(The Associated Press circulated the following story by Zinie Chen Sampson on October 6.)
RICHMOND, Va. — Virginia transportation officials and CSX Corp. said Wednesday they have reached an agreement on how to use $65.7 million in state funds for rail improvements between Richmond and Washington.
The deal was announced about a week after Gov. Mark R. Warner and other state officials publicly expressed frustration at what they considered CSX’s reluctance to make the upgrades a priority. The General Assembly authorized the funding in July 2000.
The agreement is “good for the taxpayer and fair for CSX,” said Karen Rae, director of the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation.
“I want to stress that despite the frustration about the length of time it has taken to complete the many steps needed to get to this point, we have negotiated in good faith throughout this process,” CSX chief executive Michael J. Ward wrote in a letter to Warner, dated Wednesday.
The infrastructure upgrades would help ease rail traffic in the heavily traveled and often congested Richmond-Washington corridor. The projects would primarily involve improving signals, building additional tracks and adding crossovers, or intersections where trains can move from one track to another.
Work on the first project is expected to start in two months, Rae said.
The improvements mostly will take place in northern Virginia, where the Virginia Railway Express commuter rail, Amtrak and CSX freight trains all use the tracks, which CSX maintains and operates, said Rob Shinn, a spokesman for the Jacksonville, Fla.-based rail company.
Rae said that once the work is done, VRE can add four more trains per day, and Amtrak can add one. CSX also can add up to 15 more trains, she said.
Before the deal could be reached, Virginia and CSX officials had to agree on several terms and conditions, including the additional insurance liability coverage the railroad wanted the state to assume.
Even before that, it took about a year to agree on “what were the best projects that were the best use of the money,” followed by environmental testing and engineering work, Shinn said.
Many of the agreement terms will serve as precedents for future dealings with the state, CSX officials said.
“Now that we have the template in place, we think we can add new projects in a relatively streamlined way,” Shinn said.