# Virginia Beach prepares for light-rail referendum



## CHamilton (Sep 12, 2012)

Virginia Beach light rail info effort gets green light



> [A brochure on the referendum says that] an ongoing light-rail extension study being done by Hampton Roads Transit will not be affected by the results of the referendum; pointing out federal funding options will not be known until after the extension study is completed; and emphasizing that the referendum is advisory and non-binding.
> 
> The referendum question is: "Should the City Council adopt an ordinance approving the use of all reasonable efforts to support the financing and development of the Tide light rail into Virginia Beach?"
> 
> A consultant last year estimated it would cost $807 million to extend light rail to the Oceanfront, or $254 million to take it a shorter distance to Town Center, though either project would be contingent on federal and state funding.


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## Anderson (Sep 12, 2012)

Does anyone know the contact info for the pro-light rail committee?


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## NW cannonball (Sep 13, 2012)

Anderson said:


> Does anyone know the contact info for the pro-light rail committee?


Visited Hampton Roads last month, rode the "WAVE" in Norfolk as far as it goes - extension to Virgina Beach would help tourism a lot.

Another thing that might help visitors would be some kind - any kind - of public transport to the airport ORF - right now there is *none *zero nothing at all - cab or nothing .

I departed the Norfolk area via a 2 hour city bus ride to PHF - cheap ticket, worked for me, but slow, slow slow.

Don't know the local politics of extending the WAVE at all.

Do know it would help tourism a lot -- that's what Ginny Beach is about, yeah?


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## Anderson (Sep 13, 2012)

NW cannonball said:


> Anderson said:
> 
> 
> > Does anyone know the contact info for the pro-light rail committee?
> ...



Good point on the airport extension. The biggest problem I can see there is that it would complicate operations at this stage by forcing them to operate two lines/force a transfer somewhere instead of just one straightforward line. This isn't necessarily a bad thing IMHO, but I don't know that they want to juggle that at the moment.


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## Ryan (Sep 13, 2012)

It's the Tide, not the Wave, and the vast majority of tourists to the area arrive by car and would never set foot on the Tide.


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## Anderson (Sep 13, 2012)

Ryan said:


> It's the Tide, not the Wave, and the vast majority of tourists to the area arrive by car and would never set foot on the Tide.


Eh, you've got enough traffic to/from the airport to justify a line, I think (especially if you can park somewhere _not_ the airport and ride in), and traffic is such that a beach-downtown Norfolk line would pick up a good amount of back-and-forth traffic. Actually, parking at the beachfront is bad enough that even if I was driving down, I'd gladly park a few stops out and catch a ride to the oceanfront...and even if the ticket price went from $3 to $5 or more, I'd probably _still_ beat the price of parking at the oceanfront.

It's not unlike the last time I went to a game at Harbor Park: I parked a few miles away and took the Tide to the station. I saved $2 in the process and knew I wasn't going to have to deal with a not-so-great parking lot. Moreover, the line allows you to get off I-64 and avoid any nonsense on I-264 (which can be pretty bad in either direction, depending on the day). No, it doesn't avoid the _real_ problems (the tunnels), but there's no way around that for the moment.*

*If they go ahead with the ferry plan they're looking at, though, and that _actually_ links nicely with the Tide (far from a foregone conclusion) and/or eventually links with a light rail line on the Peninsula, _that_ will be worth a ride.


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## NW cannonball (Sep 14, 2012)

Ryan said:


> It's the Tide, not the Wave, and the vast majority of tourists to the area arrive by car and would never set foot on the Tide.


Thanks for the correction - the wave is a beach thing in Ginny Beach.

The Tide is the light rail.

Tourists - yeah -mostly arrive by car - and say again - there is *no *public transport from ORF to anywhere - the military have there own shuttles to ORF (or maybe even RIC and surely PHF and various other places - so many military airfields in the region) and don't need public transit.

Tourists mostly are going to Ginny Beach.

Public transport Santiago de Chile to the port Valpariaso - and the metro from Valpo to Vina del Mar is much better in a similar place - they have only the one airport and 2 hours to beachtown, But easy to get there.

Successful light rail projects in the places I live and visit - have a stop at the airport.


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## Anderson (Sep 14, 2012)

NW cannonball said:


> Ryan said:
> 
> 
> > It's the Tide, not the Wave, and the vast majority of tourists to the area arrive by car and would never set foot on the Tide.
> ...


I'm not sure that a light rail option that connected ORF to Norfolk Naval Station and/or Oceana wouldn't get the military to cut back at least some of those shuttles, though.

From Norfolk's perspective, there are enough odds and ends in downtown (MacArthur Mall, Nauticus, etc.) that having the option there would be good as a "rainy day choice" for the beach tourists. However, as I mentioned earlier, if the Tide folks were interested in pushing it, a line to the oceanfront plus (potentially) a more frequent circulator bus would likely be popular with the tourists, since both traffic and parking at the oceanfront are a devil...but parking at the Convention Center and walking out is a bit much.


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## AlanB (Sep 14, 2012)

NW cannonball said:


> Tourists - yeah -mostly arrive by car - and say again - there is *no *public transport from ORF to anywhere - the military have there own shuttles to ORF (or maybe even RIC and surely PHF and various other places - so many military airfields in the region) and don't need public transit.
> 
> Tourists mostly are going to Ginny Beach.


Would having light rail serve the airport increase tourist ridership? Absolutely! There is no question.

But tourists would still ride the train in lower numbers if it did extend to the beach. Light rail holds one major advantage over buses to tourists. It's easy to find! So a tourist in an unfamiliar place and knowing that they have to deal with traffic & parking, will ride such a train if it takes them to places that they want to go.


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## afigg (Sep 14, 2012)

NW cannonball said:


> Successful light rail projects in the places I live and visit - have a stop at the airport.


There are long range plans or a "vision" of extending light rail to both airports. I had seen it before and had to locate it again, but here is a February 2011 Hampton Roads Regional Transit Vision Plan (63 pages, ~2.6 MB PDF) which encompasses light rail, commuter rail, BRT, express bus, high speed ferry services.

The maps on pages 23 and 24 show a third light rail line in Norfolk going through the Norfolk airport. It then gets expensive with the light rail line going through a tunnel to downtown Newport News and then NE to downtown Hampton Waterfront. The vision also has a separate LRT line from downtown Newport News to the NPN/Williamsburg Airport. However, the LRT line through the Norfolk Airport is listed in the _after 2035_ category. The LRT line from downtown NPN to the airport is in _by 2035_ category. In this plan, Short Term is "by 2025". :blink:

The focus on the LRT part of the transit plan/vision appears to be to extend the current line to Norfolk Naval Station in one direction and to VA Beach in the other. Reasonable approach, but it would make for one long single LRT line. But a single LRT line does not make for much of a transit system. Where would the DC Metro be if only the Red Line had been built and then waited 10-15 years to start on the Orange Line? Maybe they should consider getting started on the additional LRT lines to Chesapeake, Greenbrier to Norfolk Airport to the Naval Station sooner.

On the other hand, a Tide LRT line running from the Naval Station to VA Beach would have at its center the Amtrak station. Could make Amtrak a common way to travel to Norfolk and VA Beach from DC and the NEC and from the Piedmont corridor cities in NC. Take a big piece of the regional air/rail market in part because there is no convenient LRT access from the airport.


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## The Davy Crockett (Sep 20, 2012)

afigg said:


> On the other hand, a Tide LRT line running from the Naval Station to VA Beach would have at its center the Amtrak station. Could make Amtrak a common way to travel to Norfolk and VA Beach from DC and the NEC...


That would be great. Driven I-95 and I-64 from DC to the VA Beach area lately? :wacko: If I drive to "The Peninsula' or VA Beach, I already go a slower 'back' way (US 301 & US 17) just to avoid them. The better the local transportation system at my destination, the more likey I am to leave the car in ALX.


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## Anderson (Sep 21, 2012)

I've seen different iterations of this document before, and the status of ORF has always been a bit nebulous since it doesn't get marked on the map.

Honestly, part of the reason I've been pulling my hair out on this stuff is their insistence of dumping umpteen modes of transit into one map. I'll say that the ferry is something that I support as a stopgap: On the one hand, it's a $100 million placeholder for a $2 billion problem, so to speak (i.e. something that can be done now-ish with mainly local/state funding rather than a few decades down the road while we wait for the Feds to make a bunch of drawn-out decisions). On the other hand, given large enough ferries (I suspect that the current 150-person ones are woefully insufficient for the task) and/or frequent enough service, it can also be a replacement. I don't like mode shifts, but this is one place I'll put up with them.

However, getting beyond the ferry...I don't get the mix of modes that they seem obsessed with (such as the Portsmouth and Hampton streetcars...why not just run the light rail lines over those areas, even if it's street running, and enable through service?). BRT, I can understand as a stopgap (you get the RoW and you get a service that can be converted)...and as silly as it sounds, I see some of the commuter rail services (particularly the Fentress-Harbor Park line...yes, I understand the possibility of an extension here, but again...run an interurban-style LRT line down there and avoid forcing an unnecessary shift for a lot of folks, not to mention skipping any fight with Norfolk Southern over the ex-Norfolk Southern lines) as more plausible stand-ins for LRT in some form.

On the timetables...part of the problem is that they're chasing federal funding for all of this, which is dragging things out. As to "mainly" operating a single line, I discussed this elsewhere, but if you expanded the stations at Harbor Park, Newtown Road, and/or Virginia Beach Town Center to allow expresses to stop but to also overtake locals at those stations, you could run some de facto express trains over a few areas (such as parts of more suburban Norfolk or Virginia Beach) before switching to all-local status in part of Norfolk. This isn't in the plans, I suspect, but it is definitely worth raising as an option.*

The other problem is that unless you shuffle things a bit, any spurs (other than the airport) may turn into overly-short stubs...and again, finding the money is a big problem. Even when there /was/ a sales tax referendum, transit had zilch in the plan IIRC and it went down in flames. Mind you, if the Tide continues to grow in popularity, I could see a transit-oriented referendum at least getting a shot...but even then, you risk the "Miami problem" where the feds don't fund things and so plans fall chronically short of needed money.

On the NPN side of things...again, part of the problem there is that they did a study on LRT on the Peninsula and it got flunked out by the Feds because of density. Newport News has been working to ramp up density along Jefferson Avenue ever since then (hence Port Warwick, City Center, a new development at Bland Blvd., etc.). This is why the Hampton projects are so far back in the order...external funding is a problem, and local funding is likely to be inadequate. Neither Newport News nor Hampton can bear, say, a billion dollars in fresh debt (to say nothing of the tax increases that would be needed to support something like this on a purely local level)...heck, the total Newport News budget, schools included, is around $750 million and the city is spending about $58 million/year of that on debt service. $1 billion at 5% (I don't think we'd get AAA or AA rated for that much of a debt balloon, so there would be a nasty premium) would add $50 million to that (plus the challenge of dealing with the resulting balloon payment). The point here is that it's just not believable to see all of this done locally, and there's a lot of trouble "from on high" with things like this.

Finally, a lot of the plans are "by X date". I think the plan is to get started on the extensions to the oceanfront and the Norfolk Naval Base ASAP, but if I had to guess, that will involve (at a minimum) a 2-3 year kabuki dance for the DOT plus 2-5 years of "real" work for the whole thing to become operational. "Within 13 years" isn't an unreasonable goal for that line considering the likely delays and bureaucratic crap that's likely to come along.

*As I noted elsewhere, doing this could also allow a split in the line at Harbor Park to run some trains to the Naval Station while skipping some of the badly-laid out street running in downtown Norfolk (that thing makes a turn every other block).

Edit: Ok, I had "one of those" moments. There's mention of NC potentially extending a commuter rail line south from the border. To where? Elizabeth City? Moyock would be a "why bother NC about this?" extension that would only go about two miles past the border...just putting the stop on the state line or thereabouts would make more sense than dragging an additional hatful of bureaucracies into the mix. Still, that's likely to be close to an hour-long commute into downtown Norfolk (not that many might not stop short in Greenbrier, for example), while running down to Edenton is likely to get you closer to 90 minutes. And yet again, I can't help but glare at the mode shifts being shoved in here.


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## afigg (Oct 21, 2012)

Saw this news article linked to elsewhere on the net about a poll on the VA Beach referendum. "New poll suggests Va. Beach residents support expanding light rail". Key excerpt from the article.



> Residents were asked, "If the light rail referendum were held today, how would you vote?"
> Of the 471 respondents, 68 percent said yes, 29 percent said no, with 8 percent undecided.


If a poll showed 68% favorable, odds have to be pretty good that the referendum will pass.


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## Anderson (Oct 22, 2012)

I'm going to take a rare moment and criticize the light rail folks for selling this as a "vote to keep studying light rail" (as I believe most ads have been saying) when the text of the referendum seems to imply that it's actually a vote in favor of the city pursuing funding of it.

Mind you, I get the "hook or crook" nature of things like this and the need to avoid multiple referendums, but it still strikes me as a bit misleading (and/or confusing in terms of wording).


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## AlanB (Oct 22, 2012)

Well it was originally billed as that, but then for reasons unknown the language on the ballot came out different.

On the other hand, it's also not a vote to build or not build it. It is an advisory referendum, meaning that the City Council isn't exactly asking the public what they should do. The City Council is not bound by this referendum in any way.


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## Anderson (Oct 23, 2012)

Alright, it's sloppy language. I knew it was advisory, and I've been hearing ads on the radio lately playing up the "just to continue studying" angle. I guess a part of me is wondering why, if that's the case, they didn't just throw the option into the study and see where the numbers fall.

Of course, I then think about the comically bad ridership estimates that seem to be running around...


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## AlanB (Oct 23, 2012)

Anderson said:


> Of course, I then think about the comically bad ridership estimates that seem to be running around...


Well if you're referring to the estimates for the original line, the issue is that those opposed have seized upon one of two things. Either they're using the number from back when the original plan was to go to VB, and of course without the train going there that estimate must be discarded. Or they're using an estimate that was scaled back a bit from the original estimate that included VB, which they tried to push past the Fed so as to ensure that they go the funding.

Of course the Fed rejected that estimate and told them to come back with a realistic one if they wanted Federal funding. Many seem to forget that the Fed rejected the estimate, so the claim is that they lied to the Fed to obtain the funding and had they not done so, then the Fed would not have rejected funding.

The estimate that they're now close to beating is the estimate that the Fed accepted and granted funding based upon it.

Or are you referring to some estimates for the extension, which I haven't seen?


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## Anderson (Oct 24, 2012)

AlanB said:


> Anderson said:
> 
> 
> > Of course, I then think about the comically bad ridership estimates that seem to be running around...
> ...


Both, sort of. On the one hand, there were the first-year estimates for the existing line, which have been smashed into oblivion.* On the other hand, frankly, based on these numbers (and the presence of ODU in particular along one of the extensions and the fact that the Newtown Road station is being flooded by commuters on the other), a lot of the existing ridership estimates from 2008 or so seem laughably low (particularly if you throw in some complementary adjustments to other transit options as well).

And then there's just the generic fact that ridership projections seem to be based on assumptions of commuter behavior from the 1990s/early 2000s, not to mention that I get a feeling that congestion (and/or parking, in the case of the beachfront) issues are being ignored in plenty of cases.

*To be fair, part of what is driving this is that NSU and a few other folks got _very_ nice discounted year-long passes for everyone working/attending. Not a _bad_ thing in and of itself, but it's resulting in a lot of what amounts to non-revenue ridership on the line. NSU seems like the culprit for the sharp jump in ridership once the school year started...I think weekday ridership is up about 600-1000 since school started back up.


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