USA: The Commonwealth of Virginia is making progress with its passenger rail investment initiative, which will see the number of passenger trains operating in the state double from 2019 to 2030.
Speaking exclusively to Railway Gazette at the end of March, Executive Director of Virginia Passenger Rail Authority DJ Stadtler, who is a former Amtrak executive, painted an optimistic outlook for the rail investment programme. ‘Rush-hour highway traffic here is horrific. We quickly realised that our only solution is to expand the passenger rail service in Virginia’, he explained. ‘The Virginia Passenger Rail Authority was created by the state of Virginia in 2020 with all the financing set aside for our projects by 2030. Our mission is to manage and enhance the passenger rail within the state of Virginia and beyond.’
VPRA was created on the back of the Transforming Rail in Virginia first put forward in December 2019. This envisaged the state acquiring more than 360 track-km of railway from Class I railroad CSX for $3·7bn, as well as sections of little used or abandoned right-of-way with a view to reinstating and expanding inter-city and regional rail services across the state.
‘We approached CSX — the freight railroad who owns the infrastructure of the main railway lines in Virginia — to ask what it would take for us to add more trains. They said, it’ll take more infrastructure. That’s why the state decided to purchase rail infrastructure; VPRA now owns over 640 km of railroad right-of-way.
‘Following the acquisitions, we started to work with CSX to determine where we have to add additional infrastructure to eliminate the bottlenecks. With Transforming Rail in Virginia, VPRA will increase the number of daily round-trips on state-supported lines from eight to 13 by 2030.’
More trains to Richmond
Stadtler said the authority’s current priority is completing a series of upgrades to the main line linking Washington Union station with Richmond to the south. As well as carrying freight, this corridor is used by Virginia Railway Express commuter rail train and by Amtrak long-distance services, many of which run through to and from destinations on the Northeast Corridor north of the capital.
Between Washington Union and a junction south of Alexandria, the authority intends to create a four-track alignment, with two tracks being dedicated to passenger and two reserved for freight.
Being a pioneer
‘The job we are doing is pretty rare in the United States, and this itself poses huge challenges. We receive a lot of attention from other states, seeing our model one that they can possibly follow. We have a close collaboration with the North Carolina Department of Transportation, they are also investing a lot of their own money in adding new infrastructure. But there are other states interested, including Tennessee and Ohio, which don’t have state-supported passenger rail services yet’, Stadtler explained.
When asked about the proposed privatisation of Amtrak, as advocated by some of President Trump’s advisors, Stadtler said that ‘regardless of what structure Amtrak will exist under, the only way we’re going to be able to move people on the East Coast through this busy corridor is by rail. All these people can’t go onto the highways. Someone will have to operate the trains, whether it’s Amtrak, whether it’s a different company, it doesn’t matter. There will have to be trains.’
- Go deeper: This is an abridged version of the full interview, which will appear in the May 2025 issue of Railway Gazette International, and via our subscriber platform, Insights.
