February 08, 2010 4:23 PM
Richmonders shouldn’t expect a faster train trip to Washington, D.C., anytime soon.
Virginia received only $75 million of the $8 billion in federal grants offered to expand high-speed rail service in the country.
State officials had sought $1.8 billion to build high-speed rail service between Petersburg and Washington. It would have been a key piece of the Southeast High Speed Rail Corridor, a multistate effort to bring high-speed rail from Charlotte to Washington, D.C.
Virginia will use the $75 million to build 11 miles of track in Northern Virginia to improve a bottleneck in that area.
While Virginia was a big loser in the grants, North Carolina, Florida, California and Illinois were major winners. Florida will connect high-speed rail between Orlando and Tampa; California will connect major population centers of San Francisco, Sacramento, Los Angeles and San Diego; and Chicago will upgrade rail service between St. Louis and Chicago.
Interestingly, North Carolina received $545 million to improve speed and train frequencies between Charlotte and Raleigh. That will certainly connect major population and business centers of the state — but it doesn’t connect them to high-speed rail out of Washington.
Virginia had good reasoning behind its requests. High-speed rail exists between Washington and Boston. Extending service to the Richmond area would have done a lot of good for the state economy and commuters along the Interstate 95 corridor.
These are benefits that would have boosted not just to Virginia but along the entire Eastern corridor.
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This is very good that they are adding some extra railroad tracks to the rails up in this area. It’s costing the state 3 Billon dollars to widen a 14 mile section of the I495 beltway. It also cost the state 185 millon to widen a six mile section of I95 too while it will only cost 75 millon to widen a 11.5 mile section of rail line though the worst rail bottle neck in the state.
When I rode this rail line to Lancaster PA this section did cause a lot of delays. It also cost 40 minutes to change from oil power to eletric power so they need to extend the catenary wires down to Richmond and Newport News to get rid of that 40 minute wait. It was funny how the train was moving along at 30 miles on hour and it was passing everyone on the parking lot known as I95 like they were standing still.
This rail line also has a lot of history behind it was built by the RFP Railroad in the 1850’s and it had it’s last set of major improvements being turned from a singel track railroad to a double track mainline in the 1910’s though the 1930’s it’s doing fairly well for something that is double the age of I95 and hasn’t had the billions of dollars in large up grades and widening projects that I95 and I495 have had during their 40 and 50 years of life vs this railroad’s 100 life. If you look at from it’s age it’s amazing that it is still working in that it’s gone nearly a 100 years with out any major billon dollar up grades. It looks like that a billon dollar up grade would go along way for something like this.
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RF&P Railroader of Richmond
Feb. 16, 2010 at 04:42 PM
