RICHMOND, Va. -- For Larry Jenkins, his passion for trains is something that runs in the family.
"My father worked for the railroad for 45 years and then I worked on the railroad for a couple years. My brother, Joe, and my sister, Dana, also worked on the railroad for a couple years. And so, the rails in my blood, it really is," said Jenkins. "We like trains, we love to ride the trains."
Friday, Jenkins was among those at Richmond's Main Street Station to hear about the latest in train travel plans at Amtrak's Board of Directors meeting.
Among the presentations beforehand, was from the Virginia Passenger Rail Authority's plans to expand and improve rail service in the Commonwealth as they said demand is at an all time high.
"Every month since last summer, the summer of 2022, we continue to set a new record for that month. What that shows us is that if we put the trains out there, people are going to take them. Virginia is unfortunately famous for rush hour traffic on 66, on 81, on 95 and this gives folks another opportunity to go where they want to go when they want to go there," said VPRA Executive Director DJ Stadtler.
VPRA contracts Amtrak to run passenger rail service on tracks the authority makes available through purchasing right of way from freight lines that own the track, building strategic infrastructure and more tracks to allow freight and passenger trains to run separate from each other.
"The biggest challenge for passenger rail in America is the mixing of freight railroads that go about 35 miles an hour. And passenger trains that want to go much faster than that," said Stadtler.
He said among their main focal points to do that is a roughly $4-billion project through 2030 to make improvements on the line between Richmond and Washington, D.C., which includes another train bridge crossing the Potomac River that is dedicated for passenger rail.
"Right now that's at 98% capacity during peak hours and that's the bottleneck for the whole east coast."
"[VPRA is] adding service. We added some last year, we'll add more in 2026, more in 2030. By the end of 2030 we'll have virtually hourly service from here up through Virginia to Washington DC," said Stadtler, who said the end goal was to improve options and the reliability of those options. "The schedule says two hours and 10 minutes, we want you to get there in two hours and 10 minutes. We don't want you to plan on being here at 9:05 and not showing up until 9:45…The other thing that's important is when you leave [Richmond] and go to Fredericksburg, for example, because you want to have dinner in Old Town Fredericksburg -- if there's not a train that can take you back here after dinner, you're not going take the train…We want to make sure that when you're done with dinner in Fredericksburg, there's a train at nine o'clock at night that will bring you back here…Same thing if you're going to DC for a Nationals' game or if you're going to see a play. The last train out of DC is shortly after seven o'clock. You can't do anything in the evening in DC and get back here by train. That's what we're looking to fix."
It is options that Jenkins said he would appreciate as he used to live in Alexandria and is considering a train trip back, but has to factor in the fewer options for a return trip.
That is welcome news for Jenkins, who is originally from Alexandria and considering a train trip back for a visit. He said taking Amtrak is easily better than having to drive on Interstate 95.
"Especially on a Friday afternoon like today," Jenkins said. "I like it because you just sit back and relax and let them do the work for you."
As for the work on the Richmond to Washington corridor, Stadler said they still have about a $700-million funding gap between now and 2030, but said they have applied for a federal grant that would cover that and are expecting to hear if they application was accepted by the end of the calendar year.
But, Stadtler said they are also working on improving options elsewhere in the state, including plans to restore an old route to Raleigh that would be an hour faster.
"Last year [we] added a second round trip to the Lynchburg-Roanoke service. So, now instead of just one train a day, there are two trains a day," added Stadler. "We have signed an agreement with Norfolk Southern where we're going to expand that trip and extend it from Roanoke all the way to the Christiansburg area to New River Valley. We're working on 30% design of those plans now and looking to get that in place as soon as possible. Additionally, last year, going out to Hampton Roads, we added a third train to Norfolk that now gives us three frequencies back and forth from there. And in 2026, when some of our projects are done in phase one will add a third trip to Newport News."
VPRA staff said the state is also looking at something that is on Jenkins' wish list.
"I'd like to see, like, Roanoke open up. So a direct train from Richmond to Roanoke. Right now it takes a lot of hours to get there," said Jenkins.
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