley, according to DRPT Director Jennifer Mitchell.
“We have $350,000 in our six-year plan to do a study with Norfolk Southern and Amtrak to look at possibly extending passenger rail service out to the New River Valley and then possibly out to Bristol as well,” Mitchell said this week, following a Commonwealth Transportation Board public hearing in Abingdon.
A DRPT document describes the study as the “New River Valley/Bristol intercity passenger rail and operating capital funding application,” which will “do a modeling analysis between Roanoke and Bristol.”
DRPT staff has met with the Bristol study stakeholders, including city officials and the Bristol Rail Coalition, several times and supported Amtrak providing them a ridership analysis for their study, according to the document.
However, DRPT needs to obtain and evaluate two years of ridership data from the Roanoke extension — which began in October 2017 — before any further extensions can be initiated, according to the document.
Mitchell said the state agency has also worked closely with New River Valley 2020, a partnership of business, municipal, legislative and university leaders from Blacksburg, Christiansburg, Pulaski, Radford and Montgomery County. Besides city, town and county governments, chambers of commerce and development groups, it includes representatives from Virginia Tech and Radford University, federal and state lawmakers, including U.S. Sens. Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, both Democrats, U.S. Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-9th, and state Sen. Ben Chafin, R-St. Paul.
“They actually have been really active. We’ve been meeting with them for a long time. They’ve done a great job getting business support in the region for passenger rail,” Mitchell said of New River Valley 2020. “They helped work on a study to identify where the stations would be located; they picked a site in Christiansburg. They’ve been a really important group from a business perspective and community standpoint. They’ve gotten universities on board and are garnering a lot of support.”
The New River Valley area has about 180,000 residents; its center is roughly 40 miles from Roanoke, and it provides commuter bus service to the Amtrak platform in Roanoke.
The pending state study is separate from an economic impact study currently underway that was initiated by the city of Bristol, Virginia, and the Bristol Rail Coalition. It is being conducted by consultants from the firm AECOM, working in conjunction with the Community Transportation Association of America.
“The [state] study will look at various things: potential ridership and potential cost. The track is owned by Norfolk Southern so it might not be just cost to the commonwealth but cost to them, and how will it impact their freight movements as well,” said Mike McLaughlin, DRPT’s chief of rail transportation.
Mitchell said assessing the value of freight traffic versus passenger traffic — and how to possibly accommodate both — will be an important component of the state study. The Amtrak extension from Lynchburg to Roanoke included supporting improvements elsewhere.
“A big part of it is the freight railroad’s need to build capacity in different parts of their network that will free up capacity [in other parts]. Sometimes, those improvements may not even be on the same rail line. They might be in other parts of the corridor because they may have to divert trains on another parallel track,” Mitchell said. “With the Roanoke extension, they [Norfolk Southern] actually made some improvements on some parallel routes that allowed them to free up some capacity on the route to Roanoke. That’s the type of thing we would have to look at with Norfolk Southern.”
Source: State on track for passenger rail cost analysis | News | heraldcourier.com