Community Advisory Group (CAG) Meeting #6: Arlington and Alexandria Projects   11/6/2026

Good afternoon and welcome to the sixth Community Advisory Group meeting for rail improvement projects in Arlington and Alexandria.

These meetings are hosted jointly by Virginia Railway Express and the Virginia Passenger Rail Authority.

This CAG, as you likely know, is designed to maintain ongoing collaboration and communication with community leaders throughout Arlington and Alexandria, and we meet on a quarterly basis.

We greatly appreciate you being here, participating, and providing feedback.

Next slide, please.

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

At the end of today's meeting, we hope you will take a brief survey to provide us with feedback on how we can improve these meetings going forward.

Next slide.

Hi, good afternoon.

My name is Naomi Klein.

I am with the Long Bridge project team.

And I am Meredith Judy.

Good afternoon.

My name is Scott Crumley.

I'm the design manager for the Long Bridge project.

Yeah, my name is Brian Breese.

I am the Senior Project Manager here for Long Bridge Rail Partners.

Sarah Hoover with BPRA.

Good afternoon.

I'm Jason Bortz with VRE.

All right.

Thank you, team.

Next slide, please.

Naomi will lead us off with a Long Bridge Project overview and DC-specific construction progress before we move into the Arlington and River portion of the Long Bridge Project.

Sure.

Sure.

So this slide is really about who is the Virginia Passenger Rail Authority.

So we are an independent state entity, much like a port authority.

So rather than report to the governor, we report to a 15-member board of directors, many of which are appointed by the governor.

And we were formed in 2020.

We are not a rail operator, so we do not run trains.

Rather, we are responsible for completing projects within railroad right-of-way that allow us to add more passenger rail service.

So there was a landmark deal that was done in 2019 with CSX that allowed for VPRA to be formed where Virginia

bought a lot of land from that private freight company.

And that has allowed us to do a number of projects between DC and Richmond, one being the Long Bridge project.

And the goal is to increase both Amtrak inner city passenger rail service as well as VRE commuter rail service.

Go to the next slide, please.

So that brings us to the Long Bridge Project, which is VPRA's northernmost project between DC and Richmond.

You are going to hear from VRE about the Longbond Station Project.

They are the project.

They are the lead on that project.

But for the Long Bridge Project, hopefully everyone on this call is familiar with that.

In case this is your first time, I'm going to give a very quick overview.

So the purpose of this project is that south of the Potomac River, you have three railroad tracks running south through Alexandria.

North of this project, you have three tracks that run up to Union Station.

And then starting at Union Station, you have four tracks that run all the way up through the Northeast Corridor.

So if you've ever taken a train from Union Station up to New York City, you know they come frequently.

and they're pretty available, accessible and affordable.

And but the issue is right at the Potomac River, it necks down into a single two track bridge.

And so that essentially creates a pinch point, not just within the region, but on the entire East Coast.

I like to say if you're getting your orange juice from Florida, it's coming across this two track bridge.

So during the very initial studies of this, it was found that this bridge was at 98 percent capacity.

It's shared by CSX, Amtrak, and VRE.

So all three of those rail operators run across this two-track bridge.

It was at 90% capacity.

And so what the Long Bridge project is going to do is double that capacity.

by adding another two tracks to the existing two tracks.

And then where there is not room, we'll be removing the existing two tracks and building four tracks.

But what you will end up with is a continuous four-track corridor all the way to Union Station.

South of the project is the Alexandria fourth-track project, which there will be more talk about that.

I'm not going to get into any details.

And then north of us is the L'Enfant project,

All that to say there will be a continuous four track corridor from Arlington, Alexandria, all the way up to Union Station and then up the Northeast.

So for the Long Bridge project, the boundaries of that you're seeing on this map, we start in Arlington right by the Long Bridge Aquatic Center.

That's where we meet with the Alexandria fourth track project.

And then we're going to be building railroad tracks

over the Potomac River, through East Potomac Park, over the Washington Channel and Main Avenue in DC, and then through the Maryland Avenue overbuild, we're going to end just south of L'Enfant Station, where VRE is then going to pick up with their project, which they'll talk a little more about.

Due to the sheer size of this project, while we call it the Long Bridge Project, it's actually five rail bridges and two biker pedestrian bridges.

It is split into two packages for the purposes of construction, a north package, which you see here in yellow, and a south package, which is in purple.

One addition I haven't mentioned is that due to the impacts of the project, we'll be adding a dedicated bike pedestrian bridge over the Potomac River, which will be a really nice addition for the region.

The current connection is about seven and a half feet wide.

So south package is design build, north package is progressive design build,

You can see in the circle charts on the bottom that both teams have essentially completed 90% design.

They're expected to fully finish design by next spring.

And both are under construction.

So north and south package have been in construction both for a little over a year.

North package started a bit earlier.

They're constructing four rail bridges.

And that construction is expected to last through 2030.

And that's when the project is expected to be completed.

Let me go to the next slide.

Okay.

So I'm going to be covering the construction and the traffic updates in DC.

So in this box that you see here, primarily at Main Avenue, which is the critical path for the project.

Go to the next slide.

So if you've been traveling into DC either on I-395 or otherwise, you have likely seen cranes around the main avenue area near the wharf and the tidal basin.

We've been performing micropiles and drilled shafts, and you'd see the construction.

Actually, you can see it in this picture towards the bottom of some new bridge abutment, essentially concrete walls and piers.

So some ongoing activities.

We're going to be continuing that abutment and peer work, continuing to construct retaining walls.

There is going to be a long-term traffic shift that is anticipated in December.

There's already an existing traffic shift that is specific to Main Avenue.

And then there will be another traffic shift.

We essentially have two traffic patterns that we switch between now and 2030.

And so we'll be making one of those shifts in December.

and then erecting the steel spans, which is what you think of when you see a bridge starting December of this year, early next year.

And then we have to take down a pedestrian bridge over Main Avenue.

You can see it in this picture on the left.

It's blue in color.

And we will be putting up a temporary pedestrian bridge before we take that existing bridge down.

It's in the footprint of the new tracks.

And that is anticipated to happen

We will start construction of that temporary pedestrian bridge at the end of this year.

And we expect to complete that by spring of next year.

Go to the next slide, please.

Okay.

And this is some drone video footage at the Maryland Avenue overbuild, where you can see that a CSX train is diving in under the overbuild.

On the left, you're looking at an apartment building called 1331 Maryland Avenue.

On the right is the Potomac Hotel, formerly the Mandarin Oriental or the Salamander.

And on the left of this picture, you can see our cranes and micropile rigs.

They are conducting, they are performing work to install reinforced crash walls.

and also do some support of excavation work for the new tracks that will be built.

You can go to the next slide, please.

Okay, so this is our traffic shift plan that I had previously mentioned.

So we essentially have two traffic patterns on Main Avenue.

This is close to the Washington marina across from the hotel and apartment building that you just saw.

There is what we call a westbound construction phase that impacts the westbound lanes and an eastbound construction phase.

And as you can see from the chart below, we essentially switch back and forth between these two traffic phases between now and 2030.

The reason being that we have to build the main avenue rail bridge piecemeal on one side than the other in order to keep train traffic moving for the duration of construction.

Go to the next slide.

So we are going to be switching from the westbound construction phase into the eastbound construction phase starting as early as December of this year.

Currently, there are two travel lanes westbound.

We will continue to maintain two travel lanes westbound.

They'll just be shifted in essentially where those westbound lanes are.

There is currently one traveling eastbound.

It will maintain one traveling eastbound, and then we will maintain a pedestrian walkway.