High-Speed Rail Plans Gain Traction with Federal Stimulus Money

By Tom Gresham

Federal stimulus money geared for high-speed rail projects should be viewed as an infrastructure project that can be expected to provide long-term benefits, though perhaps not the ones most touted by advocates, according to George Hoffer, professor of economics at VCU.

The Obama administration has proposed $8 billion for high-speed rail projects throughout the United States, and the state of Virginia is seeking a portion of that money to develop projects in the rail corridor stretching from Washington, D.C., through Richmond and deep into North Carolina.

Hoffer says the focus of the public discussion of high-speed rail has been on increasing ridership on passenger trains, but that might not be the greatest potential advantage improvements would provide.

“While ostensibly its purpose is to improve high-speed rail and get people out of cars and onto trains, it probably will have a much more beneficial and much greater economic impact in terms of speeding up CSX freight trains,” Hoffer says. “Realistically, while it’s being touted as being green and as a passenger mode of improvement, probably the real benefits will accrue over time to the freight railroads, which it should.”

Hoffer says the current federal package will not transform the country’s rail system on its own. 

“While that’s a tremendous amount of money, especially related to what previous administrations have proposed for high-speed rail, it’s a pittance compared to (what’s needed to) really make any improvement when you take the whole country into perspective,” Hoffer says.

For instance, Hoffer points out that it would require up to $1 billion in line improvements to eliminate the bottlenecks that exist between Richmond’s Main Street Station and Washington’s Union Station – and it would be a major surprise if Virginia was awarded 1/8 of the proposed federal money.

Still, Virginia has plans for incremental changes that will add up, Hoffer says, such as $100 million in improvements to Acca Yard, a rail yard in Richmond. The improvements would allow Amtrak trains to pass through the yard at 45 miles per hour instead of the 10-15 miles per hour they travel now – a change Hoffer says would make a tremendous difference. He notes, though, that passenger trains passed through the yard at even higher speeds 50 years ago and Acca Yard changes only will affect those passengers traveling south of Staples Mill.

Hoffer says high-speed rail is a misnomer when applied to the trains that would be traveling through Virginia as envisioned. He says increasing the effective line speed in Virginia from 70 miles per hour to 90 miles per hour means trains traveling through the state will not reach the speeds that passenger trains north of Washington, D.C., have traveled for generations.

Efforts to improve passenger trains’ on-time performance, better spacing of the trains and more trains originating from Richmond, especially after the initial morning departures, would improve ridership locally without costly rail improvements, Hoffer says.

He says there also are some small infrastructure projects in Richmond and to a lesser extent in Washington, D.C., that could cut into riders’ travel times at a fraction of the cost of rail improvements. He says it can take 30 minutes to leave the parking lot of the Amtrak station at Staples Mill Road in Richmond after returning on a train – a major inconvenience and addition to travel time. He says a traffic light at the exit to the parking lot, a prepaid parking kiosk and exit gate, and an additional gate to be manned at peak times would eliminate most of that wait.

Finally, making one platform at a high level in Richmond and in Washington, D.C., would facilitate exiting as all car doors could be opened, saving up to an additional 10 minutes at each end.