(The following article by Chip Jones was posted on the Richmond Times-Dispatch website on November 10.)
RICHMOND, Va. — Faced with chronic delays of Amtrak passenger trains, a leading rail-advocacy group is calling for more funds to fix the problem.
Virginians for High Speed Rail urged the governor’s rail-advisory board yesterday to back rail projects that help move people, not just freight.
“While the Rail Enhancement Fund has been an effective funding tool for rail projects, we have seen no real investment in passenger rail,” Thomas Tingle, past president of the high-speed rail group, said in a letter read to the Virginia Rail Advisory Board. The board provides advice to the governor on ways to distribute state dollars for rail improvements.
Tingle, an architect and former president of the Williamsburg Area Chamber of Commerce, urged the board to find ways to “flow some dollars directly to passenger rail.”
Virginians for High Speed Rail is a nonprofit group with more than 110 members from business and government from Norfolk to Richmond to Alexandria. It has pursued a passenger-rail agenda for the three-year, $56.8 million state Rail Enhancement Fund.
But with the bulk of the first year’s money earmarked for freight rail or related projects, passenger advocates have been frustrated. The board has maintained that improving freight railroad also helps passenger trains in the long run.
Lois Walker, the advocacy group’s president from Alexandria, noted the scarcity of Amtrak service to Richmond’s Main Street Station, which reopened three years ago after a $51.6 renovation.
At a briefing at the Science Museum of Virginia, the board learned about some of the reasons for chronic delays. Thomas Schmidt, Amtrak’s assistant vice president for transportation, reported an average statewide on-time performance of 35 percent. “On time” means trains arrive within 15 minutes of the schedule.
Less than half the trains arrive within 30 minutes of schedule.
By comparison, Amtrak has an 85 percent on-time performance in the Northeast Corridor — between Washington and Boston.
Virginia’s delays are caused by multiple factors, from equipment breakdowns to crowded tracks. In Virginia, Amtrak mostly runs on track owned by freight carrier CSX Corp. “We’re straining the railroad,” Schmidt said later, referring to freight, passenger and commuter rail.
The General Assembly has funded track, bridge and signal improvement north of Richmond, he said, “but the business keeps growing as quickly as we solve the problems.”
Sharon Bulova, head of the state rail-advisory board, said the group must consider a host of issues before it meets in January to decide how to spend $18.3 million in 2007.
But she denied that CSX and Norfolk Southern Corp., the large freight railroads, have gotten too many state dollars. Virginia Railway Express, the publicly-owned commuter rail in Northern Virginia, also has benefited, she said.