DC Long Bridge Replacement Study

[WoodyinNYC]

SEHSR is promoted in North Carolina as 4 hours from Raleigh to Washington ...

Whether SEHSR actually achieves 2 hours RGH-RVM is a question of money. Rebuilding the ex-SAL on the former roadbed for 79 or 90 mph instead of 110 would be far less costly ...

Unless there's a second Stimulus-type barrel of money to fall from the sky, or from Congress (less likely), almost all these projects are likely to be one small bite after another. O.K., the Long Bridge would probably have to be the whole enchilada at one bite. But in the Midwest, the comparable project is South of the Lake between Chicago and Michigan. On the SOTL site, it's page after page to reach a fizzle of a conclusion that there's no funding at hand and upgrades will be designed to be "incremental". In this region, it appears that D.C. to Richmond (whichever station, and between the stations, LOL) will be incremental over almost 10 years. Now you share the observation that SEHSR Raleigh-Richmond will probably be incremental, starting at 79 mph but maybe getting to a higher speed as funding becomes available. If they can at least design-in future upgrades to 110 mph it's not too bad.

But there's a high political (and practical) price to patiently salami-slicing our way to faster trips. Announcing 4 to 6 minutes cut from the schedule each year for 5 years simply does not have the impact of a one-time announcement of 20 or 30 minutes saved. Of course ridership will grow more slowly at 79 mph than at 90 mph much less the surge from 110 mph operations.

We need success from the handful of big winners of Stimulus (and FY 2010) funds to drive future investment nationwide. St. Louis-Chicago, Detroit-Chicago, the Cascades Portland-Seattle, the Piedmont corridor, and the New Haven-Springfield-Vermont line should show much higher ridership and much lower operating subsidies. If they do, other states will develop envy: "Why can't we have a fast train from Cleveland to Chicago like they have in Detroit?" Then we'll see a push for more higher-speed corridors (which will benefit other LD trains). Otherwise, it will be back to the decades pre-Obama, with little or no improvement outside the NEC, and generalized stagnation and decline.

 

[xyzzy]

Yes, incrementalism has its pro's and con's. The construction cost of 79 mph RGH-RVM is far less than 110 mph because many miles of the curvy ROW must be straightened to allow 110. On the other hand, the rolling stock costs, signal costs, station costs, etc are basically the same for 79 and 110. Also, suppose that 2:45 is the achievable running time at 79. Today's Silver Star runs RGH-RVR in 3:22 and could probably run 3:15 into RVM if low-cost improvements were made Centralia-RVM-Acca. So, SEHSR spends a billion dollars (let's say) to shave 30 minutes off the current time by running 79 over the ex-SAL? That's still not easy to sell. And suppose it does succeed and then 10 years later, large amounts of that almost-new 79 mph trackage in southern Virginia are ripped out in a half-billion project to get the running time from 2:45 to 2:00. That will be controversial too.

Nothing about this is easy.

 

[Ashland Train Enthusiast]

This article, "Virginia bets on higher-speed rail by 2025" from the June 4 Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/dr-gridlock/wp/2015/06/04/virginia-bets-on-higher-speed-rail-by-2025/

says the FRA and VA planners want a 90-minute train ride Union Station to Richmond by 2025.

Curiously, the Washington Post does not mention the Long Bridge, but that upgrade seems essential to a truly fast route.

I read the Wash Post article last week, but decided to not post about it here (forum, not this thread) because I found it to be a confused article where the reporter mixed up a lot of stuff. The is an EIS process studying a range of alternatives from no improvements to many from Alexandria to Richmond. The Long Bridge study is a separate study covering the route from L'Enfant Plaza to Alexandria which is why it was not part of the EIS presentations.

The Virginians for High Speed Rail are pushing for 90 minutes DC to Richmond, but that can't really be done with a 90 mph max speed corridor. I think the VA DRPT and state transportation officials goals for 2025 will end up being to reduce the trip time from WAS to RVM by 30 minutes. The public meeting presentations from last week are available as an on-line meeting here. One of the sticky issues is what to do in Ashland? A 3 track tunnel under Ashland would be one solution, but seriously expensive and would encounter serious, major league opposition in Ashland.

As an Ashland resident, I figured I'd chime in here, as I have been strongly involved on some community committees with the twon and DPRT to define the criteria and requirements as they gather feedback for the submission of the Tier II EIS. You are correct that Ashland is a sticking point, moreso because the Town rightly so wants to preserve the status quo in terms of small town feel, yet does not want to lose all rail access. One of the more compelling ideas that has been discussed recently is a bypass of the town around either the east or west side to be used by all Freight, the LDs, and perhaps some of the regionals as "Express" service, while the through-town tracks are used for a subset of the trains that would serve Ashland with a bit longer overall trip time.

I'm wondering who pitched the story to the paper, the VA DRPT officials or the Friends organization? The state officials may need to start quietly edging back from election season promises to push the Lynchburger down to Bristol, and remind people that the D.C.-Richmond line has top priority. I do hope they're serious about getting most of those minutes out of the timetable within 10 years. They'll need to find some serious money.

Looking at the timetables on Amtrak.com, the scheduled trip time D.C. to Richmond is 2 hours 5 minutes or so. If they aim to get it down by 30 minutes, as you say, it will be about 90 or 95 minutes.

Faster and more frequent trains on this corridor would unleash a ridership boom here, and on the feeder routes from Norfolk and Newport News. Chopping 30 minutes off the runs of the Palmetto, Silver Meteor, Silver Star, and Carolinian would be a nice sweetness for these trains as well.

When I was discussing 90 minutes to Richmond, I was thinking of WAS to Richmond Main Street. Which is currently about 2:40. Virginians for High Speed Rail spokesman may have been talking about WAS to Staples Mill. With 2 stations in Richmond (1 downtown, 1 serving the northern suburbs) and a presently very slow speed travel time between RVR to RVM, it is important to clarify which is meant by "Richmond".

If the tracks are improved between RVR and RVM and the route south of RVM is restored, so all the Amtrak trains (except for the AT of course) are routed through RVM, Main Street will become the primary station when referring to the "Richmond" station. I suspect the Silvers and Palmetto will get a nice bump in ridership from going through RVM and tapping the downtown & city center market.

As for the Wash Post article, it was related to the public outreach meetings they had for the EIS last week. There was a similar article in the Richmond paper on the EIS study and plans for improved DC to Richmond service. Main Street Station is also starting a final $48 million renovation project to add an indoor market: Renovated Main Street Station train shed envisioned as "wonderful gateway" to Richmond. The Broad Street BRT line and Main St station project lead me to expect that there will be a push to get going on track and bridge upgrade projects to be able to run the Norfolk Regionals & other Amtrak trains through RVM when the Roanoke extension wraps up.

One of the other items that DPRT is considering on the topic of what is meant by "Richmond" is just what is the appropriate location and number of stations to have; some additional ideas that they are considering besides RVM and RVR is to build a new station between the two to split the difference, as while RVR is a dump of an amshack, it is easier to access for suburbanites and commuters than RVM. One thought that was brought up when talking to some DPRT folks last week that I found interesting was that re-opening Broad St. Station is not off the table, or developing a new station along both sides of the ROW just past ACCA Yard/the western bypass track. Given that the southern terminus of the project is past Richmond to Centralia where it would meet up with the RVA to RGH portion of the SEHSR project, the discussion of how to route trains through/around Richmond is very much a part that is driving the ultimate solution of what the Richmond station footprint will look like.

~ ATE

 

[xyzzy]

The idea floated a few years ago to route some passenger trains Doswell-Atlee-RVM over the ex-C&O (and bypassing Ashland) is dead, correct?

 

[jis]

The idea floated a few years ago to route some passenger trains Doswell-Atlee-RVM over the ex-C&O (and bypassing Ashland) is dead, correct?

Yes. Quite dead and buried. There is no way to run anything on that route faster than 60mph, if that. It is a very twisty-turny route with no hope of straightening even a bit of it without spending enormous amounts of money.

 

[neroden]

On the SOTL site, it's page after page to reach a fizzle of a conclusion that there's no funding at hand and upgrades will be designed to be "incremental". In this region, it appears that D.C. to Richmond (whichever station, and between the stations, LOL) will be incremental over almost 10 years.

Well, all the SOTL studies keep saying that the existing route (following the NY Central from Porter to Englewood, and following the Pennsy from roughly the Indiana border to Union Station -- they parallel each other for a long way) is pretty much the fastest route, and therefore the correct route.
So it becomes a matter of getting additional passenger tracks into place which are owned by the passenger operator, a few miles at a time, and building grade separations for the lines which cross (mostly around Buffington Harbor). The only important point there is making sure the needed ROW is purchased by Amtrak or Illinois (or Michigan) and gotten out of the grubby little hands of NS.

SOTL can be done incrementally quite effectively.

By contrast, the Long Bridge and the northern approach from there through L'Enfant Plaza to the First Avenue Tunnel probably has to be done as a single project in order to get any benefit from it at all. And the run from Richmond Main Street station to Petersburg also has to be done as a single project. And Acca Yard Bypass has to be done as a single project. And the S-line rebuild has to be done as a single project. There are very severe limits to incrementalism in the Virginia corridor.

Now you share the observation that SEHSR Raleigh-Richmond will probably be incremental, starting at 79 mph but maybe getting to a higher speed as funding becomes available. If they can at least design-in future upgrades to 110 mph it's not too bad.

 

[afigg]

The study process for the Long Bridge replacement project continues. With the TIGER grant funding, DC DOT has a "new" website for the project which has moved into the project scoping stage. Which is really re-doing the Tier I studies all over again, but that is how we do major project environmental studies in the US: keep redoing, refreshing, and expanding the scope of the studies until we have spent a lot of money.

DC DOT & FRA Long Bridge replacement project website.

The reason I posted this is that I see there were new documents posted on the project site in January on the study documents page.

The new document that might be of interest to some is the Scoping Report which is dated January 20, 2017 (31 page PDF). No design details or decisions, but the lists of POCs and interested parties shows just how many state, DC, and federal agencies & commissions are going to be involved in the process of selecting the alternatives and high level designs. The study through to the Record of Decision process could be as long as the bridge. <ahem>.

 

[keelhauled]

In related news, Virginia's Atlantic Gateway project includes money for design and engineering work of the Long Bridge replacement/rebuilding, so at least some part of the process will not get stuck in development hell.

 

[Anderson]

So, three comments:
(1) I am reminded of a comment from the Canadian pipeline debate back in the 1950s: "The debate was nearly as long as the pipeline, and full of an entirely different sort of natural gas."

(2) "The bottom of the river is under the jurisdiction of NPS". And here I thought it was just under water...
(3) There's a note on one page indicating that among the comments recieved were two off-topic "sticky notes".

Finally, though it won't happen, the more this drags on the more I wish they'd seriously pursued connecting La Plata to Dahlgren and just gotten most freight ops out of WAS-FBG. The single connection there is one of the great tragedies of the design of the railroad network on the East Coast.

 

[west point]

One point made on another forum. Long Bridge's current capacity could be increased by installing high density signaling. High density signaling was installed in the Amtrak NYP north river tunnels increasing thru put about 4 trains per hour. Essentially it is installing signals about 1.1 miles apart allowing closer train spacing. For the 2 MTs across the bridge and 3 or 4 MTs either side should be a temporary help to increase number of trains.

Someone who knows its personell needs to ask VRE and VA DOT why this short term option has not been considered.

 

[Anderson]

One point made on another forum. Long Bridge's current capacity could be increased by installing high density signaling. High density signaling was installed in the Amtrak NYP north river tunnels increasing thru put about 4 trains per hour. Essentially it is installing signals about 1.1 miles apart allowing closer train spacing. For the 2 MTs across the bridge and 3 or 4 MTs either side should be a temporary help to increase number of trains.

Someone who knows its personell needs to ask VRE and VA DOT why this short term option has not been considered.

I'll actually ask if there's an option there. I think part of the problem is that Crystal City and L'Enfant Plaza are too close to the bridge to really help the situation (and CP Virginia isn't that far from L'Enfant).

 

[Thirdrail7]

Well, we final have a preferred selection:

Please allow a brief "fair use" quote from


New DC-Va. bridge plan would add more trains, bike paths over Potomac

WASHINGTON — In a crucial step toward expanding train service for D.C.-area commuters and longer-distance travelers avoiding Interstate 95 traffic, the District Department of Transportation has chosen a preferred layout to double the number of tracks over the Potomac River to Arlington, Virginia, and also add a new way to walk or bike across the river.

The preferred alternative revealed Thursday would retain and repair the existing two-track Long Bridge built in 1904, while adding a new two-track bridge just to the north between the existing bridge and Metro’s Yellow Line bridge.

The new bridge is projected to take five years to build once construction starts. Final federal approvals for the project are currently expected in early 2020, which would allow for contracting to begin then if funding is available.

Pedestrians and bikes would be accommodated upstream:

The final Draft Environmental Impact Statement also responds to an outpouring of support for a new way to walk or bike across the river by keeping the option to build a separate bicycle and pedestrian bridge about 25-feet upriver from the new tracks.

6 years to whittle it down to this? Impressive!

 

[daybeers]

Taken long enough...also what a railfanning spot that will be! There is Long Bridge Park, but that's significantly more difficult to get to without a car and not all that close to the tracks.

 

[neroden]

OK.  Good plan.  Given the track layout, freight gets the old bridge and passengers get the new bridge, which is good.  Now can they get the funding and actually build it?  (Also, it seems like the L'Enfant Plaza fourth track and new platforms are a separate project, but I can't find the study website.)

 

[PRR 60]

Meeting presentation 11/29/18.

 

[west point]

OK.  Good plan.  Given the track layout, freight gets the old bridge and passengers get the new bridge, which is good. )

Not that simple.  

1.  If the present bridge will be getting rebuilt then all traffic will have to go onto the new bridge during work windows and maybe some longer outages.

2.  The new Potomac yard station ( for Amazon and others )  that probably will be built as outside platforms of  the planned 4 tracks thru there will require passenger trains on the outside tracks and freights on inside for all trains that stop at POT.  As well how the expansion of LeEnfant is laid out may also have trends to the outside tacks.  Just how inbound trains will cross over to enter 1st avenue tunnel to WASH  I unknown,  As well future additional 2 tracks from WASH toward long bridge is unknown. 

 

[jis]

I think both L’Enfant and Potomac Yard stations will have a layout like the current Alexandria station with passenger trains that stop there using the rightmost two tracks facing south/west. A quick look through Google Earth suggests that is how things are already laid out, sort of. It minimizes the need for conflicting crossovers.

Future of two additional tracks on the DC side can be easily surmised from the EIS.

 

[Ziv]

Not that simple.  

1.  If the present bridge will be getting rebuilt then all traffic will have to go onto the new bridge during work windows and maybe some longer outages.

2.  The new Potomac yard station ( for Amazon and others )  that probably will be built as outside platforms of  the planned 4 tracks thru there will require passenger trains on the outside tracks and freights on inside for all trains that stop at POT.  As well how the expansion of LeEnfant is laid out may also have trends to the outside tacks.  Just how inbound trains will cross over to enter 1st avenue tunnel to WASH  I unknown,  As well future additional 2 tracks from WASH toward long bridge is unknown. 

I thought that the presentation materials said that the present bridge was re-furbed in 2016, so hopefully we won't see traffic being shifted off the existing bridge any time soon. But now that I am looking again, it says that the bridge will need to be renovated soon. Not sure what I read earlier, but I think my first impression that it had been reno'ed may be incorrect. Sorry for the misinformation.

 

[neroden]

The presentation says that CSX says the present bridge is sufficient for their needs and that they think it's in good shape.  Result: new passenger bridge, old freight bridge, it's up to CSX if it wants to fix the freight bridge.