Arlington Alexandria Projects Community Advisory Group Meeting Recording - October 9, 2025   10/9/2025

Welcome to our second Community Advisory Group meeting for Arlington and Alexandria.

We will be focusing on the rail projects in this region, and this is jointly hosted by both Virginia Passenger Rail Authority and Virginia Railway Express.

Next slide, please.

Today we'll be talking about all of the projects that extend from essentially L'Enfant Plaza in DC

to just pass the Alexandria Station that includes the Long Bridge Project, the Alexandria Fourth Track Project, Crystal City Station improvements, Alexandria Station improvements, and the King and Commonwealth Bridge Replacements Project, Bridges Replacement Project.

And then we'll be plenty of time for a Q&A session.

Next slide, please.

I'd like to start with introductions.

We actually have many staff members and consultants on the line here available to answer your questions, but we've highlighted on this page your speakers for today.

Let's go ahead and do introductions across the top line from left to right and then the bottom.

Hi, good afternoon.

My name is Naomi Klein.

Hello, my name is Jerica Gutmann.

Good afternoon.

My name is Brian Breese.

Sarah.

Good afternoon.

I'm Sarah Hoover.

And good afternoon.

I'm Mark Stauffer.

And Jason.

We have Jason Bortz.

He's the project manager for design and construction with Virginia Railway Express.

And myself, Meredith Judy, I'm the community affairs manager with VPRA.

Next slide.

Just a quick recap of why we're here.

You are our community advisory group for Arlington and Alexandria.

You represent residents, business owners, property managers, boaters, special interest groups like bike and pedestrian advocacy groups.

Northern Virginia agencies, elected officials and staffers and other key stakeholders.

So you are very important to helping keep our project informed and about so that we understand what's happening in the public, but also so you can help us spread the word about the work that we're doing.

You are a sounding board for community questions, concerns and impacts.

We will be meeting quarterly via Zoom, although we will arrange some sidewalks and tours as needed and as we have

Naomi?

Thanks, Meredith.

So the Virginia Passenger Rail Authority, who are we?

So we were created in 2020 by the Virginia General Assembly.

We are a quasi-government authority, and we are responsible for expanding and promoting passenger and commuter rail.

So we are not a rail operator.

The rail operators that we work with are CSX, Norfolk Southern,

Amtrak, and VRE, but we are the owners of the tracks and the right-of-way themselves.

And our job is to design, build, and maintain those rail facilities.

So I'm going to talk a little more about Transforming Rail in Virginia, which is a series of projects that we are using to expand passenger rail between Richmond and Washington, DC.

And so I just mentioned the Transforming Rail in Virginia program.

Back in 2019, we did a landmark deal with CFX, we being the state of Virginia, to acquire unused right-of-way along the rail corridor.

And we are now executing a number of projects to build new rail tracks next to existing rail tracks and expand

The ability to run passenger rail service.

So what that will do, it will increase our capacity.

It will improve efficiency of the existing service by removing bottlenecks along the corridor and improve reliability, so timeliness of service.

Next slide, please.

And this is a map that just shows you, like I said, we are working on a large number of projects to improve rail service along the East Coast.

All the way from Washington, DC to Richmond, Virginia, there are 11 projects and those projects will unlock new passenger rail service through an agreement that we did with CSX.

New round trips by Amtrak, including late night and weekend service and new VRE service with plans to also have VRE service nights and weekends.

Next slide, please.

So this is our rail network as of 2025.

You can see the various routes here.

There are four state-supported Amtrak routes, so eight daily round trips, and then 16 daily round trips for VRE, so 32 trains a day, including the trains that go to Manassas and to Fredericksburg.

There's one North Carolina state supported round trip and five long distance round trips by Amtrak.

Next slide, please.

So I'm here to talk about the Long Bridge Project.

So the Long Bridge Project is one of the reasons that it is so important is because it really relieves one of the biggest bottlenecks on the East Coast for rail service.

South of here, you have three tracks.

and when you get to Union Station going north, you have four tracks.

But right here going across the Potomac River, you have a two-track rail bridge.

And essentially all the rail traffic on the East Coast, including the orange juice that is coming to your house from Florida, have to go across this two-track rail bridge to get up to the Northeast Corridor.

And so that is already operating at 98% capacity as of

The existing bridge will remain in place and continue to be owned and operated by CSX.

VPRA is building a new two-track bridge across the Potomac River, including a number of other bridges that are needed in order to connect this blue line that you see on the map.

So while we call it the Long Bridge Project, the largest bridge is going across the Potomac.

but there are really five bridges in the 1.8-mile project corridor.

So the Long Bridge project is divided into two packages because of the size of the project for the purposes of construction, a north package and a south package.

For those in Virginia, the South Package is the one that you will be seeing.

And so the South Package is responsible for all of the work in Virginia and building the rail bridge across the Potomac River as well as the Bicycle Pedestrian Bridge across the Potomac River and then connecting those to the Alexandria Fourth Track Project.

on the south end.

Construction is estimated to start in the middle of next year and right now we are working on advancing the design from preliminary engineering to final design.

The north package, I'll be a little shorter with this one, picks up from the south package in East Potomac Park and constructs all the way just south of L'Enfant Station

And that construction is really starting now for early works and then full construction to start mid next year.

And both of these are estimated to be completed in 2030.

This shows you our design and construction timeline.

So where have we been and where are we going?

So the environmental assessment was actually done by DDOT in the district because actually all the area across the Potomac River is technically Washington, DC.

And we took over the project from the district in 2022.

We completed preliminary engineering and began our final design

At the end of 2023, early 2024, over the past two years, we've moved into final design, bringing on our design build teams.

Long Bridge South is design build.

Long Bridge North is progressive design build.

and so like I said for Long Bridge South we are working towards a final design expecting to do some early work at the end of this year and then full construction mid next year and then you'll see construction will be from mid next year through project completion in 2030.

Next slide please.

The construction of the Long Bridge project is underway.

This video provides an overview of how the new rail and pedestrian bridges will be built over the Potomac River.

Construction of the new Potomac River rail bridge will occur simultaneously from the DC and Virginia shorelines.

Crews will begin the rail bridge by installing steel pipe piles for the foundation of each pier.

Once the pile group is complete, a precast concrete slab is floated into position and placed over the piles.

Concrete is then used to complete the pile cap, unifying the load distribution across the group of piles.

Work continues placing steel piles, pile caps and pier walls.

Due to space constraints, crews will assemble the bridge sections at an off-site location.

Once assembled, the sections will be floated into place using barges and lifted into position using a series of jacking devices.

Once the new rail bridge is structurally complete, a similar operation will commence to install the pier foundations of the new pedestrian and bicycle bridge adjacent to the rail bridge.

Cranes will operate from the new rail bridge to carefully raise and set into place the prefabricated truss sections of the pedestrian and bicycle bridge.

To ensure the safety of all waterway users and construction personnel, please stay alert and follow posted signs, maintain a safe distance from construction equipment, and use caution when navigating near the work zone.

Thank you for your patience as we deliver these critical improvements.

Thanks Meredith.

So what is happening now?

What would you see if you were out on the river?

Am I doing this slide?

Thanks, Brian.

All right.

So over the past few months, several months as part of our design effort, we have really been focused on on what we call scope validation activities.

And and those activities are basically going out into the site, doing field investigations to verify our assumptions.

So what you see in some of these photos are the geotechnical investigation work that's been taking place out on the river.

I think we mobilized out there in the beginning of June.

And just recently here over the past couple of three weeks, we finished up with that geotechnical investigation on the water.

So that activity is now complete.

We're continuing with some non-invasive surveys of adjacent structures and things along those lines.

But generally speaking, the field activities that you've seen to date,

are to facilitate that scope validation exercise and validate our design assumptions.

Looking more forward here over the next couple of months, we will start to clear some of the trees out of our way to facilitate test pile operations.

We're going to be building some water access points in between the existing yellow line and the existing long bridge so that we can start to get our larger cranes on the water

to do the test piles on the water.

So that'll be full blown large pile operations.

We'll have a 330 ton crane out there, a series of barges to support the work.

And so that's the work that's going to be taking place over the next three to four months is generally speaking, clearing trees, building bulkheads to facilitate access onto the water, and then the test pile operations.

Next slide, please.

So the test pile operations consist of four driven test piles, large diameter driven test piles.

One is on the Virginia shoreline.

There's going to be two in the river and then there's going to be one on DC.

So you can see the crane or the picture with the crane and the leads.

That's generally what the operation is going to look like.

We'll have a crane out there either on land or on water.

We'll have a series of leads and hammers to be able to install that pile.

You're going to hear a consistent bang as we're driving those pile out on the water.

I don't know that you're going to hear it very far away from the job, but if you're close to the job, you're going to hear that.

And these test piles are generally to verify the engineering calculations and try to optimize our design as it relates to the permanent pile that we have to install to hold the bridge up.

After we drive the pile, there's some load testing required to verify the capacity of those pile, and we'll be using a statinamic load test to do that.

What that is, is it generally simulates the weight of the new bridge going into the pile to verify that the pile will achieve the capacity that's necessary.

There is a controlled explosives that injects that load into the pile, so you're going to hear a bang when that happens, but generally speaking, again, it's controlled, and the purpose is to

to insert that anticipated load into the pile.

There is one statinamic test per load pile, so we'd be doing that once on Virginia, twice on the water, and once on the DC side.

And again, you might hear what sounds like an explosion during that test, but it's in a controlled manner.

Next slide.

So we've been distributing monthly notice to mariners.

As our boring operation is going on, we'll continue that exercise here moving forward through the fall and the first quarter of next year as it relates to our test piles.

The navigation channel will remain open through construction, and we're currently working on our private aids to navigation plan to make sure that we're working safely

in conjunction with the boating public.

So you can see in the photo there, we're going to have a series of buoys out there.

There will be a very much like on the roadways, if you're setting up a lane closure on the roadways, there will be a series of buoys that guide the boating public through the channel away from our work.

And then we will have certain exclusion zones demarcated with buoys and signs.

That's going to be our area just to keep the boating public out of there and safe.

Next slide.

Yes, yeah, we've been working very closely with numerous stakeholders throughout the, for years now and we will continue moving forward.

Stakeholders have included transportation groups like VDOT, DDOT, WMATA, CSX Transportation, working closely with NPS, permitting authorities, of course Arlington County and the City of Alexandria and other major property owners and stakeholders have all been involved in the process.

We are keeping in touch on topics such as traffic flow and analysis, noise and vibration, structures, roadway and drainage, utilities, inspections and permits, and quite a lot of adjacent project coordination since of course there's many, many jobs going on in this area at one time.

And then next slide, please.

Public outreach, of course, has also been a key part of our work, including our community advisory group, all of you.

We have a new digital display that yesterday we just installed at the Long Bridge Aquatic Center, which will have already has some very cool videos installed in it, including the one that you saw earlier today about the construction of the bridge.

So we'll be continuously updating that for in-person update.

Of course, we'll have continuous virtual updates as well.

I hope that you're all signed up for our social media and our newsletters.

We've been doing door-to-door outreach throughout our study area, but including the boating community.

We've of course been issuing traffic advisories and marine advisories.

The videos are on our YouTube site, which include a very, very cool Boring's video, which you can link to here on

In our PowerPoint, you'll find it when we send out these slides afterwards.

And we have another excellent fly-through video of the whole project that's coming out soon.

Our newsletter number two went out today.

So I hope that you're all on our email list and received that.

And then we've been tabling throughout the community this whole summer and fall.

Something of note upcoming is that we'll be out on the Mount Vernon Trail and Gravelly Point next month, both during the week and on the weekends.

informing riders and walkers of the upcoming test pile driving, but also just all of the upcoming impacts to the trail network and just the detours that we'll have in place.

There will be continuous flow.

That is a priority for us, but there will be some detours and we want to make sure that no one's surprised.

Everyone knows what's upcoming and we'll be following up with some more permanent signage to keep people informed as well.

Next slide.

Links to all of the places that you can follow us and stay informed.

I do highly recommend the email subscription if you're not signed up yet.

Next slide.

All right, I'll hand it to Sarah.

Good afternoon once again.

So the Alexandria Fourth Track project is a six mile corridor, a fourth track from the Long Bridge Park to the Business Center Drive area.

As part of this, there are several projects that are baked into that.

That includes the Crystal City Station, the King Street area projects, which include Alexandria Station, the King Commonwealth Bridges, and some city streetscape improvements, which are currently in the planning stage.

And then also the Telegraph Tunnel, which we intend to have pedestrian mitigation improvements to.

Next slide.

So just an overview of the fourth track itself.

As I noted earlier, it adds six miles of new track between Long Bridge and Alexandria VRE station.

This will all be existing within the right of way between Arlington and Alexandria.

The intent of this particular project is to increase rail capacity and address current bottleneck issues that delay passengers and freight trains that are currently traveling north into DC because we have an issue where there are five tracks that converge into three.

So currently what is happening on the track, the completed activities that we currently have, so CSX has completed their invitation for bid phase.

They have selected a contractor, so they are currently working through the notice to proceed with them.

With that being the case, they do hope to begin construction as I mentioned earlier at the end of this year, early next year.

Track work will begin at Slater's Lane and Long Bridge here in early 2026.

And as you can see in this image here from Route 1,

You can see the intent is to lay this track here on the left in green.

In a lot of this corridor, that track was already there and was removed historically, so it should be simply a process of putting it back in the simplest terms.

Next slide.

So where we are in the project timeline, we did complete the 100% design in 2023.

We completed all of our permitting earlier this year.

The item that we're currently working through is property acquisition, but we're currently almost through that, so that should be done fairly soon.

And as I mentioned earlier, we will be beginning construction later this year, early next year, and then we intend to finish early 2028.

Next slide.

All right.

Thanks, Sarah.

and sorry for my technical glitches earlier.

I'm Jason Bortz with VRE.

I'm the project manager for the Crystal City Station project and the Alexandria Station and King and Commonwealth project starting here with Crystal City Station.

So the predominant effort here is to where we are relocating and reconstructing the project on the right hand side of the

Of the image, you can see the Crystal City Water Park.

The existing station is just on the opposite side of that water park off the north end of it.

So we'll be relocating an entrance to the south side of the water park.

It'll be right next to the connector to the Mount Vernon Trail Tunnel.

and the body of the platform will be within the existing rail corridor instead of on the edge of the corridor.

As it currently is, that will allow it to be served by tracks or on either side of the platform.

So we'll have two boarding edges, which will allow for increased operational flexibility.

And then towards the south end of it there at 2011 Crystal Drive, we are in

Coordination with JBG for that green segment there that will provide access directly over and across their one-story building there down onto their plaza.

Off the bottom of the image in orange is the county's proposed CC to DCA project, which is a pedestrian bridge over to the airport.

We are

coordinating the collective designs, even though they won't be necessarily built at the same time by the same contractor.

So this is the rendering of the north entrance.

We are working through this process with the county.

We may have to make some minor adjustments, but this is effectively what it'll look like.

But to what I was speaking to on the prior slide, we're looking to provide platforms that will accommodate eight-car train sets.

That's our typical allotment.

We want to make sure that we can open all doors on all trains and be able to board as quickly as possible and keep operations moving.

The new platform will have two boarding edges instead of one, which will allow for smoother operations in that regard.

As far as local connectivity, in addition to the connection with the CC to DCA project, on the north end, the new north entrance in concert with WMATA's inclusion of a second entrance on their station will ultimately have better connectivity between VRE and the adjacent WMATA station.

Next slide, please.

And here's our current timeline.

We completed 90% design on the body of the station.

The south entrance with JBG is quickly catching up to that threshold.

We'll look to have both of those up to 100% design in early 2026.

And we'll be looking to start construction in early 2027.

that's directly interrelated with the fourth track project that Sarah unpacked.

So there's a lot of track work that needs to happen before we can begin our construction in the right of way.

Next slide, please.

Hopping down the track to Alexandria, we have Alexandria Station and King Street and Commonwealth Avenue Bridge Replacement Project.

It is a mouthful.

And it started as two different projects for the purposes of this slide.

On the right-hand side, you see the large green blocks.

Those are the bridges over King Street and Commonwealth Avenue.

And then smattering of colors to the left, that is the original Alexandria Station improvements project.

In working through construction sequencing,

We realized that it made a whole lot more sense to actually construct these under a single contract.

So we worked through that with VPRA and CSX and that is what we're moving forward with.

So the light blue is predominantly existing platform that will be rehabilitated.

The darker blue to purple is existing platform footprint.

and the pink is the new elevators that will be going in to provide access between the two platforms.

In red is the existing pedestrian tunnel, which we'd originally proposed to rehabilitate, but we're now actually able to replace that, so we'll have a wider walking path underneath the tracks, which will be nice and certainly better for ADA access.

The yellow box across the tracks, that's the existing pedestrian crossing that will be removed.

That is kind of a core tenet of our funding for this project is crossing safety funding and it's removing that crossing to provide more safe access across the tracks via the elevators and the tunnel.

Next slide, please.

So honing in a little bit more on Alexandria Station specifically, the three main items that we were looking to achieve with this project is firstly, removing that accurate crossing as a reference.

And the second is improving the track and platform interface.

So the top of the platform should be eight inches above the top of the rail.

That is not the case out there just due to

years of track maintenance and platform settlement.

So we'll be rectifying that.

And then currently we can only board on the two western tracks.

We'll be making it so that we can also board on the eastern existing track, track one.

Next slide, please.

The replacement of the King Commonwealth Rail Bridges, these

Bridges were inspected and determined that it was appropriate to do significant maintenance and rehabilitation to them.

Given the investments made in the fourth track project as well as in the station and the state of their condition, they are over 100 years old, it was determined that the most effective means was to do a full replacement rather than to do extensive rehabilitation.

It will ultimately provide improved spans over the roadway.

Actually, next slide, please.

It's shown better on there.

Improved spans over the roadway and improved clearance over the roadway.

I know there's a history of particularly King Street being struck by box trucks, so that will be mitigated by this and potential for streetscape improvements led by the City of Alexandria.

Next slide, please.

And so for this project, design is completed.

We have satisfied all the technical requirements for permitting.

Property acquisition is just wrapping up, and we are actually going to VRE's board this month to request approval to award the contract for construction.

And we anticipate a contractor to receive notice to proceed by the end of the year.

Next slide.

There we go.

So contractor selection is underway and construction start is imminent.

So we are moving forward.

Sorry, I thought that was just on the previous slide, but that's it.

All right.

Thanks, Jason.

I'll take over again.

Mark Schnaufer with VPRA.

So at the very end of the fourth track project, we have one of the other projects related to the expansion of that four track and this is the Telegraph Road Tunnel.

It's a

It's a pedestrian connection from what a lot of people know as the Wegmans shopping area, a lot of residences and new businesses in that area, connecting to a soccer field and softball field at Witter Field on the Duke Street side of the railroad corridor.

This goes underneath both the Wamata, existing Wamata tracks and the CSX tracks.

So we can go to the next slide.

You can see the location of the existing tunnel.

We initially looked at possibly rehabbing it, bringing it up to ADA compliance.

and being able to keep the tunnel, it proved to be infeasible first because of cost, second because of constructability issues, and third just trying to bring it up to current standards with the small footprint that we have underneath the Telegraph Road Tunnel.

It was determined to be infeasible.

So that tunnel is going to be closed.

However, working with the City of Alexandria, we came up with a proposal to at least make the pedestrian access from both sides of the track a little bit better than the existing at-grade access.

So if you go to the next slide, we'll show what we come up with.

Utilizing the existing sidewalk, if you're familiar with the area, there is a sidewalk that goes, a U-shaped sidewalk, goes underneath the Telegraph Road Tunnel.

It's kind of isolated back there, and to utilize that, you'll see on the lower right-hand corner of the inset picture, there is that trail, but it's also fenced off.

You can't get from the trail to the softball and soccer field.

You have to actually continue walking up that trail almost a half mile if you stay on the sidewalk network and not cut through private property.

So by creating this new path, it's a couple hundred feet long, and we're going to pop a hole in the fence, basically, with access to the existing trail.

And it'll shorten, like I said, about a half mile shorter to get to the soccer field utilizing the Telegraph Road sidewalk network.

So we'll construct that trail in the outfield.

of the softball garden area behind the fast travels lane.

And this is all on City of Alexandria Park property, and we are working in conjunction with them on getting these plans approved.

So we made a lot of progress since we last talked to you.

Next slide, please.

On our design.

We have completed our 100% design and our draft, if you will.

We just received comments from the City of Alexandria this week, pretty minor comments that we will address.

We'll address those comments and that will get us our site plan amendment approval, which is the permitting process, if you will, that we need to get city approval.

And then the timing of the construction on this is dependent on a couple other side projects also related to the FORTRAC.

The city is going to have to relocate one of their sanitary sewer lines that's in the immediate area.

And we cannot construct it where we don't want to construct this trail prior to them doing their work because they'll just get torn up for the sewer work.

So sewer work will come in first, then we'll build this trail.

and the goal is to have this trail in place and operational before the tunnel needs to be closed.

The fourth track project is gonna start from north to south, so that means that this will be one of the latter parts of the project to be completed.

So that is our goal is to have that new pathway and access way in prior to the closing of the tunnel.

But you can see that sentence, those two pictures underneath, there's flooding issues, there's height issues, you can't ride a bike through there without possibly hitting your bike.

I'm up with an alternative to get you to the park.

And similarly to the Long Bridge project, we're highly engaged in the Alexandria and Arlington communities conducting outreach for the Alexandria Fourth Track projects and similarly VRE for its projects.

We have an established hotline.

We have fact sheets where we've been holding pop-ups and events at the station.

and in neighborhoods in Arlington, conducting media outreach and community events, and of course our CAG.

So please stay tuned, much more community outreach to come.

Thank you, Meredith.

So with all of this great advancement and progress in construction, there will be some impacts to passenger and commuter rail service.

as we advance the Long Bridge project into major construction starting in January of next year.

There are some critical constraints in DC, as you see pictured on the right side of the screen.

DC has some noise and vibration laws that restrict significant work in the daytime hours.

are also, as we stated earlier, a lot of congestion, train congestion in DC, and so that's why we need the Long Bridge Project, but it also provides us with a little bit of a conundrum in terms of when we can do the work, so what we've done,

is developed a service plan that facilitates a five-hour outage of what we're calling a work window between 8.15 a.m. and 1 p.m. that will allow the Long Bridge Project in D.C. to maximize their productivity but also prioritize peak service.

for both Amtrak Virginia for VRE and also for the long distance Amtrak service in the Carolinian in North Carolina.

So we will have some temporary service adjustments for all of that service.

And if you advance to the next slide, you'll see that VRE, all of their trains will be in service.

Some trains will start and stop

and Alexandria instead of Union Station.

The RA is also bringing back the Amtrak Step Up program, so if you are a multi-ride ticket holder, you'll have more options to be able to get on an Amtrak Virginia State supported train to travel in and out of Union Station, and then some of the schedules will be refined, and so there may be some temporarily adjusted schedules.

For Amtrak Virginia, the state supported service, there will be some reduced service down in Hampton Roads, so two round trip trains to Norfolk, two in Newport News, but we are adding express intercity bus service from Hampton Roads to give folks down in Hampton Roads additional opportunities to

travel to Washington, DC.

So where there were five round trips daily, there'll be six combined rail and bus round trips.

And some of the departure and arrival times for all of our Amtrak Virginia services will be adjusted slightly.

We're still refining those schedules as we work with all of our teams and all of our partners.

So those schedules for VRE and for Amtrak aren't ready to be

to the public yet, but we will keep everyone updated.

But I wanted to, as we meet with you all who work really closely with all of our community members, to make sure that we have the opportunity to share this information with you all.

We've developed a service guide to talk about these service impacts.

Right now it has a video explaining in more detail about what this service impact looks like.

VRE also has on their Plan a Trip

and on their service status on their app, talking about what these impacts will look like and how you can maximize your transit benefits.

So please stay informed and stay connected and we'll make sure we continue to get the information out there.

Thank you.

Oh, I'm not finished.

How to stay informed and stay connected.

Please, as Meredith mentioned before, if you're not already signed up for our email updates, please join all of the listservs for Long Bridge, for Alexandria Fourth Track, and then also sign up for construction updates so you'll get all of the information and then make sure you're connected to all of our

All of our social media, particularly on YouTube.

The team has been doing some really great videos talking about how we're constructing the projects, putting travel advisories and also talking about the service impacts.

And then VRE as well.

Please stay connected.

They also have project pages where you can get information, use this QR code to learn more about the VRE projects you've heard about today as well.

And I'll turn it over to the team to do the Q&A.

Okay, so we're ready to start the Q&A.

It looks like Eric has his hand up.

Sure, several questions.

One is, do you have for the south part of the Long Bridge construction project and the fourth track, what are the hours that the construction will be done?

I know she's talked about the north track, north part of the bridge just being during daylight hours.

What about the south part of the bridge and the fourth track?

So as a routine, a routine day is probably going to be seven to five, but we are going to be moving things on the river after hours, off production.

There will be during the course of the job, I'm sure times that we're going to be working night shift because the proximity

to the airport and the railways.

So there's just certain things that we're not going to be able to do safely at certain times of the day.

So we shift them tonight.

The normal day is Monday through Friday, figure seven to five.

But Saturdays and Sundays occasionally will be out there depending on how critical the activity is, weather impacts, things along those lines.

So it's going to be dynamic.

It'll be similar hours.

The night work, they're still currently trying to judge what that will actually look like.

So we do not have anything firm in regards to night work.

Right, because the night work, especially on the 4th Track, is going to be impacting a lot of residential areas.

Understood.

Okay.

And one last thing.

Yes, we will do that.

We will do that.

And Eric, you've been a great resource for sharing information with the community.

Okay.

Do we have any questions?

This is John Patrick.

OK, so let me just show you on this slide.

If you put your cursor and you hover down to the bottom of your screen, you will see a reaction button where the little heart is.

Okay, I just raised my hand.

Thank you.

We're all learning.

I had several questions, actually, but if they run too long, let me know and I'll stop and let someone else participate.

First of all, I wanted to know, it looks as if the construction schedule for the replacement of the bridges in Alexandria at Union Station, which is our interest, because we are that neighbourhood.

It looks as if the schedule has changed a bit.

My understanding was that the work on the bridges was all going to be done as far as street closures are concerned in 2027.

No, so the timeline for that is still accurate.

The bulk of the work in the roadways will be in 2027.

But there is a significant amount of work that needs to be done to enable that.

So if you recall from the slides, how the new bridge spans will ultimately be longer, be wider relative to the road.

Yes.

The way we're achieving that, right, is by actually keeping the existing bridges in place and digging out all the dirt behind the abutments.

and constructing the new bridge support abutments behind those while that existing bridge stays in place.

So there will be a lot of work that is not in the roadway until those new abutments are built and complete, and then we'll come in and swap out the actual bridge span itself.

So as far as the actual work in the roadway, you're absolutely right, that'll probably be more in 2027,

Yeah, so it should be predominantly no impact.

There may be some temporary day here, day there sort of activities, but no significant impacts in the immediate future.

The other question I had, well, another question I had was, in 2027, when roadways have to be blocked off, my understanding is that that will involve, essentially, your estimate is, and I realize it's only an estimate, one month of closure for King Street, for two of the lanes, and then one month of closure at Commonwealth Avenue for two of the lanes.

and then there'll be another two months of closure.

So it is, you're, you're absolutely right in that there is we're doing the, the Eastern two tracks first, or I should say anticipating doing the Eastern two tracks first and then doing the Western two tracks after that.

The,

The one month duration is the anticipated duration for replacing the superstructure span over the roadway and for both King Street and for Commonwealth.

What we have to work through with the contractor and realizing the contractor is going to be in the very, very near future, but we just don't have the exact level of detail into their schedule yet, is we're going to have to work through their maintenance of traffic plan and their overall approach to how they want to go about building the bridges.

The hope and anticipation,

is that we will not have to close both roadways at the same time.

But that's something that we're going to have to work through with the city.

The city would ultimately have to approve our maintenance of traffic plan.

And I think the contractor would likely have to demonstrate that

They can do it on a severely expedited timeline to convince the city to allow the contractor to close both roads at the same time.

If they said, hey, if we do them both at the same time, we can knock it out in a weekend, right, which I think is extremely aggressive, then maybe the city would be amenable to that.

But I think otherwise, right, it would probably be one and then the other, which one comes first or second, again, subject to contractors' means and methods.

But absolutely something that we want to connect with you and your organization about and make sure that whatever the plan is, right, that you all are informed well in advance.

But yeah, we won't have the exact on that until the contractor's on board in the next

Excellent.

The last question I had was concerning noise.

So we don't have driven piles in the foundation.

We've drilled shafts, which are significantly quieter to install.

Technically they're micropiles, but they're drilled micropiles, not hammered piles.

Correct, yes.

There is some

Shoring that needs to go in behind the abutments to achieve the work I was outlining earlier about how we keep the existing abutments in while we build the new.

And that could potentially have some hammering.

It could usually be installed either by vibration or by hammering.

And I think it's kind of that

I'll say net benefit aspect that was kind of talking about with the MOT for closing the bridges.

Okay.

And the

Is that correct?

Yes, correct.

Excellent.

And I know you mentioned that you were having some connectivity issues getting to us.

I don't know that I've seen anything come through from you, but if I did and I missed it, my apologies.

The connectivity problems actually were Meredith Judy's passing on my name a couple of times and saying I would receive an outreach and I never did.

Okay.

All right.

Absolutely.

Thank you.

Hi, I'm Steve Miller.

I'm the outgoing treasurer of the Crystal City Civics Association, where I'm going to have a different role come November, hopefully.

A couple of questions about the Crystal City Station itself and the interface, if any, between the construction of that station or VRE and the construction of the adjacent Amtrak station in Crystal City.

Is the work being coordinated?

When will the Amtrak work occurring?

And then after you answer that, just with all that this is, all that's going to be going on here, this seems like in addition to the, whatever you have at the aquatic center, a topic and project that will be of interest to rail fans across the whole world.

And so I'm just wondering if any thought has been given to having some kind of a museum or some museum more, you know, more robust activity set up to inform everyone.

What's going on here?

Well, the latter portion there, you've piqued my interest.

I don't know that we've unpacked that there, but it is an interesting thought and something for us to chew on, right, as to, I'll say, realizing the unique nature, particularly with the corridor and the number of businesses, residences along the corridor.

As far as the integration with Amtrak, we actually had a pretty extensive coordination with Amtrak up until about, I want to say about a month ago, when they let us know that they were actually deferring delivery of their station.

And we're actually

Working with them now for them to actually stop at our station rather than build their own separate platform.

So that's a shift from what was previously anticipated.

We were both going to have our own separate platforms sort of nose to tail along the track.

and ultimately they decided that it made more sense in the near term for them to serve on our platform rather than construct a separate platform.

So we're working through that with them and what accommodations that would require us to make as far as, say, additional ticket vending machines that sell Amtrak tickets, not just the VRE,

ticket vending machines, things of that nature.

Thank you.

And maybe on the other more creative idea, we can have separate conversations.

I mean, we're looking at the idea of maybe having some kind of theater

Yeah, I love the creative thinking about outreach and how we can keep the community informed.

I'm sorry, we have a question in the chat.

But go ahead.

Yeah, I was just going to add as to like the importance of the corridor and celebrating that.

Obviously, this is specific to Long Bridge and not all of Transforming Rail in Virginia.

But one of our commitments that we will be installing

What are called interpretation panels, and you've probably seen those on other parks and trails and important monuments.

And they're basically signage that talk about the history of the rail corridor, the history of the Long Bridge, other bridges in the area.

And so there will be these signs that will be installed to kind of celebrate what we're building and the history of rail in the region.

And those locations have not been fully determined yet.

And while it's certainly not a museum by any stretch, we do, a similar interest rate could be that

VRE is a general practice.

We put up construction cameras during construction of our projects, which take still images at a regular cycle.

And those are fed directly to our webpage that create a time lapse as the project evolves.

Thank you.

We have a question in the chat from Bruno Resto.

So I will send this slide out to everyone, but that is a very good reminder.

If you registered for this event, then we have your email and your name.

If you did not, we ask that you please drop it in the chat right now and then we can make sure that you're on our email distribution list for sending out the slides after this meeting, but also for the invitation for the next meeting.

Yes.

Okay, correct.

I raised my hand because I thought of another question that I had not yet asked.

Could I take just a little bit more time to do that?

Please do.

Good.

Yes.

Yeah.

So the, the platform itself relative to the track is, is lower, lower than it should be.

It should be eight inches above top of rail.

That's not where it's at.

In some cases it's probably closer to 8 inches below the top of rail, so it is a pretty significant raise at some locations.

That's why we have those yellow step boxes out there, so those should go away at the end of this.

As far as it being a historical structure, we are limited to the first course of brick is what we were directed by the Historic Preservation

Office that we were bound to.

And so that's what we're tied to at the at the actual face of the building.

So we can't go more than one brick off from what's worth top of the platform currently is at the building.

The canopy out over the platform is actually was actually deemed non historic.

The brick building itself is the canopy itself is not.

However, what we're

What we're doing is the colonnade that you referenced.

Those are actually just facades.

There's a steel beam vertical inside the center of it, and there's a facade around it.

So what we're doing is basically cutting that facade off.

Exactly, yeah.

The existing canopy that is out there will remain

We're just replacing the platform surface underneath it and the column styles that are out there will be replicated and replaced with new.

Excellent.

So not level.

There will still be steps, but it will be significantly

Any other questions?

Anybody?

Yeah, just real fast.

Just so you know, there is a DC Rail fan group.

And I put one of the links to one of their videos in the chat.

You might contact them.

They come to the Long Bridge Park often to overlook the rails, and they might really enjoy to hear when you're doing rail work and things like that.

As they say, there's a group of, I think, about 10 or 15 people who regularly come and

and look at the tracks and all that, you know, different trains go by and all that.

Yeah, we can reach out to them and make sure they're connected with us.

Yeah.

Any other questions, whether you want to raise your hand or not, or just shout it out?

Recognized that we're also past 1 30.

So we want to keep to our commitment to you.

But we really appreciate you being here today.

We'll be back in touch for our next quarterly meeting with more information.

I guess I see more emails coming in.

Thank you.

And we'll be sure to send you this PowerPoint shortly.

Please keep in touch.

You have our contact information.

Thank you.

Great work.