(The following article by Chip Jones was posted on the Richmond Times-Dispatch website on February 4.)
RICHMOND, Va. — The phone rang early at Dale Zehner’s house on Jan. 5.
Zehner, chief executive officer of the Virginia Railway Express, was dismayed to hear that that one of his trains derailed near Quantico, injuring several passengers and a conductor and creating a mess for Northern Virginia commuters.
But something good came out of the 7 a.m. phone call from Jay S. Westbrook, the new public face of CSX in Virginia. CSX owns the track and needed to fix the problem to help its tenant railroads — such as VRE and Amtrak — but also to get its trains back on the move.
Within 10 minutes of the Quantico derailment, Westbrook asked, “‘What do you need from us?'”
Then Westbrook and a trouble-shooting team caught a corporate jet from CSX’s headquarters in Jacksonville, Fla., and arrived on the scene only hours after the accident. He pledged to get the trains rolling by the next day, and he managed to make good on his promise.
“My feeling is that wouldn’t have happened” without Westbrook’s swift intervention, Zehner said.
The quick response marked a turnabout for CSX, not known for speedy service or communications.
“We have lots of challenges, but at least now we have a single point of contact,” said Karen Rae, director of the state Department of Rail and Public Transportation.
Westbrook’s new job marks a “much higher level of commitment” by CSX to mend fences here, said Rae, a sometimes harsh critic of the nation’s third largest railroad.
Rae, who announced her resignation last week, has complained about foot-dragging at the railroad in making needed improvements, including the chronic congestion of rail cars at CSX’s Acca Yard, adjacent to the Interstates 195 and 64 in Richmond. The crowded freight yard is a choke point that can slow Amtrak trains to a crawl.
Westbrook, 44, knows there’s plenty of work to do.
“I feel a lot like a football coach taking on a program that’s gone 0-12 last season,” he said in a recent interview. “There are many opportunities, and the only way I’ve got to go is up.”
The sandy-haired executive said his 22 years with CSX has prepared him for the task, which requires a mix of business and political polish, along with a practical knowledge of railroading. He has served as an assistant roadmaster, helping run trains along the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, but also has worked in government relations.
“I am a communicator,” Westbrook said. “That’s what we need here — enhanced and more frequent communications between myself and the people of Virginia.”
He’s also keen on improving communications with the two passenger railroads operating in Virginia — the VRE and Amtrak.
“This is all about passengers and freight,” he said, stressing CSX’s focus on cooperation.
His job title reflects the cooperative spirit of his job: assistant vice president for public-private partnerships. Virginia is the only state in CSX’s 23-state system with someone assigned to keep the trains — and construction projects — running on time.
Westbrook reports directly to the railroad’s chief operating officer, Tony Ingram, and also meets with CSX’s chairman and chief executive officer, Michael Ward.
The Virginia management post was created after Rae complained in 2004 that CSX was sluggish about starting $65.7 million worth of state-funded track, bridge and signal upgrades.
The spat bubbled into the governor’s office, where Ward eventually met with then-Gov. Mark R. Warner to smooth things out.
Ward wrote a conciliatory note that pledged to “make our business dealings easier in the future.”
Westbrook’s task is trying to turn his boss’s rhetoric into reality.
“I have a lot of work to do, don’t I?” he said with a good-natured grin.
A 1984 graduate of North Carolina State University, with a degree in civil engineering, Westbrook said he’s up to the challenge because he “enjoys problem-solving.”
He ticks off some improvements that have taken place since he took the assignment last fall, including a significant change at CSX’s operations center in Jacksonville.
The railroad has assigned a new rush-hour supervisor to give special priority to problems that occur during morning and evening commutes. The rush-hour supervisor is authorized to deal immediately with any operating snafus.
Westbrook also is working with his counterparts in the public sphere to address the underlying problem facing the railroad: crowding on its busy 100 miles of track between Richmond and Washington. He’s starting with the most congested stretch from Fredericksburg to Washington.
Like I-95, he said, it doesn’t take much to disrupt the railroad — a broken switch here, an ailing locomotive there. “Any small incident” can do it, Westbrook said.
Ultimately, the answer is adding tracks, bridges and other pieces to the rail network in Virginia. Pieces of the puzzle are falling into place, such as a second set of tracks over Quantico Creek in Northern Virginia.
But Westbrook agrees with state and VRE officials that the long-term solution is to build another set of tracks running from Washington to Richmond. Most of the corridor has double track, except for the single line over Quantico Creek — a frequent bottleneck.
Some of the work has been approved, including a $53.4 million rail-improvement package awaiting approval by the current session of the General Assembly.
Meanwhile, every day can pose a new problem for the busy rail network.
“The on-time performance continues to be problematic,” Rae said of CSX. “It’s bigger than just Virginia,” with train slow-downs up and down the East Coast that have a ripple effect here.
Still, she sounded pleased with Westbrook’s efforts.
“You’ve got to crawl before you can run,” Rae said. “Before we were standing still. We’re cautiously optimistic about these changes.”