(The following editorial appeared on The News & Advance website on October 4, 2009.)
LYNCHBURG, Va. — Few people may have realized, but a new era dawned Thursday morning in Lynchburg, when a second Amtrak train to Washington, D.C., pulled out of the Kemper Street Station.
After years of hard work on the part of many leaders in Central Virginia — Democrats, Republicans, business and civic, the dream of expanded passenger rail service throughout Virginia is becoming a reality. When Rex Hammond, president of the Lynchburg Regional Chamber of Commerce, expressed the dream of a rail line spanning the commonwealth from Bristol and Roanoke to Lynchburg and Charlottesville and Richmond on to Washington, probably more than a few people quietly laughed and wondered about his sanity.
The intervening years, filled with hard work by dozens of people across Virginia, saw that dream become reality.
The new line, along with one to launch later this year beginning in Richmond, is backed by more $15 million in state subsidies that will pay for the initial three years of service.
Amtrak and state rail officials hope that the new line will serve more than 50,000 passengers a year, with stops in Charlottesville and points north on the way to Union Station in the nation’s capital.
The new train is much more than simply a way for tourists from Central Virginia to get to Washington or college students from Liberty University or the University of Virginia to get home at the holidays. It’s even more than the ability for a Lynchburg businessman to get to Washington for a mid-afternoon meeting.
It is much, much bigger than any of that.
Long range, the new rail service represents nothing less than Central Virginia beginning to be included in the geographic definition of the Northeast Corridor.
Running from Washington to Boston, the Northeast Corridor is the epicenter of the United States business and financial sectors. From Washington through Philadelphia and New York City on to Boston, it is the main economic engine of the country.
And for Lynchburg and Central Virginia to be hooked into the corridor is hugely important for this region in the years to come, especially from an economic development perspective.
It won’t happen overnight, nor will it happen without a lot of continued hard work on the part of the political and civic leaders who have made this first leg of the dream a reality.
But mark our words: It will happen. Some people today may complain about the train’s departure time or the subsidiy the service gets from the state’s taxpayers. Those are minor problems, minor issues that mean little in the grand scheme of things.
The world today is growing smaller and more interconnected. Simultaneously, our world in Central Virginia is growing a bit larger. And we’re only just embarking on this journey to the future.