Taking the train

DailyPress.com
7/9/09

If you want to see what a dreamer looks like, find someone who’s working on passenger rail service.

Because you have to dream big, and about a world different from today’s, to think it’s going to work. And we have to look — and plan — long-term if it is going to have a chance of working.

Let’s begin with the first part: You have to look down the road if you want to see rail succeeding. Because in the near term, it’s not likely to.

Oh, it’s a popular idea, that people will take the train and leave behind the frustrations, traffic and pollution of the highway. Events — rising gas costs, an intensified focus on the environment, a shortage of road-building money, a flood of stimulus money — are bringing the subject to the front burner.

Our region wants some of the eight billion stimulus dollars set aside for heavy rail service, the kind that runs city to city (in this case, from Hampton Roads to Richmond and Washington). Local light rail is also on the regional agenda as the first such venture takes shape in Norfolk.

But the romance of trains aside, it’s hard to pry people out of their cars. As bad as the drive to Richmond and Washington can be via I-64 and I-95, only 321 people a day, on average, choose Amtrak’s twice-daily service out of Newport News. You could increase Hampton Roads ridership tenfold and it wouldn’t make a dent in interstate conditions. You’d spend a lot of money on a relatively few passenger miles.

As much as we locals gripe about congestion around Oyster Point, we also like being able to go and come when we want, pop our shopping bags into our trunks and drive right to our own doors. No wonder that the city’s research confirms that ridership on a light rail line connecting CNU, Riverside and Mary Immaculate hospitals, the retail corridor and the airport won’t draw enough riders to qualify for federal funds, at least not any time soon.

What conditions would a dreamer have to foresee to believe rail will work and justify the big price? The downside of driving — congestion, parking — has to be so bad that people are glad to get out of their cars. And the train has to be appealing enough to make them want to climb aboard. That means fast, reliable, frequent, convenient service and low (subsidized) fares.

Rail planners figure that in the long run the stars — growth, energy prices, environmental concerns — will align to lure people onto the train.

When that happens, they want to be ready, which will happen only if we prepare now. It’s like Noah building when the sun was shining — an act of faith.

So the faithful are at work. In Newport News, officials are trying to make sure today’s plans and projects anticipate the addition of local, light rail service tomorrow. On the inter-city rail front, the city is working up plans for better service out of two proposed new stations, downtown and at Bland Boulevard. (That airport-area station will be essential, as a downtown station would be inconvenient for most of the Peninsula.)

But a different plan has support on the other side of Hampton Roads. Instead of expanding service along the Peninsula’s rail right-of-way, those cities want to expand the route running south of the James River from Richmond to Norfolk.

To have any hope of competing for stimulus money, and a link to a high-speed connection that might run out of Richmond, Hampton Roads has to settle on a single plan — and show the state and the feds it can think regionally.

And, considering the subject, dream regionally.