Tag Archives: regional rail

Crayon plan for VRE’s Manassas Line

As part of the Transforming Rail in Virginia plan, the Commonwealth purchased half of the RF&P railroad (home to VRE’s Fredericksburg line) from CSX. The agreement includes not only the right of way, but also an agreement for shared dispatching and scheduling authority, opening the door for better on-time performance and more control over passenger rail schedules in a mixed passenger/freight corridor.

Unfortunately, the plan has yet to include any (public) agreements with Norfolk Southern, who owns the tracks for VRE’s Manassas Line. In many ways, the Manassas Line has more potential than the Fredericksburg line – the Manassas line travels through relatively densely developed suburban areas along a corridor that lacks competing highway travel options. The rail line is already double-tracked and mostly grade separated, yet doesn’t host much freight traffic for NS. With the eventual expansion of the Long Bridge enabling more Amtrak and regional rail traffic, the line is a perfect candidate for increasing service.

The vision for regional rail in the DC area: run it like rapid transit. Frequent, all-day service.

My basic, quick-and-dirty vision for the line:

  • Purchase the line from NS
  • Electrify the line, and link through to the NEC
  • Develop stations to maximize ridership

The last item would represent the biggest physical change on the line. The railroad itself is a large barrier in this part of suburban Virginia – only a handful of north-south roads cross it. Conveniently, these areas also include areas with commercial and industrial land uses (orange) ripe for eventual redevelopment as station areas (green).

Crayon of the new VRE Manassas Line – Close the existing Rolling Road station; add new stations at Rolling Road, Burke Lake Road, and Old Ox Road.

The existing Rolling Road station would close. All stations would be rebuilt to enable operation on both tracks in both directions, as well as to provide pedestrian and bike connections to neighborhoods on both sides of the tracks. Locating stations near the north/south roads also creates the opportunity for connecting bus transit, which currently doesn’t exist.

Other ideas for the Manassas line:

Add a station at Clifton, VA – limited development potential due to historic preservation, but a strong, walkable small town core.

Consider an extension to Haymarket, VA – VRE studied this, but it would require splitting already infrequent trains among two termini, as well as require extensive investment to avoid NS conflicts.

The good and bad of Denver’s new airport transit line

Denver RTD A-Line map.

Denver RTD A-Line map.

Next time you fly into Denver, you’ll be able to hop on a train from the airport to downtown. There’s a lot to celebrate about this new transit line, and much to criticize. There’s plenty of effusive praise for Denver’s transit ambitions without much critical pushback in the popular press.

A few thoughts on the good and bad of the line and RTD’s rapidly expanding system, starting with the not-so-good.

  • This line is part of Denver’s large FasTracks system expansion. While ambitious in scope, many of the routing decisions are odd network choices. There’s a lot of reverse branching, use of freeway rights of way, and other opportunistic decisions to ease construction, but which may be regretted later.
  • FasTracks centers on Denver Union Station. DUS is a remarkable urban redevelopment project, but a huge missed opportunity in terms of transit operational design.
    • Union Station is now a stub-end terminal for regional rail trains, limiting the station’s capacity and preventing future intercity or regional rail use of the station.
    • Light rail trains stop 1,000 feet away from the regional trail platforms. The distance is creatively connected with an underground bus concourse, but the transfer environment is less than ideal – particularly given the almost-blank slate to work with.
    • Real estate development projects advanced before any understanding of the transit right of way needs, and have now forever closed those avenues for expansion. The real estate framework for expanding Denver’s downtown matured before the framework for transit expansion.
  • Rail service to Denver’s airport is important, but commentators often place too much emphasis on serving airports instead of overall improvements to the transit network. This is less true for Denver, given the systematic transit expansion as a part of FasTracks (and the network benefits therein).

 

Critiques aside, there’s a lot to praise with the airport line.

  • Frequent, all-day, electrified main-line rail service – much of it built in a greenfield right of way.
    • For all of the benefits of main-line rail as a means to offer rapid transit service, it’s great to see a project execute on those benefits
    • Electrification offers great promise for frequent transit – taking advantage of performance benefits from using electric multiple unit trains with quick acceleration, instead of diesel-powered peak-only ‘commuter’ trains.
    • Development of new regional rail transit lines along greenfield right-of-way opens up all kinds of planning possibilities for other regions.
  • The project demonstrates the benefits of risk-sharing public-private partnership deals. With the contractor responsible for long-term operating costs, their design efforts focused on the most efficient way to meet the parameters of the contract (all-day, frequent rapid transit service). For those reasons, the team embraced the electric commuter rail concept, opting for:
    • Mainline rail vehicles to better handle interactions with adjacent freight rail corridors and meet regulatory requirements
    • International standard electrification (25kV AC) to reduce the costs of substations while still providing the necessary performance
    • off-the-shelf procurement of a proven design (Silverliner V vehicles) to avoid development costs.