(The following article by Chip Jones was posted on the Richmond Times-Dispatch website on December 16.)
RICHMOND, Va. — Planned improvements of the state’s rail system moved ahead yesterday, along with a related rail project rolled in by Gov. Mark R. Warner.
The Commonwealth Transportation Board unanimously approved a package of rail improvements that commits the state to spend $53.4 million during the next three years. Among the top 12 projects are three in the Richmond area:
$2.8 million for new track switches in CSX Corp.’s Acca Yard, one of the biggest choke points for freight and passenger trains;
$140,000 for a feasibility study to upgrade tracks around the Port of Richmond, in the hope of making it a staging area for Amtrak trains at Main Street Station. This also could provide connections for the proposed TransDominion Express, a pilot project to run passenger trains from Bristol to Richmond and points north; and
$750,000 for an environmental-impact study necessary to connect Richmond with Raleigh, N.C., in what’s touted as a Southeast high-speed rail corridor.
“For the first time, we’re in the driver’s seat,” said Karen Rae, executive director of the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation.
Rae pledged to work with the attorney general’s office to make sure grant recipients do the work they have pledged to do. The biggest recipients are CSX and Norfolk Southern Corp., the two major Eastern railroads.
“Cost overruns will not be reimbursed,” Rae said.
In a related matter, Warner told the transportation board that he plans to inject $9 million into the next budget for track and road improvements for Norfolk Southern’s Prince George Intermodal Facility near Petersburg.
Construction of the $13.35 million rail-truck transfer facility on U.S. 460 is set to begin in the spring of 2008.
That work is separate from the slate of projects in the state’s first dedicated rail fund. The General Assembly has approved $23.2 million for the first year of work, but subsequent years must get new appropriations.
“It’s a very good start,” said Gerald McCarthy, the Richmond district representative on the transportation board. “But we don’t want to create a lengthy wish list for which no money” is available.
The plan’s critics have said it pours too much money into freight rail improvements, and not enough into passenger rail. Overall, more than $17 million of the first-year spending — or about 73 percent — is dedicated to freight rail, including major improvements in the rail connections at the Port of Hampton Roads.
The rest — more than $6 million will pay for improvements for passenger rail — both Amtrak and the Virginia Railway Express in Northern Virginia. That sum includes the Acca Yard project, which some critics have said is actually covering deferred maintenance for CSX.
CSX officials have said they would not replace the switches unless they had the state’s backing to try to speed the current sluggish train speeds through the yard that connects Amtrak’s Staples Mill Station and Main Street Station.