Arlington and Alexandria Community Advisory Group Meeting #4   4/22/2026

Okay, it's 1230.

I think we can get started here.

Good afternoon and welcome to the fourth VPRA and VRE community advisory group meeting with a focus on Arlington and Alexandria.

As a reminder, our community advisory groups are designed to maintain ongoing coordination and communication with leaders in our project areas.

This includes residential groups, businesses, regional organizations, advocacy groups, elected officials and staffers, and others.

We meet virtually on a quarterly basis for project updates and to hear your thoughts and input.

Next slide, please.

Today's agenda covers all of our VPRA and VRE projects in Arlington and Alexandria, including the Long Bridge Project, Alexandria Fourth Track, Crystal City Station, Alexandria Station, and the King and Commonwealth Bridges Replacement Project.

So let's start by introducing our team that's presenting today.

Next slide, please.

I'd like to go across the top and then the bottom.

Good afternoon.

My name is Naomi Klein.

Sorry.

Good morning.

Good afternoon.

Actually, my name is Brian Breeze.

Good afternoon, everybody.

I'm Jeff Pelletier with VPRA.

Good afternoon.

My name is Jason Skofie.

Good afternoon.

I'm Jason Bortz with VRE.

I'm Mark Stauffer.

And I am Meredith Judy.

I'm the Community Affairs Manager with Virginia Passenger Rail Authority.

Next slide.

Let's dive in.

Naomi's going to lead us off with a discussion of Transforming Rail in Virginia and an overview of our Long Bridge DC side updates before we move into our Virginia side updates.

Absolutely, thank you Meredith.

So this slide is talking about our Transforming Rail in Virginia program.

The program is a series of projects between DC and Richmond and this started off as a landmark deal between CSX and VPRA that allowed us to acquire the right-of-way next to the existing CSX tracks

What that land allowed us to do was then to complete projects that would separate passenger from freight rail, making them both more efficient and allowing us to run more passenger rail service.

So that allowed for the expansion of rail.

As you can see in DC, it really is this midpoint that connects the north with the south, the east coast with central cities like you can see here, Chicago.

And so it's not just about DC to Richmond, it really is about bridging the east coast and being able to expand that rail.

The TRV program will allow us to double state supported Amtrak service and also run

VRE trains on nights and weekends.

So we can go to the next slide.

So this shows you the Long Bridge project.

It starts from Arlington, Virginia over by the Long Bridge Aquatic Center.

It goes over the Potomac River through East Potomac Park across the Washington Channel.

through the Maryland Avenue overbuild and then end just south of L'Enfant.

You're going to hear today we connect to two other projects.

South of us, we connect to the Alexandria Fourth Track project, which you will hear from today.

And then north of us, we connect to the L'Enfant project, which is doing a station upgrade and then also building a fourth track to Union Station.

So what we will end up with are four tracks from Alexandria all the way up to Union Station and then four tracks that already exist from Union Station up through the Northeast Corridor.

So you can see the Long Bridge project is split between two packages, the South package and the North package.

Today our focus being within a community advisory group for Arlington and Alexandria will be on the South package, the North packages.

essentially entirely in the district.

And so the south package is constructing the rail bridge across the Potomac River and then as mitigation for the rail project, the Long Bridge project is also building a dedicated bicycle pedestrian bridge across the Potomac River.

So the south package is responsible really for those two bridges, bridging over the

GWMP and the Mount Vernon Trail, and then working with the North Package to build the abutment in Ohio Drive.

Construction is going to be starting mid this year.

You probably already see cranes out in the river.

We'll talk a little bit more about that.

And then construction is set to be completed in 2030.

We can go to the next slide.

So this just shows you a little bit of our activity in DC.

While the focus of this meeting today is on Arlington and Alexandria, we know that people are traveling.

into and through the district.

And so some of the work that we're doing on the north package may affect your travel by car or by train.

So we are doing crash wall work on the Maryland Avenue Circle, which is just north of that picture on the top.

You can see it just a little bit in those buildings to the right.

We're doing ongoing utility relocation work to get utilities out of the way to be able to build these bridges and then additional crash wall support wall construction.

There is expected to be a traffic shift on Main Avenue either late in spring, so in the next couple of months, or in early summer.

and you're seeing that traffic shift on that top picture where there will be one lane of travel eastbound and two lanes of travel westbound.

There will be a maintained pedestrian walkway eastbound and then there will be the closure of this ramp that goes from 4th Street to Main Avenue.

and that ramp is going to be closed.

We're working with DDOT right now on how long that closure will be, but it will be more than several months at least.

So we can go to the next slide.

Okay and

Now we're talking about the Washington Channel, so we're talking about East Potomac Park, closest to the channel to that north side of East Potomac Park.

And they are currently constructing a trestle, so you may see them building this wooden bridge are actually almost complete with that construction.

and that trestle is going to allow them to roll on the heavy machinery that is needed to build the rail bridge across the Washington Channel.

And then in East Potomac Park, again on that north side closest to the Washington Channel, there is a new traffic pattern that's going to be going on through spring of 2027 with one lane open in each direction rather than the two that you would have in the typical traffic pattern.

and additionally on the south side of East Potomac Park closer to the Potomac River, parking lots B and C will be closed for the duration of the project through 2030 to allow for the staging of material and equipment needed to build the project.

Go to the next slide.

Okay and am I talking about this or am I turning this over to Brian?

Thanks, Brian.

So, as Naomi said, over the last couple of months, you've seen a lot of cranes going up and we've really been focusing on our access, both from GWMP and then also from the Ohio Drive side of things to make sure we can get our cranes on and off the water to support our test pile operations.

We have built our access roads in from the Gravelly Point parking area as well as from GWMP in between the existing Yellow Line Bridge and existing Long Bridge.

We have completed our first of two Virginia Shoreline bulkheads and those bulkheads, you can see it in the upper right hand corner there, those bulkheads will be used to get equipment on and off the water, to get materials on and off the water.

And then looking forward a little bit, we're going to continue setting up our large cranes for pile driving here.

That'll start in a few months.

We have a second bulkhead to build on the Virginia shoreline, further downstream from the one we've built towards Gravelly Point.

And also, in fact, we've already started building our first of two access points on the DC side of things.

So one of our water-based cranes is out

building another bulkhead off of Ohio Drive in between the bridges currently.

You can see on the top the temporary construction access road.

So this is over the last couple of weeks.

If you go into Gravelly Pointe parking area now, there is a fairly obvious access road that goes all the way from the parking lot up along the shoreline towards Gravelly Pointe.

and right now that interfaces with Mount Vernon Trail as we go up through there.

Our plan is to detour Mount Vernon Trail out to GWMP and that should happen in the next four weeks.

So we're currently scheduled for May 22nd which is the Friday before Memorial Day weekend to make that transition and really that

at that point that eliminates some of the major interfaces that we have with the trail users out there.

So that's a focus right now coming in from Gravelly Point is getting that trail out of our, away from, as far away from our construction areas as possible.

You can see in the graphic the green

is the proposed Mount Vernon Trail location where we're going to be pushing it out along GWMP.

There will be a barrier separation there, so they'll be protected from traffic.

And you can see the, I guess the reddish trail, which is the existing trail.

We'll close that portion of it as it goes through our construction area.

Next slide, please.

Again, a lot of our activities in terms of access have been focused on our test piles.

We have four test piles to build for this job as part of our scope validation where we basically go out there and confirm some of the assumptions we made in our preliminary design.

So we have two test piles on the water, we have two test piles on land,

Currently the two test piles on the water have been driven and we've had a restrike on them and now we have to do a statinamic load test and what that is is you mount a frame on top of those pile out on the water and you use an explosive charge to inject a force into that pile as you're you're managing the stresses or you're monitoring the stresses of the pile and it basically gives you an indication of the capacity of that pile so again kind

confirming our design assumptions.

We do have two more to build on land.

We have one on the DC side of things at East Potomac Park at Abutment B, and we have one on the GWMP side of things between GWMP and the shoreline.

And those statinamic load tests and the test pile operation itself will take place here in May and June.

Next slide, please.

All right.

You've also seen us, whether, you know, we started with tree clearing here a month, month and a half ago, several weeks ago.

We have been developing the loop ramps and boundary channel where you come off of 395 as our construction staging area.

So if you've gone by there, you've seen some temporary office facilities for our field crews out there, parking, some lab facilities, and we're also developing access from

and Boundary Channel down along the existing ramp 395 to GWMP southbound between that ramp and the Aquatic Center where we'll be developing access to get down to our southernmost abutment and pier work for the new bridge.

Again, the trees have been cleared.

We've been developing our access.

basically getting our yards in the loop ramp done and we'll be developing the access along the ramp here in the coming weeks.

Next slide, please.

And I know we talked about this in the last meeting, but we're getting close to putting our age to navigation plan into effect out on the water.

So if you're looking at the graphic on the lower right hand corner, you'll see basically where we have our construction zones hashed in that orange kind of color and we'll have a navigational

channel going through our work zone where how boaters can safely navigate the work zone.

We're gonna have a lot of barges out there, we'll have a lot of boats running around out there, so we want to make sure we're separating the boating public from our work zone to the extent we can.

So this will be installed here over the next few weeks and

It'll be maintained for the life of the job, so that channel may shift back and forth a little bit, but it'll generally keep the same concept as what you're seeing in that graphic.

The appropriate age to navigation will, or I'm sorry, the public notifications will be made to all the appropriate marinas and the Coast Guard and everything else, so the notifications should be available to the voting public.

Next slide, please.

Okay, thank you, Brian.

Moving to our public outreach section.

We've continued to do quite a lot of public outreach throughout the winter and the early spring.

Some highlights that we've noted here on the slide include a joint Potomac River Boathouses meeting held in

March, and at that meeting we were able to present some of the upcoming Long Bridge construction impacts to the navigation channel and help the boating community prepare for those.

We also

did some trail outreach on the Mount Vernon Trail and the Gravely Point area in March as part of Winter Bike to Work Day, letting people know about the upcoming detour and then answer any questions that they have about the current impacts on the trail.

We developed a new video for the test pile driving in the Potomac River that we'll be pushing out on social media this week.

It's already up on our YouTube channel.

We've the number of inquiries that we've been receiving through our email and phone hotlines has significantly ticked up as expected with construction underway.

And so we are trying to respond to those inquiries as quickly and as thoroughly as possible.

Of course, we have our ongoing weekly traffic advisories and monthly marine advisories that we're sending out as well.

I also want to highlight that we have a new monthly construction e-blast that we're sending out.

It's brief and it highlights the key construction updates for all of our subscribers.

It goes out to our e-newsletter subscribers.

So if you are not yet receiving our newsletter or our monthly construction updates, I highly recommend that you join that list.

All you have to do is email us at info at longbridgeproject.com.

Next slide, please.

And then, of course, it is outreach season, spring and summer.

So we have a lot of events coming up and activities.

But again, I want to highlight for you a few of those key items.

We have public meetings coming up this spring.

We have two schedules in Arlington, one in Arlington and one in Alexandria, the one in

Arlington is at the Long Bridge Aquatic Center.

It's on May 7th, and the one in DC is at the Southwest Library on May 12th.

Both meetings run from 5.30 to 7.30.

They will be primarily open house style.

We'll have display boards, videos.

Many of our staff members will be there to answer questions, but we have established a six o'clock time in which we will give a presentation highlighting

informational updates about Long Bridge and then allowing for an open Q&A session as well.

Much of the information is similar to what we're presenting today.

This is a bit of a trial run to share what we plan to bring out to the public meeting.

So we look forward to hearing your input on this material so that we can refine it and improve it for our meetings on the 7th and 12th.

We also have regular spring Bike to Work Day on May 15th.

We'll be at six different locations.

We'll be at two in DC, two in Arlington, two in Alexandria.

I have them listed here.

I hope that you'll plan to stop by and speak with us.

Bike to Work Day is one of my favorite events because we get so much terrific engagement from the bike community and others who stop by and really take some time to absorb the information about our upcoming construction activities and give us

Some questions, feedback, etc.

And then as Brian mentioned, when the detour goes into effect for the Mount Vernon Trail on Gravelly Point, that will be right now, they're estimating May 22nd is when that detour will begin.

We're going to be out on the Mount Vernon Trail again.

We're going to try to time it so that we're there the day before and the day of the detour implementation so that we can let folks know it's coming, answer any questions and just kind of see how

the process goes and respond accordingly.

A few other highlights this spring include our Pentagon Transport.

We're going to attend the Pentagon Transportation Fair in mid-May.

We have some new signage out on Mount Vernon Trail and

We will soon have some new signage around the Aquatic Center related to the project.

We'll be at the Carlisle Commuter Fair this summer, as always, and then we'll continue to provide updates on the Long Bridge Aquatic Center kiosk.

That's just a few of many outreach and tabling events that we will be at.

Next slide.

Just a reminder of all of our social media and

website and hotline, phone numbers and email addresses for you to keep on hand as the Long Bridge project continues.

Next, please.

Meredith, there was a hand up.

Oh, I didn't see that.

Yeah, this is John Patrick.

I am in Alexandria in the Rosemont neighborhood.

I just wanted to point out that you have a May 15th meeting showing as being at Alexandria City Hall.

Yeah, it's adjacent.

There's a square adjacent to there that it's going to be in.

I'm hoping that there'll be clear signage.

I can update that to clarify the exact location.

But yes, they have moved Bike to Work Day to right across the street this year.

OK, thank you.

And I know, Jeff, that you're going to take questions at the end with Meredith and others, but there are two other questions popping up here in the chat.

So does the no wake zone terminate north of the work area?

So yes, the no wake zone.

The no wake zone will be limited to, you can see where the arrow is for the navigable channel.

You can see where the slow no wake buoys are, those yellow buoys just to the south of that.

And then you can see on the north end those yellow buoys that extend slightly north of our construction zone.

So slightly downstream and slightly upstream of our construction zone is the limits of the no wake zone.

Does that answer the question?

Yes, thank you.

OK, good.

And also thank you, Mr. McPike.

I think he's clarifying in the comments that it's not City Hall Square where they're hosting Bike to Work Day this year.

It's across the street called Tavern Square.

So I'll update that in our materials.

Thank you.

So moving further south, we'll get into the Alexandria Corridor.

I'd like to call it the Alexandria Corridor, not just the Fourth Track Project, because it really is a package of projects that the Fourth Track Project really enables, which include the Crystal City Station improvements by VRE, the King Street area projects by VRE that they'll be presenting on following me, and then the Telegraph Tunnel replacement that we'll talk about later this year as we get closer to the tunnel closure.

We can go to the next slide.

But to just talk about the fourth track project overall, or specifically, it picks up where Long Bridge leaves off.

It's going to extend the four track corridor, as Naomi mentioned, about six miles south of Long Bridge down to about a mile past Alexandria Station.

And this is a really critical bottleneck in the area and it's really going to open up service because just south of the station is where the trains that head north or head south

to Richmond, branch off from the trains that move west out to Roanoke, Charlottesville, Lynchburg points that direction.

So we do have a lot of trains that come together, not just from our inner city service, but also from the VRE Manassas line and the Fredericksburg line at that point.

So having a fourth track in the Alexandria and Arlington corridor is really important to us.

and it's something that we've been working on for quite some time.

We actually kicked off construction late last year but really have kicked into gear earlier this year and we'll give a few more details on that in the next couple slides so we can flip to the next.

Just give us a snapshot of where we are.

As I mentioned, we had notice to proceed back in January.

We've seen materials start coming in, like you see in the photo on the left here.

We're doing a lot of work in what we call the interlockings, which is where we have signals and switches, which allow the trains to move from track to track.

To do that, we have to do this very specific and specialty track work that gets fabricated offsite, brought in on rails.

and then it will get installed here in the next in the next coming months and if you can actually see some of these panels they've been laid right across are right adjacent to the the trail along the Long Bridge Aquatic Center Park and that is where some of the work that you can also see you can get a front row seat to see what's been going on there doing a lot of grading work a lot of our erosion and sediment controls to be compliant with the Virginia DAQ

and grading work that we're doing to get ready to put in some of this new specialty track work that's going to allow for the switching movements during construction, but also of course allow for the four-track operation once Long Bridge does come into service in 2030.

In terms of upcoming work, I'll get into it in the next couple slides, but we are working pretty heavily up north, but also some areas along what we call Slater's Lane or the control point at Slater's Lane, which is where we also have a number of switches and signals.

This is right where US-1 goes over the railroad.

And that's an area that we'll be focusing on here in the coming months.

Go to the next slide.

We have a lot of access points within the corridor for Fourth Track.

Fortunately, the vast majority of the work that we're doing can be done within the existing railroad corridor, but we do need to access the corridor.

We have seven locations, but the top three there are the ones that we're using right now.

In Crystal City, we're using the location at Crystal Drive and 12th Street.

That is the access point that is gated and monitored 24 hours a day.

We have a camera there.

An access point that we know is very sensitive and something that's being monitored very closely by CSX.

We also have started opening up Crystal Drive and Service Road that gets us to the eastern side of the tracks via the tunnel from the service road.

And we've recently started work at Potomac Greens Drive and Service Drive in Alexandria to get to that side of the corridor as well.

And then we have these other ones that you see here that we've not yet activated.

So you will see these at various times.

We plan to be using them all at various times, but we have set them up in such a way to try to be as little disruption as possible to the neighborhoods and the communities that are there.

Next slide.

As I mentioned before, we have a lot of work that's been going on adjacent to the Long Bridge Aquatic Center.

This is an interlocking that we call RO.

As I said before, there's a lot of signal activity, switching activity that happens in this area, and we need to get that online in order to do some of the work we're going to do later on in the project.

What you'll see is heavy equipment, grading equipment, some pile driving might be going on as well in the near future, and then rail construction equipment as well.

Some of this work will happen at various times of day, sometimes it happens at night.

We have been putting out notifications of when this work is going to happen, but it is sort of the linchpin to the work that we're doing in Alexandria.

We're going to be

And then the Slater's Lane area.

This is the area we're just getting started up here.

We should be doing some of the grading work, the environmental work and drainage that's needed to do the track work in this area.

Similar to the area up by the Aquatic Center, we'll be putting in new tracks, welding that track, getting it surfaced, putting in the stone, the ballast for the track work itself.

So there will be a lot of work happening in this area and again,

Next slide.

So the phasing for the next few months is kind of what you see here.

I know this is a little bit tough to see in some areas, but where we're going to be working heavily is again up by Long Bridge Aquatic Center and in Slaters Lane.

That's the phasing that we're doing for the near term.

What you see on the right is the final build out, but as we have these, you know, the CAG meetings progress, we'll show you what the next phases are going to look like.

Really, once we get the

RO and the Slater's work done.

We'll start marching down from north to south along the corridor, putting in the fourth track and eventually getting down to the Alexandria area.

And as we get closer to that work in the next couple of years, we'll be providing some updates on that phasing.

We'll go to the next.

And this is the timeline that we're working on right now.

We've really completed a lot of our, all of our design work, our right-of-way acquisition, and now we're fully into construction, which we should be wrapping up in late 2027, early 2028.

And then that opens up a lot of the other work for things like Crystal City Station, as well as King and Commonwealth, which Jason Bortz and Jason Skofie will be briefing just after me.

I did see a comment came in while I was presenting.

Yes, this happens periodically.

Really?

Okay.

We will certainly look into that.

I know it's meant to trip to close, but I know we have some of the team here from the CSX team that can also look into it as well.

And like I said, we do monitor it by camera.

We, you know, we do have folks out there as often as we can, but if there are some times we're missing it, we'll certainly make sure that gets addressed.

Okay, I think that's it for me.

Thanks, Jeff.

As Jeff mentioned, Crystal City Station is kind of a partnering project with Fourth Track and overall, we're kind of from a schedule standpoint, we're in a little bit of a ramp up period right now as all of the Fourth Track track work proceeds pace.

After a good chunk of that work is completed, we will be able to begin construction on this project.

So right now where we are at from a design standpoint is that we will be finishing design by the end of this month and circulating that amongst CSX and VPRA, JBG and Equity, the adjacent property owners.

to make sure that we have, and WMATA as well, since we go over there, Fox Tunnel, to make sure that everything is in line with all their previous comments that we've received to make sure that that's all been addressed.

That will show in greater detail what I'll go over with you here, which is just kind of a brief summary overview.

So on the right-hand side of the image is the Crystal City Water Park,

At the very top of the image is the new second entrance going into the WMATA station.

So what we'll be doing is building out and widening the ramp that currently goes down to the Mount Vernon Trail connector.

We'll have ADA compliant ramps and stairs that work their way down towards approximately the same elevation as the Mount Vernon Trail connector tunnel.

And we will build our tunnel almost right next to it.

And that tunnel will go out underneath the nearest track, as you can see there in red.

Turn and go between the tracks, gradually ramping up towards the platform level.

This is a low-level platform, 8 inches above the top of rail, like most other VRE stations, or all other VRE stations.

As you wind your way through the magenta area down towards the south entrance, you have a set of stairs, an elevator tower, which ties in a couple of directions.

So going page south, it's really kind of east, but it's downward on the page, is kind of an orange color.

That is the CC to DCA bridge that Arlington County is leading.

So our projects are designed to

be integrated.

Ultimately, they will tie directly to each other.

And then going towards the top of the sheet is the pathward up towards Crystal Drive.

That would be a pedestrian bridge over the service drive behind JBG's building and effectively will land on the roof of their one-story building with a set of stairs and an elevator that come down into their plaza.

Shown at the very left past our Magenta platform is what was a blue platform.

Amtrak had intended to build a separate station there, kind of nose to tail with our station.

Ultimately, for the immediate future, they are deferring that and looking at potentially surveying on our platform.

That has not been

When exactly that would start has not been determined, but we're looking to make sure that we have all the appropriate accommodations that would allow that to happen similar to the county's pedestrian bridge to the airport.

Next.

All right, so why build all this?

The existing station is one of the busiest stations in our system.

and it currently has about a 400-foot platform which limits the number of doors we can open.

We can only open about five doors.

We generally run up to eight car train sets.

Right now we're running about six, but we do commonly run up to eight.

So we want to make sure that we can open all the doors on the train.

That makes sure that everybody gets on and off the train more quickly.

You don't have people in, let's say, car one walking back to car three just to get to an open door.

This will also provide two boarding edges.

Currently there's only one boarding edge, so that means that we can be boarding two trains simultaneously.

We'll also be providing enhanced intermodal transit connectivity by the entrances being closer to WMATA, Mount Vernon Trail Connector, ultimately the pedestrian bridge to the airport, and as well as working with Bikeshare and things like that to make sure that there are terminals as close to the station as possible.

Next slide please.

So where are we at?

Right now we are wrapping up design.

We'll have that final package here by the end of the month which we'll distribute and make sure that we have taken care of everything and be looking to do the formal distribution for invitation for bids probably sometime this summer.

Overall we're

Closely tracking the fourth track's construction progress to determine exactly when that will go on the street for construction.

But we are looking at somewhere in the Q1, Q2 of 2027 timeframe.

Next slide.

All right.

Thank you, Jason.

I'm Jason Skofie with the construction management team for the project.

Many of you have seen this graphic before.

As mentioned, it's

Historically been two different projects that we combined together.

VPRA's bridge project and VRE's station improvement project.

So just have one contractor be able to knock out both projects kind of

Mixing's more efficient and streamlined.

Starting from right to left here, you'll see the Commonwealth Rail bridges and then the King Street bridges in green that'll be replaced.

The other goal of the project is to remove that at-grade crossing at the station, that pedestrian crossing, and it's going to be replaced by installing the two elevators that you see in magenta there.

and also be replacing that existing pedestrian tunnel to make it a little wider, as well as some platform improvements that I'll get into on the next slide.

Next slide, please.

So at the station here, you'll see the yellow portions.

That's the part that we're going to be extending the platforms, as well as raising them to be angels above top rail like the rest of the

stations in the VRE system as Jason mentioned previously.

You can just kind of see where that existing grade crossing was and that'll go away.

And then the elevators will be adjacent to that existing tunnel.

We're also adding a boarding edge along track one where there's not one today.

So you'll have three boarding edges on that track one, two, and three.

Next slide.

Here's a view of just the two bridges.

As many

have gone through under Commonwealth.

It's very tight there for pedestrians and cyclists.

So we're going to be able to gain a lot of real estate under both bridges.

The city of Alexandria is leading the streetscape portion of the project, and that's still under design.

But it's going to have a lot of room to play with in terms of the pedestrian flow and cyclist flow.

But these rail bridges are from 1904, so over 120 years old, and at the point where we're going to be replacing them now.

Next slide.

Here's a high level 2026 construction timeline.

So the contractor began to mobilize on site in January of this year.

Right now we're in Q2, and so we're going to be working on jump spans and supportive excavation, which I'll get into in the next slide.

Later this year and into the summer, they'll be doing the micropiles and the bridge footings for the bridge itself.

and then in Q4 of this year, moving to building the bridge foundation walls that hold up the bridge.

Next slide.

Kind of digging into some of the details here.

So when the contractor, they completed, they mobilized on site, you'll see the orange construction trailers.

That's where the construction crews have their field offices located.

You definitely notice the three big cranes out there, the two big red cranes and the one big yellow crane.

Those will be here for the project.

You'll actually see them move from this side of the tracks and then they have to move to the other side of the tracks and then move back to the west side just to do the sequencing of the work.

So they completed surveying and they completed utility location.

And so right now they have started some of the sheet pile work for support of excavation, mostly up by Commonwealth Avenue and then just starting on the Kingtree one earlier this week.

There's also doing center platform work.

We're building a temporary platform to be able to access track one and be able to board people off of that track one.

So that's underway right now.

You'll see the crews out there.

And then upcoming, I'll just note that the picture on the top right is not from our project.

It's an example of what the jump spans will look like on the project.

So in May, we've got three weekends.

of work to install these temporary jump spans, which allow us to then go and build the permanent bridge footers and foundations underneath the track.

And so that work is subject to the City of Alexandria noise variance permit.

And that work will include road closures on King Street and Commonwealth Avenue.

So a lot of questions on that.

And we can go to the next slide and talk about it.

OK, so what everyone's kind of looking for here, I'm going to jump to the middle first of when this work is going to occur.

So begin Friday night, May 1, is when they'll begin.

So more in the evening, like that 7 8 PM, you'll start to see some movement around the site with service restored for Tuesday morning rail traffic on that May 5.

And then the second and third weekends on May 15 and May 28 weekends, those will begin Friday mornings

both of those and restoring that same Tuesday morning.

The work for those is a little more in-depth and requires a little more time to complete that, which is why it's a little longer.

So the road closure is involved here.

King Street will be closed in both directions, so there'll be no traffic going under the King Street Bridge.

Everyone will detour over to Duke Street.

And then Commonwealth Avenue will have one lane open and one lane closed.

And so we'll be flagging vehicles in both directions using just the one lane on Commonwealth Avenue.

And then the noise variance permit granted allows us to work from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. daily.

Next slide.

So obviously, you know, very invasive to the community here.

So we're trying to keep everyone up to date.

There's about, I think, 11 variable message boards that have been deployed in the past week that are notifying people of the upcoming weekend work that's going on.

We did do some door hangers throughout Rosemont.

We have a bunch more we're about to go and deliver this week.

There's these little postcards, kind of like business cards that you see in the top right there.

that has the contact info, project website, email, link to be able to contact us to find out more.

We've got a quarterly newsletter that's posted on there right now.

And then we'll be posting this kind of content and the detour content to that site as well.

And then there's a bunch of stakeholders that we've been talking to, you know, the bus, WMATA and Dashbus, Rosemont Civic Association.

And then we are aware that the

The Old Town Festival of Speed show is during that second weekend of work.

So we're going to be contacting them.

And then we have our project website too.

Next slide.

So tomorrow we have a community information session.

It's a virtual meeting that you can register by that link above.

It's a 7 p.m. meeting.

It's to inform the public of these upcoming outages.

A lot of the same content from this meeting will be presented at that meeting as well.

VRE has a Meet the Management session on April 29th at 3 p.m. at Alexandria Station.

We did one about a month ago too.

there with some good turnout.

We have big project boards and talking with the community and answering questions.

In the Rosemont Civic Association, we are planning on attending their monthly meeting on May 14th at 7 p.m. Next slide.

So this is, VRE has their dedicated website for all the different projects and studies that you can see there.

And then questions about those projects can be directed to that email address.

and then the next slide is the kind of overall, this is VRE's overall public outreach links and all the different social medias to contact them on for their projects and for just general VRE contacts.

I see a couple of hands raised here.

We'll start with John.

He's the furthest to the left on me.

Hi.

Yeah, the one, two questions actually.

Could I get that link sent to me for that community outreach meeting that's to take place tomorrow?

Because I'd like to alert the neighbors.

Sure.

I think Lindsay Martin with VRE just posted in the chat.

VRE posted to their social media late last week, and I know it's on LinkedIn and Facebook.

Yeah, if someone could send it to my email, that would be very helpful.

I'm not good at getting things off chat.

Thank you very much, I appreciate it.

The second question I had was one of the neighbors was concerned about May 1, she has some business she wants to do on that day and she was worried there would be sheep pile driving on Friday, May 1.

There will be some pilot driving during the day of that day.

No problem.

Right.

This is actually a question for Jason Bortz, if I can make that now.

Yes, ma'am.

Okay, I'm Carol Fuller with the Crystal City Civic Association, and as Jason knows, the community has for many years now expressed its concerns to VRE about what the security will be at the Crystal City Station.

Well, generally speaking, we would not release fully detailed sets of plans to the public.

That kind of, A, there's a safety and security aspect to that.

And B, that also actually creates issues from a procurement standpoint on a couple of fronts.

But yes, certainly we have received the concerns.

I know with respect to

issues about lighting, noise, I know there was a request for a gate, most of which were responded to several years ago, but happy to go in and kind of re-look at the questions and I'll see if I can maybe get you an updated response that kind of re-clarifies with greater detail since I know those were provided earlier in the design.

But certainly I could pull the prior questions and give an updated response.

I can't give you the full design details.

It would be very helpful because we were always told when you got to the 90% design that you would discuss this with us and that hasn't happened.

Yes, ma'am.

Okay, let's go ahead.

Did someone raise their hand?

Okay, then let's go ahead and I'll just highlight here the Virginia Passenger Rail Authority links to all of our social media, email, our email and our construction hotline that you can write to us about any of our projects.

Yeah, thanks to everybody who's participated so far.

You can continue to write any questions you have in the chat, but also looking if anyone has their hand raised and we're glad to take questions about any portion of the presentation.

We have a question from Daniel

Garey, sorry for butchering your last name if I'm doing that, from Omada.

Can you go back to those impact dates where King Street was closed?

Didn't get a chance to screenshot.

And also, Meredith, you're going to be providing this actual presentation to everybody once we download the recording and everything.

We should have this posted, the PowerPoint and the video posted by tomorrow at some point.

And I will email everyone to let you know when it's posted and send you the links.

But in the meantime, here's the slide that you're asking about because the VRE meeting is tomorrow night.

So I definitely want to make sure everyone captures that information.

And please, I'm glad to hear that Mr. Patrick is sending out the information about the VR meeting to his community, although I know VRE has as well.

Yes.

The changes involving Amtrak, is that going to have anything to do with when their plans to have a Crystal City stop?

Is it just a matter of whether they're going to stop on a new ramp or on a new platform or the existing one?

I'd say that's the primary.

Ultimately, it's not.

particularly feasible for Amtrak to add a Crystal City station stop until the Long Bridge project is completed.

So post 2030, 2031, something like that.

But yeah, no, what we're endeavoring to do is to make sure that our platform is fully capable of serving Amtrak.

We have multiple stations that Amtrak and VRE are co-located.

So it's not, from an infrastructure standpoint, it's not a whole lot of difference.

It's just making sure that they have space allocated for things like their baggage cart, right?

Because VRE doesn't have baggage service.

It's things of that nature, but we'll be making sure that all the infrastructure is capable for it as far as the operations aspect.

And when Amtrak decides to initiate that service, that one's a little bit outside my realm.

And also, I neglected to mention, if you want to raise your hand, and you forgot how, which I always do, but you hover your mouse over the React icon, which is that slightly tilted heart.

And when you click on that, you'll have options to raise your hand.

OK, well, if there are no other questions, we can wrap this up.

We really greatly appreciate everyone being here, asking your questions, providing your feedback now online or through email.

You know how to reach us.

And Liv, can you just pop back to the last slide that has our contact information?

think everyone knows that, but just want to make sure it's front on your mind, reach out any time.

And then our next meeting of the Community Advisory Group will be in about three months.

So end of August, early September, you'll be hearing from us with a specific date.

And please remember, we have both a VRE meeting tomorrow night about the King and Commonwealth Railroad Bridges.

And then on May 7th, we have, and May 12th, we have our Long Bridge project meetings.

public meetings.

So please spread the word.

Thank you and we'll see you next time.