Virginia goes all in on passenger rail

Virginia officials broke ground Tuesday on a project to bring a new rail bridge into Washington, D.C., a major milestone for a state that’s been trying to connect all of its regions to passenger rail, even if it means buying or building the tracks itself.

The $2.3 billion project would double the number of train tracks crossing the Potomac River from two to four, alleviating a major chokepoint for freight and passenger rail traveling along the East Coast. The federal government agreed to put up $729 million toward the project, which will also include a new bridge for bicyclists and pedestrians to use. The federal money comes from the $1.2 trillion infrastructure law that Congress passed in 2021. Construction is expected to be complete by 2030.

“Today, freight and passenger rail that share the tracks that cross this bridge—at a time when passenger ridership is on the rise and when capacity is virtually maxed out at peak hours—are depending on a structure that is more than 100 years old,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Tuesday.

“Rarely in the United States will you find a single piece of infrastructure on which so many people depend every single day. A more modern structure and updated capacity are going to be vital to sustain that level of traffic, and we’re going to have a lot more coming,” he added.

Virginia officials say the second span crossing the Potomac is the first time a state has purchased right-of-way from freight railroads to build their own rail infrastructure.

In the past two years, in fact, Virginia has acquired nearly 500 miles of railroad right-of-way along major interstate highways. Last month, it purchased a rail line to suburban Manassas for commuter trains and secured access to a freight corridor in southwest Virginia, a key step in bringing regular passenger service to the New River Valley for the first time since 1979.

Meanwhile, the state and other rail agencies have been busy with construction projects, particularly in the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington. They have been adding tracks, lengthening station platforms, replacing outdated bridges and adding a “flyover” bridge that will let passenger trains travel over a freight rail route instead of having to cross it at grade level.

But the key to adding capacity throughout the region is the new Potomac River crossing. The existing 119-year-old Long Bridge handles 80 freight, Amtrak and commuter rail trains a day. Virginia officials say it is operating at 98% of capacity at peak times. It is also a crucial link between Virginia and Amtrak’s busiest route, the electrified Northeast Corridor between Washington and Boston.

Doubling the number of tracks over the Potomac will allow for 13 round trips between D.C. and Richmond on Amtrak every day. It will also allow Virginia Railway Express, the commuter rail serving the area, to offer night and weekend service, something many commuter railroads have been trying to add to adapt to post-pandemic ridership demands.

Virginia, along with neighboring North Carolina, has been setting all-time ridership records on state-supported Amtrak routes in recent years. The number of passengers so far this year is ahead of last year’s numbers, too.

“One lesson that we've seen here is that even amid a very strong federal push, it makes a huge difference if the state recognizes the importance of passenger rail infrastructure,” Buttigieg told Route Fifty after the event. “Any state that’s willing to make those investments and prioritize capacity for rail is going to see a real economic payoff to doing so. And of course, when they do that, it makes it easier for us to be a good partner on the federal side.”

U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, a Democrat who once served as mayor of Richmond, recalled how the city bought the downtown station there under his watch. “The Main Street Station in Richmond was a beautiful building,” he said, “but it was mothballed for 20 years. The state owned it. There was no rail service, but there was a demand. We knew that if we built it, we could really restore ridership.”

Amtrak used a station five miles to the north of downtown Richmond after a hurricane flooded the historic station in 1972. The railroad began servicing the Main Street Station again in 2003, and in 2021 the state backed new service to the downtown location. But those trains could become more frequent with the improvements coming in northern Virginia.

“We only have a couple of trains a day into downtown, but in a while we will have many more with this Long Bridge,” Kaine said. “It’s not just Main Street Station in Richmond. This is going to help us to get to Lynchburg, Roanoke, Christiansburg and Bristol, Tennessee. It’s going to help us get into North Carolina.”

U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, another Democrat, who, like Kaine, previously served as Virginia governor, said rail ridership has consistently come in higher than initial projections when the state introduced service to places like Lynchburg, Roanoke and Richmond. In fact, when the state first launched the Virginia Railway Express commuter rail in 1992, “it was known as a white elephant. Nobody was going to ride it,” Warner said. “Today, we can’t add enough capacity.”