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RESPONSE: Why Richmond doesn’t need a new train station on the Boulevard
Taber Bain just posted WHY RICHMOND DOESN’T NEED A NEW TRAIN STATION ON THE BOULEVARD, a response to Dr. Eugene Trani and John Watkins’ call for a new train station on Boulevard (and redefinition of “downtown Richmond”):
Famous unemployed persons Dr. Eugene Trani, former president of VCU, and John Watkins, former Virginia senator from Powhatan, have checked in with us through the pages of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, and boy oh boy, do they ever have some thoughts for us about where “downtown” is, how people use trains, and how much parking is required for everything (SPOILER: INFINITE!). Specifically, Dr. Trani has swooped in once more to make a sad case for building some sort of magical new train station on Boulevard rather than sending trains to, like, the very pretty train station we already have downtown.
I think this is a super un-smart idea, and it’s an idea that people like for really bad reasons.
So I couldn’t restrain myself. Below is my abridged line-to-line response to “Why Richmond needs a new train station on the Boulevard”, which is the title of the opinion piece but not a thing that is true.
Well said! Trani’s Development of VCU was often surprisingly suburban, it makes sense that he would propose a new downtown 10x the size of Boston’s!
Honestly the best location would be to build a new science museum and return the current science museum building to being the train station it once was. It has the land for the turnabout that may be needed and it could accommodate the parking. But it isn’t going to happen.
As for Main Street Station, it will remain underutilized as long as their is no way for trains to bypass Acca Yard to get to Main Street. It simply takes way too long right now to move a train from Staples Mill to Main Street because of the yard to make heavy utilization of that station realistic.
Both Boulevard and Broad St station would also have to go through ACCA train yard so it would save maybe 5 minutes compared to RVM. They are not realistic alternatives to RVM.
Why not keep both? Richmond has a lot going on. Transportation is much needed.
You have two stations in place already (although the one in Henrico is an eye sore (like a really bad fast food restaurant from the 70s), any new money for a new station would be better spent creating light rail in they city. Think about light rail connecting, not only points along Broad, but could also act as a shuttle to the existing Main St location. And a bypass around the ACCA yard pinch point is already in the works.
Yes, yes, and YES!
Keep the main st station where it is. Do NOT open one in Scotts addition. Pour some dollars into a bypass of the freight yard or whatever is holding up the line. More detail in Shockoe and downtown. If there is a viable and convenient train like to Main Street station this city will take off like a rocket.
Does anyone else feel like This article sounds like some person who lives outside the city who wants the cool parts of the city without having to actually GO to the city? Like: ‘that’s cool. We should totally move that closer to my house.’
*more RETAIL downtown and Shockoe
The ACCA rail yard is a fact on the ground that we just can’t ignore. It would cost many, many millions of dollars to fix. I’ve heard upwards of a billion. The trip between Main Street is excruciatingly slow, then is followed up by a further wait while passengers board and deboard. The sad fact, as Justin has mentioned, is that both stations Broad and Main Street, or even the Science Museum, would be stuck on the wrong side of ACCA. Meanwhile the decrepit Staples Mill station is jammed with people and parking.
Agree with BAF.
People are ignoring the realities of why Main Street Station is no longer a high-functioning rail hub.
About that ACCA yard bypass…it’s already in progress. http://m.richmond.com/news/local/article_f092ae2b-27e5-5a3c-8bba-4dda9299e78c.html?mode=jqm
Some of the comments on this Style article thread from last year break down a few of the complicated factors with the train station situation. I don’t believe the Acca yard improvements address all of them.
http://www.styleweekly.com/richmond/market-shift/Content?oid=2168821
What I don’t understand… if the Main Street Station is outmoded, why did they spend $52-million to renovate it? Then went through a marketing campaign saying upwards to 9 passenger trains per day would go through it with more to come down the corridor? And even had a dedicated part of the 14th Street parking deck for passengers. But at the 11th hour, Amtrak decided to pull the plug and not close the Staples Mill location killing all the work done? If the downtown location wasn’t viable, why did they even attempt what they did in 2003?
Eric: short answer? Because they received an enormous amount of federal money–millions and millions of dollars– to turn it into a glorified event space for the city.
Clay Street… This is before what you are speaking of. I am not talking about the money being spent now on the station. I am speaking about the money spent in 2003 with all of the promotional materials printed up and news stories about it being the new central train station for the city and eliminate Staples Mills then. Apparently they thought in 2003 it could work or the city would not have spent the money renovating a building that was closed in the 1970s and nearly burned to the ground in the 1980s.
Here is a link to one marketing company and the grand opening brochure for 2003…
http://advanteusa.com/success.html#image-9
And a picture (scarce to find one) of a banner on the track overpass that as I recall, even mentioned the number of passenger trains that would be going through there. But Amtrak pulled the plug before that gala event.
http://asdeveau.homeip.net:82/dcampix/2004H1/PDRM1363.JPG
Eric, this is a perfect example of the complete ineffectiveness and backroom dealing of the city. We’ve been hoodwinked. You are assuming the goal was in fact to elevate transportation and bring rail to downtown and eliminate Staples Mill–ha! What it the actual goal was to get funding? And give contracts to friendly local businesses?
In order to do that they had to sell the idea that it was really going to happen.
The city owns the building.
CSX owns ACCA yard.
Amtrak has nothing to do with either.
CSX doesn’t just own the ACCA yard–it owns the tracks between here and DC–Amtrak has to lease them.
Why would anyone blame Amtrak? The city can’t make CSX change the yard or the track infrastructure.
ACCA yard is slowly being addressed, but you can see why this was such a fail if they weren’t planning this from the very beginning. It’s like they’re all “oh, how surprising that we can’t get trains through there–oops!”
Here is the text from a 2004 article spelling out what a messy bottleneck the whole thing has been from the get-go.
https://www.ble-t.org/pr/news/pf_headline.asp?id=10813
Clay Street, thanks for the link! But, maybe my idea after reading this may be a bit simplistic but why can’t they simply build an overpass through the yard dedicated to Amtrak? These photos reminded me of it…
http://www.piedmontsub.com/graphics/RichmondVA3cross.jpg
http://lh5.ggpht.com/-wmylP3lV5AA/U-pPUhCECLI/AAAAAAAA5pg/0tDrFNZdD2s/Imagens%252520engra%2525C3%2525A7adas%252520e%252520curiosas%2525205_thumb.jpg?imgmax=800
And we are not talking about miles of track to be built but only a 1-mile stretch to overpass the entire yard – maybe like what we see along Dock Street with the elevated tracks. Just an idea.
the one thing not in favor of main st station being the main richmond station is that it is not on the main north-south rail line.
trains running north / south of richmond have to detour onto east-west rail lines utilized heavily for freight traffic.
if every north-south bound train has to detour to east-west lines to get downtown, this is going to delay a lot of rail traffic.
i’m surprised nobody brought this up.
now, if CSX works out something so that there is an extra spur running from the north-south line to main st, then when DC-RVA high speed rail becomes possible, it should indeed stop downtown.
but – the staples mill station is a nightmare to enter/exit and has all the charm of a cinderblock.
ok i see _everyone_ brought the bad-location/rail congestion issue up.
apologies for poor observation on my part.
@24 Clay Street: you pretty much nailed it. By way of history: The original renovation of Main St. Station was done with Fed funds from an ISTEA grant (Intermodal Surface Transportation Enhancement Act). I don’t know what it is called now, but assume that the most recent work was most likely covered by something like that, too. Intermodal meant what it implies, that it involved trains, buses (hmm, that mega bus thing), bikes, etc. ISTEA (pronounced like ice tea) was a big deal back in the late 1980s and into the 1990s. Some areas used grant funds from it to reclaim old, abandoned rail tracks and turn them into bike paths or walkways. There were all sorts of uses of those funds, and not all were a waste. I don’t think anyone at the time, though, thought through to the possibility of high speed rail and the ACCA yard; reclaiming the train station was the big deal.
I know for a fact that the Maglev high speed train with main service between Richmond to DC, was on the table because one of our former attorneys at the law firm I worked for was representing it. This was one of the reasons for the initial condo-apartment boom… to be ready for the influx of commuters to move to cheaper properties in Richmond along the Maglev corridor. This was during the same time as the 2003 grand opening.
A quick question to #29- Was ISTEA used for Rails-to-Trails in some places? If so, that was a heck of a good idea. ‘ve lived in 3 states so far that had trails from that program.
Yes it was. Sorry I can’t remember any local examples, but I remember hearing about it. At one point I went to a workshop sponsored by VDOT and that was one of the things they mentioned.