Draft of 2013 VA Statewide Rail Plan

[xyzzy]

It's my understanding that NS has consented to 90 mph Charlotte-Raleigh as long as their views are taken into account during design of the improvements. Of course, Charlotte-Raleigh is a special case because the State of NC owns the railroad.

CSX reportedly is happy with 90 or 110 mph Collier-Raleigh because they'll be allowed to run freight over it... at slower speeds, of course. The restored S-line would de-load the perpetually congested A-line. What's unclear is how many sidings would have to be reinstalled on the S-line between Cary and Hamlet if the line is to carry through-freight again (in addition to 91/92 and the existing CSX local trains). But Collier-Raleigh is so far into the future that CSX isn't spending much time thinking about it. For that matter, CSX and NCDOT haven't even started to implement the A-line improvements in NC that were funded years ago.

As to 79 mph versus 90 mph RVM-Collier, I think it's a pragmatic view of benefit/cost analysis. Given reductions in speed for the Centralia interlocking, the Appomattox River bridge, the Ettrick station stop, etc, the additional 11 mph would not make much difference in running times between RVM and Collier.

 

[Anderson]

It's true that NC is the primary advocate for SEHSR defined as Charlotte-Raleigh-Richmond. The definition causes problems in NC politics because skeptics ask, "Who needs a high-speed train between Raleigh and Richmond?"
That said, I can't imagine that NC alone could pay for 110 mph Raleigh-Petersburg. It's even a stretch for NC to pay for 90 mph Charlotte-Raleigh and track capacity for 5x daily service. If budgets remain tight, NC will throw all available money at intrastate service.

From the perspective of Virginians, it's unclear that SEHSR would serve any station between Petersburg and the NC-VA line. Note also that SEHSR would terminate at Richmond Main Street, and there would have to be separate projects to improve trackage from RVM to Acca and beyond. Not much point in 110 mph Raleigh-RVM if you run 20 or 30 mph RVM-RVR.

To be clear, the SEHSR is defined as extending from DC to Charlotte via Richmond and Raleigh. It is simply broken into 3 segments: DC to RVM, RVM to Raleigh (which has a Teir II EIS awaiting a ROD from the FRA), and then Raleigh to Charlotte.

There is a $2.9 million HSIPR grant to DC DOT for the PE and NEPA fpr the Long Bridge replacement study to cover L'Enfant Plaza to Arlington and a $44.3 million HSIPR grant (FY10 funding) to VA DRPT for the Alexandria to Richmond Main Street Station segment. So there is funding to carry the DC to RVM segment through a Tier II EIS. VA is in a position to spend state money on specific track and capacity projects from Alexandria to RVM. For the DC to RVM segment, VA DRPT is likely to prioritize projects that benefit VRE & Amtrak between ALX and Frederickburg (the state has awarded a contract to build a 3rd track from south of Frederickburg to the new VRE Spotsylvania station), RVR to RVM for NPN & eventually NFK trains. The Long Bridge replacement will require a significant federal funding component to happen - which it may get via the FTA.

For the segment south of RVM, there will be an approved FEIS and preliminary design. VA could proceed with specific projects for Sections AA, BB, CC in the FEIS which cover the RVM to Collier Yard segment. DRPT has already allocated $80 million which I believe is mostly going a new bridge across the Appomattox which is the biggest part of the Section CC upgrades. BTW, the price tag estimate for the 11.3 miles of Section AA from the RVM platform to Centralia is $245 million.

The rest of the SEHSR RVM to Raleigh segment over the mostly abandoned S-Line will require a substantial federal passenger rail funding program to happen and who knows when that is going to be.

IIRC, when it came to Hampton Roads service, CSX said 90 would be fine while NS only wants 79. Of course, that may be a quirk of the routes and the potential passing siding situations.

Shifting back over to VA's stations, while a lot of them were lousy ten years ago, it's rather stunning looking at the march of ridership numbers since 2007. Really, vis-a-vis the national system the numbers are impressive...with some stations, it really has the feel of watching a flood tide inexorably rise. What is particularly stunning is the increases at stations on the Peninsula (which have seen no change in service over the last decade). Going down the WAS-NPN line, you get:

ALX: +73.7%

WDB: +41.9%

QAN: +28.1%

FBG: +30.4%

ASD: +86.2%

RVR: +47.3%

RVM: +174.4%

WBG: +40.4%

NPN: +41.4%

RVM is an obvious outlier, but at the start of FY07 service was relatively new. Parking at RVR can't be hurting RVM, either. After that, Ashland (another lower-ridership station) got a spike, followed by Alexandria (the only one to get two trains added). Most intriguing, though, is that the Peninsula stations (with no added service) got as much of an increase as the others did...assuming internal ridership is negligible, those three stations went from 151,171 to 230,265 (+52.3%). Basically, you've got about five cars full leaving RVM each day between the two trains.

Honestly, the 40-50% ridership hikes have probably been enough to make a touch-and-go parking situation a disaster, and a decent one touch-and-go. And I don't think this sort of march (especially since it seems to clearly go back a bit further) could have been foreseen given how the last 20 years had gone.

One common thread between the "hard spike" stations: Colleges. NPN serves CNU, ODU, NSU, and Hampton. WBG serves William and Mary. RVM serves VCU better than RVR does, though both can count for RU. ASD basically runs through the middle of campus. And woe betide the innocent traveler who tries to book on a day they all go on break...I've seen truly insane fares on those days just to get to DC, crowds over 150 at NPN and over 100 at WBG on a Saturday morning.

A rather worthwhile thought is how long this can continue before capacity becomes a problem. Parking is already a disaster at almost all the stations, though NPN can at least look to NFK as a bus feeder station. The thought of WBG trying to handle 100,000 passengers (or NPN trying to handle 200k) is kind of staggering. Probably more staggering, though, is that I could see these numbers starting to ramp up at the rate things have been going in VA. Going along with that is the fact that, as we've noted elsewhere, passenger service is moving into the black...and capacity constraints are becoming an issue (witness the Lynchburger, for example...I don't know how much room there /is/ for riders from ROA on it once they extend it, but there's probably not room to add another 50k to the train).

 

[Paulus]

Rather than additional parking, shouldn't the emphasis be on additional local mass transit and thruway connections?

 

[jis]

I think both are needed and are complementary. I doubt that stations like Metropark or Hamilton in NJ would be as successful as they are if they did not have the massive parking structures. Both have excellent bus connections and are served by several routes. But the inherent problem with buses is that they cannot really go everywhere within the suburban sprawl that exists today. That is the current reality one has to account for while encouraging development of transit villages etc. This transformation where one could get away from providing for automotive users at multi-modal stations will take several decades to achieve.

 

[xyzzy]

During discussions of the design of the new station in Raleigh -- a situation not that different from Richmond, especially in regards to inadequate parking -- there were proposals to favor mass transit to the new station and therefore to provide even fewer parking places than the current station has. I believe the City and NCDOT look forward to mass transit someday, but for the time being "Cars R' Us" and that means a parking deck.

 

[Anderson]

Both are complementary, yes. It's also worth noting that the catchment area for RVR is a lot larger than Richmond. I frequently drive in from Newport News, you've got people coming in from Charlottesville to go to Florida, etc. I can tell you that I sure as heck don't want to have to work in an additional bus timetable to my trip planning.

I agree that having a massive parking deck isn't a great solution (though it may be needed in cases like this). But there aren't many great solutions to problems like this...especially in cases like RVR where the station is far enough out not to be well-placed in the mass transit system. Also, for people from across town, asking them to take two buses to get to the train station is going to be about as popular as the TSA. To put this another way: People aren't going to completely abandon their cars. They're going to want to drive to the station to go on a trip, and you've just got to cater to that in some form if you want them to take the train...especially when you've got trains coming and going in awkward hours of the day/night that the transit system is largely off. Witness why I don't park at DCA when going to Montreal: The Metro shuts down at midnight(-ish) and I don't want to have to fork over for a cab to the airport. It's an extra complication that I don't need.

The other thing is that even if you get a good fraction of folks taking other options (friends driving, transit, etc.), you're still going to have a certain percentage that want/need to drive. If you add 200 riders/day at a station, you've probably got to get 50 of them parking spaces under the best of conditions (especially when you consider that a number of them need multi-day spaces).

 

[Anderson]

Just some fun data compilation for the Regional corridors:

Year   NPN   WBG   RVM    RVR   ASD   FBG   QAN   WDB   FRN   ALX  |  BRK   MSS   CVS   LYH
2007  96473 41941 12757 234670 12909 61615 28078 15361 1695  97734 | ----  8178  48190 18744
2008 117154 49685 19360 275479 16497 52300 21113 10642 2598 120153 | ----  9644  53038 25383
2009 110226 48688 23576 256006 16634 54053 22114 10848 2694 120815 | ----  9204  52546 23641
2010 116229 47176 27520 266343 19163 56427 23560 11250 2103 139837 | 1156 16239  91707 58348
2011 122438 53056 32628 320239 22359 71110 31311 17612 ---- 161687 | 2967 20264 111602 76179
2012 136369 58894 35970 345657 24041 80320 35970 21794 ---- 169746 | 4099 23923 127524 86498

Year  NPN-RVM RVR-ALX LYH-MSS
2007  151171  452062   75112  
2008  186199  498782   88065  
2009  182490  483164   85391  
2010  190925  518683  167450  
2011  208122  624318  211012  
2012  231233  677528  242044

 

[afigg]

One common thread between the "hard spike" stations: Colleges. NPN serves CNU, ODU, NSU, and Hampton. WBG serves William and Mary. RVM serves VCU better than RVR does, though both can count for RU. ASD basically runs through the middle of campus. And woe betide the innocent traveler who tries to book on a day they all go on break...I've seen truly insane fares on those days just to get to DC, crowds over 150 at NPN and over 100 at WBG on a Saturday morning.

Would be interesting if there were stats available on what percentage of the ridership growth over the past 6 years - in both VA and across the Amtrak system - is from colleges and university students (undergraduate and graduate). For the overall population, the number of annual miles driven, car ownership, percentage with driver licenses, etc are down for the under 25 group since 2006-2006. Quite pronounced change after decades of greater automobile use given the population size.

I should search for data on this, but I would expect that the percentage of college students with a car is down from what it was 10-15 years ago. Between the sluggish economy, higher gas prices, and the ever spiraling cost of going to an established college/university with increased student debt, many students from middle to upper middle class families are likely having to skip owning a car, even an old clunker. Which means more students who have to take the train, bus, or bum a ride from a student who does have a car to get back home.

Looking at the wiki list of Virginia colleges and universities, there are other colleges than just Virginia Tech in the Roanoke area. The extension to Roanoke is going to pull in a large customer base from the college set. Until there is a second train, Amtrak should plan to run extra - extra long Regionals to Roanoke for the peak college travel periods.

On the ridership growth at the stations, CVS and RVR capacity were not designed to handle this many. No easy fixes for RVR. I hope that when the Roanoke, Bedford Bristol", and new Newport News stations are designed, that they provide for enough parking and waiting room capacity to meet demand 15 years from now.

* Brain freeze, not going to see service to Bristol for some years, meant Bedford even though it wil be a minor station.

2nd edit: wording fix

 

[Anderson]

I had lunch with a friend in the Williamsburg government, and we're going to try and see what we can do on the parking front for WBG. In some cases, though, the answer is probably going to have to be secondary stations: It's not in any plans, but a stop up near Toano would probably add some significant ridership with the suburban growth in that area (which is split between four counties that don't talk very well...James City has a growth plan, York sort of does, and I don't think that New Kent or Charles City are really planning at this point). We particularly mused on the room for commuter traffic from the Peninsula into Richmond with an earlier train. We're also trying to see what might be arranged with tourist packages (i.e. getting a discounted/included bus pass or a cut-rate CW pass which includes the bus when you come into town on Amtrak). Considering the demographics of Williamsburg's tourist markets (which center in the NEC), there's probably a lot of ridership to be had.

However, the other thing we're looking at is ways to sell the train to college students and run up the score there. Considering how many campuses disbar freshmen and sophomores from having cars in conjunction with the car ownership trends you discussed, I suspect this market isn't being taken full advantage of quite yet.

I tend to agree...a Roanoke extension with times that actually work for college students (sorry, but the only option being an 0432 departure involving three hours on a bus is no bueno for what we're looking at) could probably run an extra 2-3 sections at times Tech goes on break. Heck, it might be worth talking to NS and Amtrak and seriously look at running a slow "extra" on those days after most classes get out...as well as pitching running connector vans to the student governments (much like they've run airport vans at W&M for years). Looking at the Lyncburger with a presumed extension to Roanoke/Blacksburg, I get the following along that route:
-Liberty (LYH): 56,625
-VA Tech (ROA): 31,006
-UVA (CVS): 24,391
-Lynchburg College (LYH): 2,643
-Roanoke College (ROA): 2,104

There are a number of others in the region as well, with miscellaneous student bodies (for example, I think you could make a case to run a connecting service on break days to Staunton/Lexington, to Radford, etc.) that could add another 10-15,000 students to your ridership pool. I'd note that I am ignoring commuity colleges for this list. Taking those "big three", though, you have 112,000 students. Even getting 2% of them onto the train would fill coach on four ten-car Regionals. 5% market share (a realistic longer-term goal IMHO...I'm thinking the "actual" share for such is 10% of students who would be taking those trains, presuming that half of students live somewhere other than NOVA or the NEC) would, at the moment, fill every outbound seat on a Regional for a week and then flood the Crescent and Cardinal. In short, even if you ran those trains at more-or-less freight speeds until they hit ALX/WAS, I think the market for such a service is readily there to be had, and given the relatively fixed nature of academic calendars I think you could plan for them with ease.

====================================

Moving back to parking, one answer may well need to be simply having a satellite lot and arranging to divert a public transit bus to run a connecting shuttle a few times a day, right before and after trains come and go. That seems likely for RVR, for example, and if they don't do the new NPN station right that's likely to be necessary for that to be run from the airport (a whopping three or four blocks away). NFK seems to have planned alright for the moment, but I sense a turf war down the road with Harbor Park. There's no way that 130 spaces is going to cut it for 3x daily trains, and so help them if they get their six-a-day with SEHSR and those ridership projections are anywhere near the mark. 130 spaces for a half-million riders? Even with the Tide, give me a break...this is NOT suburban New Jersey.

One of the biggest problems, though, is going to be forecasting ridership trends. Though it seems unlikely, if we repeat the last five years over the next five, you get rough totals of 353k on the Peninsula (nearly 200k at NPN and over 80k at WBG), 509k at RVR...you can see where this becomes a potentially toxic block for growing ridership in VA. I would honestly expect that it's already costing at least some growth, and VA can't be the only place with this particular problem.

================================

One final thought: It's likely that ridership on the Peninsula is at its highest levels since the mid-60s. The question of the late 50s is a bit less clear, since the population of the Peninsula in 1960 (as near as I can tell, at least) was about half what it is now, maybe a bit less. Even assuming much higher rail ridership per capita...that's a lot of ground to make up.

 

[afigg]

There are a number of others in the region as well, with miscellaneous student bodies (for example, I think you could make a case to run a connecting service on break days to Staunton/Lexington, to Radford, etc.) that could add another 10-15,000 students to your ridership pool. I'd note that I am ignoring commuity colleges for this list. Taking those "big three", though, you have 112,000 students.
....

One of the biggest problems, though, is going to be forecasting ridership trends. Though it seems unlikely, if we repeat the last five years over the next five, you get rough totals of 353k on the Peninsula (nearly 200k at NPN and over 80k at WBG), 509k at RVR...you can see where this becomes a potentially toxic block for growing ridership in VA. I would honestly expect that it's already costing at least some growth, and VA can't be the only place with this particular problem.

On the college and university market for Amtrak, what is needed is a count of the students (undergrads and grads) who are more than 40-50 miles from home. Then a count of how many of them are in the wider NE corridor. If this was applied to all colleges - community, public, private - then one would have a handle on the market. For that matter, if Amtrak were do such a market survey for all the colleges in the New England and Mid-Atlantic states and map it, it would provide one guide on where, in an ideal scenario with real funding, intercity rail service should be expanded to. It is not just the college students, but major colleges & universities attract start-ups, R&D firms, faculty who I would venture are more likely to take a train along the NEC spine. Big thought for the day.
Virginia, by extending service to Roanoke, LYH, CVS, along with service to Richmond, WBG, NPN, NFK is doing a pretty good job of hitting the major colleges in the state. One exception is James Madison University, but a daily Cardinal with a faster trip time over the BBRR and a connecting bus to Staunton OR a bus from JMU to CVS might cover JMU to some extent.

On ridership and station growth, I doubt that we will see the same percentage growth over the next 5 years as the last 5. With only 6 trains, capacity constraints will limit growth until VA completes improvement projects. Once there are 3 daily trains to NFK (and The Tide extended to VA Beach), maybe a 3rd train to NPN, 2 to LYH and Roanoke, a daily Cardinal, station expansions, and ideally all the RVR trains also running through RVM, with improved trip times across the board, then there will be room to grow. Oh, also new single level coach and café cars for 10 to 12 car long trains for the peak periods. No problem.

 

[Anderson]

The capacity situation is complicated. On the Lynchburger, assuming 9-car Regionals, somewhere around 44.8% of seats seem to be taken (though given in-state turnover it's a little lower than that), but that assumes uniform demand and what-have-you. In reality, we both know that demand bumps around quite a bit and that a certain share of seats simply can't be filled due to those variations. The other issue is net boardings at WAS and beyond, which will "lock out" a share of potential traffic. The Lynchburger is basically full ATM; this manifests in ridership inching up slowly but not doing much else.

On the Richmond trains, there seems to still be substantial room for growth. Using some slightly rough figures (i.e. assuming 52 standard weeks, 9-car Regionals, 5x daily 5 days a week, 4x daily 2 days a week), I get 1,942,512 seats available on those trains. Of those, I get 623,864 taken (32.1%). It's lower than the Lynchburger, but again...X of those get filled out in or past WAS. Also, note that I am probably high-balling the average train length here; cutting the average train to 8 cars cuts capacity to 1,695,408 and hikes the share of seats taken to 36.8%; for LYH this changes the numbers to 360,620 and 51.3%. Still, it's lower than its counterpart...and I'd point out that the RVR trains have managed to add about 14% to their traffic YTD, in part due to Norfolk.

What does this mean? I expect growth on the RVR trains to continue, at least for another year or two. I expect the Lynchburger to be mostly flat in that time, probably rising by a bit each year but blocked in by capacity with added ridership mainly happening as cars might be added. But I'd also be a bit surprised if the trains managed to get too far over 50% on that seats-taken factor (implying a ceiling in the range of 850k-950k on Richmond's trains). Seeing as those trains are, in fact, on course for a little over 700,000 for this year (and presuming nothing major changes, probably somewhere in the 750k range next year) this would imply 2-4 more years of growth before a wall begins to appear. But almost no matter what you do (or try to do), there's likely going to be a significant capacity crunch before the end of the decade in VA absent longer trains (though we may yet see those soon, too).