By Kathryn N. Davis

Richard Beadles can’t shorten the distance between Richmond and Washington, D.C., but he’d like to make it seem shorter. His reasons are economic — if Richmond-area businesses can go north quick enough, they can find customers there. "Richmond is tantalizingly close to this huge economic engine of Northern Virginia," says Beadles, a retired railroad executive. "Yet in many ways, we’re too far away to participate."

Beadles is lobbying for a long-proposed high-speed rail link between the two cities. In 1997, Beadles and business leaders from Richmond and Hampton Roads founded the Virginia High Speed Rail Development Committee to push for passenger rail improvements as an alternative to crowded highways and inadequate air travel.

The committee is among a number of voices in the business community that have been finding favor lately in rail travel. Northern Virginia’s technology executives are calling for an 23-mile extension of the Metrorail system through the technology corridor to Dulles International Airport. To the south, Norfolk officials are making plans for a light-rail link from the city’s downtown business district to the Virginia Beach city limits. Hampton Roads business leaders also are pushing for a rail connection through the Interstate 64 corridor to Richmond. Southwest Virginia wants more passenger rail and is proposing new trains to serve communities from Bristol to Lynchburg and on to Richmond and Washington.

Beadles says business leaders are backing these projects because they realize rail is a critical part of the state’s transportation network — and thus, the economy. In addition, rail is often less expensive than highway projects and in many cases can be done more quickly.

Coinciding with support from business is a boost in funding for many rail projects. The General Assembly’s transportation spending package included $75 million for the Metrorail extension, $69 million for the Richmond-Washington high-speed rail link and $9.3 million to begin work on rail service to Southwest Virginia.

"If enough voices are raised on behalf of something, the legislators do listen," Beadles says. "I think we’re making a difference."

*   *   *

It takes two hours and 10 minutes to travel from the Amtrak station on Staples Mills Road in Henrico County to Union Station in Washington. Add in travel time from downtown Richmond to the Staples Mill Road station and the trip can eat up most of a morning.

Moving the Amtrak station to Main Street Station and using new trains capable of speeds up to 110 miles per hour could cut that trip to 90 minutes, says Alan Tobias, senior rail transportation engineer for the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation.

Beadles thinks a 90-minute trip will for the first time tie Richmond to the Northeast’s string of metropolitan areas reaching to New York and Boston. "It becomes one giant region with a lot of interaction and commercial activity," he says.

Amtrak today runs eight trains a day between Richmond and Washington, carrying about 700,000 passengers per year. With high-speed rail, ridership could triple during the next 10 years to 2.1 million. New trains could be in place in two years, though the actual high-speed service will take longer.

The $380 million project includes $150 million from the state over six years for corridor improvements. The rest would come from the federal government. The biggest expense is adding a third track between Washington and Richmond; there are also bottlenecks along the route that need to be removed so trains can reach maximum speed.

The high-speed service is part of Amtrak’s revamping of its operations throughout the Northeast corridor. The railroad had hoped to begin its new Washington-to-Boston high-speed service earlier this year, but it met delays in getting the equipment ready.

High-speed rail could someday extend south of Richmond. Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia are working together on plans to extend high-speed rail to Charlotte, N.C., by 2010, and then later to points south in Georgia and eventually Florida.

Improving the Richmond-Washington corridor would have another benefit: It would give the Virginia Railway Express commuter line from Fredericksburg room to add express trains, says Matt Benka, VRE spokesman. The new trains could cut commuters’ travel time by 20 minutes each way. "That’s a huge difference, especially in the hectic, maddening world of Northern Virginia."

*   *   *

Northern Virginia already has the state’s best public transit network. The Virginia Railway Express runs commuter trains to and from Manassas and Fredericksburg, and the regional Metrorail system serves suburbs closer to the city.

All that rail still isn’t enough. The Dulles Toll Road corridor of Fairfax County is crowded with new development. Close to 10 million square feet of new office space came on line last year and "cranes are still swinging," says Patty Nicoson, president of the Dulles Corridor Rail Association.

Nicoson’s nonprofit group has support from technology companies, commercial real estate firms and other businesses in the region. The group calls rail "an essential component of an integrated development program" of the corridor. That’s a nice way of saying that traffic is a mess and is expected to get worse. "Commuting is hellish unless you’re walking from your bedroom to your home office," Nicoson says.

A Northbound train crossing Quantico Creek in Prince William County. Amtrak currently runs eight trains each day between Richmond and Washington D.C. Photo by Doug Koontz

Their proposed solution is a 23-mile, 10-station extension of the Metrorail from Falls Church to Dulles International Airport. The project received $75 million in the 2000 General Assembly to begin extending bus and rail service along the corridor. The region’s long-term plan calls for having the line in place by 2010 at a total cost of $2 billion. When completed, the rail line is expected to carry 50,000 commuters a day in its first year.

The region’s rapid growth should continue. A 1997 study projected traffic on the Dulles Toll Road would reach 140,000 vehicles per day by 2020, up from 80,000 per day in 1990. The number of households in the corridor would increase 138 percent to 89,000 by 2020. Employment in the same period is predicted to rise 123 percent.

"This is Virginia’s high-tech corridor," says Gary Kuykendall, project director in the Northern Virginia Transit Support Section of the Department of Rail and Public Transportation. "It is worth it to invest in that corridor."

*   *   *

Hampton Roads doesn’t have Northern Virginia’s traffic congestion — at least not yet, says Michael Townes, director of the Transportation District Commission of Hampton Roads.

The region is making plans for a network of light rail service that would take pressure off crowded highways. But those plans were disrupted in November when Virginia Beach voters rejected a proposal to install light rail along an existing Norfolk Southern line. So now Townes’ group is making plans for a seven-mile "starter" line that would run from downtown Norfolk to the Virginia Beach line.

The original line was 18 miles long. The current proposal would cost $291 million and carry about 3,840 riders a day, according to preliminary studies. Tentative plans call for construction to begin in 2004 and take two years, though the project could be suspended if it’s not financially viable. The commission hopes that once the starter line is running, other cities will agree to extend the rail.

Supporters say the region desperately needs it to deal with traffic problems. The number of congested highway miles in the region will increase from 318 miles in 1995 to 869 miles in 2015, according to a Hampton Roads Planning District Commission study. Townes is confounded at the resistance the light rail project found in Virginia Beach. Opponents cited the cost and questioned whether light rail was the right investment for limited transportation dollars.

"It’s as if some people are angry that we’re suggesting an alternative form of transportation," Townes says. "How could you not think that we need another form? I think it’s just something that they see as a threat because it will take them out of their cars."

*   *   *

There’s more to rail projects than getting people off roads — getting them out of the air, for instance. Communi-ties in Southwest Virginia are pushing for a new passenger rail service — dubbed the Trans-Dominion Express — not only to escape the Interstate 81 corridor, but to provide an alternative to high airfares. The rail line would send two roundtrip trains a day from Bristol northeast to Roanoke and Lynchburg, stopping at smaller stations along the way. In Lynchburg, riders could continue on to Richmond or catch a train north through Charlottesville to Washington.

Rex Hammond, president of the Lynchburg Regional Chamber of Commerce and part of the effort to win funding for the project, says he has received more than 80 letters of support from communities, business groups and colleges along the proposed corridor. "A good idea will take on a life of its own," he says.

Southwest Virginia has only limited air service, and what is available is expensive. A roundtrip coach ticket from Bristol to the Washington area costs $758. By comparison, a roundtrip ticket for the same trip on the Trans-Dominion Express would cost $140, according to preliminary estimates.

The overall project cost is $20 million. A study by the state Department of Rail and Public Transportation predicts that the rail service could pay its own way in 12 years. The service would reach 19 stations. Ridership would be an estimated 370,000 in the first year, according to a state study.

The General Assembly agreed to spend $9.3 million on the project — enough to make the capital improvements, says the state’s Tobias, but not enough to cover initial operating costs. With full funding the service could have been operating by 2003. Surprisingly, the new service wouldn’t make the trip any quicker. It would still take about seven hours to reach Washington from Bristol.

The train service would run on tracks owned by Norfolk Southern, which has concerns about sharing its tracks. Plus, Norfolk Southern has its own proposal for alleviating traffic on I-81. The state plans to spend $3.5 billion in the next 20 years to widen the road from Bristol to Winchester. Norfolk Southern says that if the state instead made $900 million in improvements to its rail system, it could reduce truck traffic on the interstate by moving it to rail, and do it more quickly.

*   *   *

The money the General Assembly doled out for rail projects is proof of how attitudes have changed toward passenger rail, which for decades has been a poor cousin to new highways or air travel. The $69 million for high-speed rail, for example, is the first-ever state funding for that project, says Bevon of the State Department of Rail and Public Trans-portation.

In every instance, frustration over bad traffic is driving new support to rail projects. The irony is, that same traffic gridlock has the potential to eat up the limited supply of state transportation funding and thus delay the construction of new passenger rail.

Beadles says nobody he’s talked to about expanding passenger rail thinks it’s a bad idea. "The only crunch and squeeze comes when you start trying to figure out how to fund [it] all."

The proposal to replace Northern Virginia’s Wilson Bridge is a good example. Cost estimates of that project are above $2 billion, Beadles says. "You can’t put off doing the Wilson Bridge," he says. "I’m not one of these guys who thinks you can banish automobiles." But in some places, highway expansion is reaching its limit.

"I drive along in urban areas and see where they’re adding lanes and building those atrocious barrier walls. ... You begin to see the physical limits. So even though we have this enormous list of highway projects that are essential, we are bumping up against the physical limits of expansion."

Beadles believes the time is right for rail service to succeed. Amtrak already carries about 900,000 passengers a year in Virginia, "and it hasn’t even been well-developed and well-promoted." New Amtrak service and the potential expansion of the Virginia Railway Express could sending passenger totals soaring, he says.

"When you get right down to it," he says, "rail will be defined and its success measured in how it compares to driving the automobile."