New River Valley October 2022 Informational Meeting   10/19/2022

Hey, good morning everybody.

Yes, we can.

Oh, fantastic.

Very good.

So, yes, the New River Valley Passenger Rail Station Authority held their first meeting on September 28th, and I want to take just a few minutes and make sure that a larger stakeholder group is aware of

Some key items first, who the board members are representing the project across the region and some actions that the authority has taken so far and then what's coming up for that group.

So yeah, their first meeting on September 28th, a board member representation.

I'll read through this list so everybody's aware of names.

There are two representatives for each member.

There are seven local governments and two universities that comprise the authority.

from Giles County.

Ricky McCoy is on the Board of Supervisors and they have a second member to be appointed.

Pulaski County has Dirk Compton from the Board of Supervisors and Jonathan Sweet from County Administration.

Montgomery County has Sherry Blevins from the Board of Supervisors and Craig Meadows from County Administration.

City of Radford has David Horton from City Council and David Roodpath from City Administration.

Town of Blacksburg has Jerry Ford from City or Town Council and Larry Spencer, the Town Attorney.

Town of Christiansburg has Mike Barber from Town Council and Randy Winkfield from Town Administration.

Town of Pulaski has Shannon Collins from Town Council and Darlene Bertram from Town Administration.

Virginia Tech has Chris Kiewis and Lindsay Belshe and Radford University has Angela Joyner and Laura Questenberry.

So it's a full board.

In their first meeting, the first item on their agenda was to take the oath of office, which they all did successfully.

And after the oath of office, I walked the group through a project timeline to make sure that anybody that was new to the project had a good understanding of the impressive progress that's taken place to date.

And I want to review a couple of those key milestones so all of our stakeholders are aware of the impressive progress.

The New Revalley Passenger Rail Initiative was first convened by the Boxford Partnership in December of 2013.

Then in 2014, that group did some great research with Lynchburg Region, Roanoke Region, and Bristol just about their rail initiatives that helped provide the foundation for how the New Revalley was going to approach this project.

and April, I'm sorry, in March of 2015, the Metropolitan Planning Organization had provided funds to the New York Valley Regional Commission to conduct the first local study on passenger ridership demand and an initial location for a station.

And that study kicked off in March of 2015.

And the next month, the NRV

Rail Initiative identified three subcommittees that were going to do a lot of heavy lifting on the overall program.

And those three committees were Government Relations, Marketing and Public Relations, and then a group that would participate with that demand and location study.

So those three were very busy initial years launching this program.

Each year from 2015 on, the NRV Rail

initiative has hosted annual legislative receptions with a focus on making sure the local, state, and federal representatives were all informed of the progress being made and how they could help support the effort going forward.

In January of 2018, there was a station ownership and operations report that was kicked off

and that report was significant because that helped to identify the organizational structure that was going to be the preferred model to own and operate the station within the region and identified the authority as the preferred model.

And then in January of 2021, we had legislation that was introduced to the General Assembly on the House side sponsored by Hurst and Rush on the Senate side by Edwards to create that New River Valley Passenger Rail Station Authority.

And in May of 2021, we had the visit from Governor Northam.

And at that visit, the governor announced the Western Virginia Rail Initiative, which is a significant commitment to have this passenger service introduced to the New York Valley.

Also at that announcement, the governor talked about the Virginia Passenger Rail Authority, which has been the state partner in all of this.

And it was just a mere 17 months ago.

And I think there's been a lot of great progress being made since then.

The authority became law in July of 2021.

And from that point, the local governments and universities needed to pass resolutions and ordinances in order to create the authority on the ground.

Once those were all in hand, we delivered those back to state administration and they certified the authority on September 1st of 2022.

So that's what led to our first meeting being held at the end of September.

So what's next with the authority?

It's a lot of foundational pieces in getting the organization set.

We are looking to hold our next meeting in late November and as part of our last meeting we had an exercise of building the work program from scratch for what this authority needs to do.

And the first item of business for that group will be appointing staffing as well as legal representation to support the authority.

Soon after that, it's moving right into bylaws, where the organizational documents, they're going to guide how this thing operates.

They're also identifying leadership roles in voting policies.

That's something the group spent a fair amount of time on the last meeting, deciphering between legislation and what the bylaws should reflect for voting purposes.

So yeah, we've been working closely with VPRA staff, between DJ Michael and Colin, they've just been fantastic to involve us in all the local meetings and weekly if not daily conversations about moving this program forward.

Thank you so much, Kevin.

And if you have questions for Kevin or throughout the rest of the program, please feel free to use the chat function.

We're going to kick it back over to Mike McLaughlin.

I think he's joined over the phone.

Okay.

So thank you.

Sorry about that.

I tried to join via computer, but that sounds more reliable.

Kevin, I do want to make a point as I made a couple of weeks ago at the New River Valley

Chamber of Commerce that we look forward to participating alongside the new station authority.

We pledge to be, even if it's virtual, in meetings, sometimes in person, so we can coordinate together the construction of the tracks, the platform, the station.

So we do look forward to working with you guys on that initiative.

So we did hold a quarterly meeting

back in July, that was well attended.

It's New River Valley.

It's a community college there.

So this is the next quarterly meeting.

So we'll have some updates today.

But we have been, like I mentioned, we have been down in the New River Valley just a couple weeks ago, Colin and I were down there meeting with the New River Valley Chamber of Commerce.

And we look forward to continuing this engagement with you, whether it be quarterly meetings or meetings, such as with the Chamber, the Montgomery Chamber.

So next slide.

I think I'm going to hand it off to some of my compatriots.

So I'll hand it off here in a second.

Go ahead.

So Colin, I think I'm going to hand it off to you.

But again, that's a picture from the New River Valley Chamber just a couple of weeks ago.

We had a great event.

and I'm not sure if Dr. Smoot is on this call.

I want to give a shout-out to him.

He was up at the panel with me.

He and others have been great partners to work with over the past five years to make rail to New River Valley a reality in just a few years.

Thanks, Michael, and thank you, Kevin.

I just wanted to thank Kevin and everyone down there for their support in this project and Kevin for his leadership.

It's been really

Every time we go down there it's very welcoming and we look forward to continuing our relationship and getting this project completed.

So I just wanted to start off with just a little bit of refresher on some of the projects that are going to be required for the expansion to the Newark Valley.

Some of you may have seen this slide before, but essentially what this shows is a series of projects in southwestern Virginia that are going to need to be completed before we can start the passenger service.

And on the right side of the screen you can see the Roanoke Yard, which is going to be a

passenger bypass track which will bypass the Roanoke yard itself.

That project is led by Norfolk Southern.

And then that orange line starts the track right away that's owned by the Virginia Passenger Rail Authority and there's 28 miles of track from milepost 251 just west of Salem and Roanoke.

from that milepost 251 to milepost 279 is the section of track that VPRA currently owns.

And along that track, there are a number of improvements that are going to be made, need to be made before the service can begin.

And that is in the form of track improvements, bridge improvements, culvert improvements, tunnel improvements, some soft infrastructure such as signalization and positive train control, which will allow for safe travel.

And then at the end, all the way on the left side of the screen is the proposed New River Valley station site, which is a project which will construct the actual platform, some of the infrastructure to allow for the passenger service to reach the sites that were identified in the feasibility study, which I'll talk about in a little bit.

And then also, some of the pieces that we are going to be including in part of that project.

Excellent.

So again, some of you may have seen this slide before, but the passenger rails, the New River Valley Passenger Rail Station Feasibility Study, which finished earlier this year, assessed five potential sites in the New River Valley area for passenger rail station site.

And two of those sites emerged as the preferred locations.

And those are the NRV North or the North of the New River Valley Mall and NRV Mall West or NRVW site, you can see here on this map.

and those two sites are both adjacent to the Uptown Christiansburg Mall on the Blacksburg Branch and then the feasibility study also identified a potential for a hybrid station site which will take some of the least impactful elements from each of the NRVN and NRV West sites to combine them and make a hybrid site that is least impactful and I'll talk about that in some of the next slides.

So with every project there are challenges

and both of the sites that were identified in the feasibility study identified a few challenges for each site.

And fortunately, these challenges are what we know, we know some of the challenges at this point.

And what this slide shows you is the New River Valley West site.

You can see Optana-Kirchinsburg Mall there at the bottom of the screen.

So the site is kind of is across the parking lot west of the station or the mall.

And some of the challenges here are the you can see that green line that runs kind of left to right across the graphic.

is the platform, the post platform.

And that's not on a straight track.

Typically, a tangent track is required for safe boarding and alighting for passengers.

So that's one challenge.

There's a stream that runs through this area kind of just west of the track and crosses under it at one point.

Anytime we're going to be doing any kind of construction there, there are some impacts that can be expected.

So we will have to account for some of those and reduce, you know, additional negative impacts.

And then the temporary trail impacts.

Well, this station site, both station sites actually will kind of be in the same area as the Huckleberry Trail.

And these trail impacts are not going to be long lasting.

It would just be a slight detour until the construction is completed and then the trail will, you know, it'll go back to its original form.

And then also this site lies on private property with the uptown Christiansburg.

And so a coordination with the mall owners will be needed.

And when we started that outreach already,

Next slide.

So the NRV North site, which is kind of in that green space just north of the parking lot of the Uptown Christiansburg Mall.

With this site, some of the challenges that we're aware of currently are the potential cultural and historic resources in the area.

The feasibility study identified a few resources, cultural and historic archaeological resources in the area that we would like to avoid disrupting at all costs or potentially minimizing as much as we can.

Again, with the stream impacts, the stream runs parallel to the Blacksburg branch for most of the way.

So there are some potential impacts there.

And then the trail again will, temporary detours may be needed during the construction.

And lastly, this site is primarily located on Corning Glassworks property.

So coordination with them is required.

And we've also started the coordination with Corning.

Next slide please.

So this slide shows you some of the additional infrastructure that we are planning to have constructed in the kind of the station site area.

And what this is, the graphic there in the middle of the screen is a kind of an overhead bird's eye view looking southeast over the area.

You can see at the top right, there's the proposed New River Valley Station locations where the mall is.

And

Two of the additional pieces of infrastructure that we're going to be constructing to access and support the New River Valley Station are the Amtrak servicing facilities.

This site will be the terminus or origin of the route, depending on how you look at it, and in order to lay the trains overnight and then clean them and

to do routine maintenance, we're going to have to construct a servicing facility to store the tracks overnight.

We have not identified a site in that, but in the next round of environmental review and preliminary design, we will identify the most feasible, least impactful site.

And another piece of infrastructure that's going to be required to serve the station site is a connector track, which will connect the Blacksburg Branch, which is where the Alton Christiansburg Mall is adjacent

to the Virginia Line, which is that orange piece of track that I showed on the slide earlier, which is the rail lines that VPRA owns.

They currently don't connect, so we are going to be looking at potential alignments for a connector track to connect the Blackstone Branch to the Virginia Line.

And you can see in that picture right there, it was taken from the Huckleberry Trail, the

The steep grade in the hill there that's going to be required to cut through in order to access if we go with that site, kind of where that arrow is pointing.

So next slide please.

And as I was saying, Mike would mention, we have done some coordination with the MPOs in the region, the Metropolitan Planning Organizations.

And this project, we anticipate we will be pursuing federal funding for this whole project.

So anytime federal funding is pursued, the project needs to be included in regional plans.

And we've taken the steps already with the New River Valley Metropolitan Planning Organization to have the portion of the Virginia Line that's in the NRV MPO boundary

included into regional plans and the station site project.

So you can see that there's some updates.

The policy board will be voting on the projects next month for formal adoption.

Next slide, please.

So the Virginia line spans 28 miles across southwest Virginia, and there are about 13 miles of that Virginia line that spans the Roanoke Valley Transportation Planning Organization, the MPO responsible for the Roanoke area.

And we've approached the RBTPO, which is the Roanoke Valley MPO, and the

Transportation Technical Committee, I apologize if I'm getting that wrong, the TTC is currently reviewing that project and it will be advertised for public comment and then go before their policy board sometime in January.

And at that point it will be included in the plan officially.

So what we have going on right now, we have two separate procurements out right now.

One is for the NRV passenger rail station

project, which includes the station site, the platform area, the Amtrak facility and connector track.

And further environmental review and preliminary designs is kind of the goal of that task order.

And there is an option if federal funding is awarded in that task order to have the consultant provide a NEPA class of action request to the federal

Grant Funding Agency, most likely the Federal Railroad Administration.

We hope to have that contract executed and an NTP issued, a Notice to Proceed issued by the beginning of November, the end of this month.

And that contract length is nine to 12 months, nine months with an optional 12 months for any NEPA class of action.

And then the Virginia Line Improvements Preliminary Design Task Order is an engineering consultant

Task Order that we have out which will bring the Virginia line up to do some preliminary engineering plans for the safety improvements on the Virginia line and that contract is expected to last nine months and we hope to have a contract signed by the beginning of December.

Next slide please.

So this schedule shows the

Anticipated schedule for the Virginia Line improvements, which is that 28 miles that's going to require safety improvements and infrastructure improvements.

And this again, this schedule here is kind of tentative and we'll have a more refined schedule once the preliminary engineering design gets further along.

Next slide.

This schedule shows the anticipated timeline for the New River Valley station site, where we're shooting to have the platform canopy opening by the summer of 2026.

And I think many of you see this slide.

This has been presented last time, and that's the presentation.

Please feel free to use the chat function to ask any questions you have.

I believe you also can raise your hand and we can unmute you.

Lots of eager hands raised.

Okay.

I will first unmute Mr. Irish.

Yeah, I'm on the board of the Villas of Peppers Ferry Community, which is, I guess, the only established residential community that will border the two sites under consideration for

the rail station, and I know I've had discussions with a number of the folks involved here.

I would just like to get a handle on the timeframe, just about when we could expect to be contacted for any input we would have on the station and its impact on our community.

I know in talking to you all earlier, you said maybe

This is Colin Bridge, thank you for the question.

And when we start this next step in the process of the preliminary environmental review and the preliminary design, there is a public outreach element to that task order.

The next individual who has their hand raised is someone named Larry.

Sir, you should be able to unmute yourself now.

Looks like we may have lost life.

Okay.

Yes.

Looks like those are the only two.

No, we have a chat question.

Yes, Eric, thank you for asking about that.

We've met with Brown Booth at Blacksburg Transit and Redford Transit, and I understand that they are currently in the process of their TSP, and we hope to have that included in any of the kind of the

incorporate those plans as we move forward with the project so that we can accommodate any kind of transit.

I know that one of the things that was brought up by Blacksburg Transit and Redford Transit was having enough space at the station site to be allowed to accommodate the maximum number of buses we might expect in the future and then also sizing of buses.

So we will be

This is Kevin Bird.

I think I'll hop in real quick right there in the center.

You guys were also talking with Radford Transit and Pulaski Area Transit Coordination as well.

Correct.

Follow up question from

So currently we do offer bikes on our trains, and this is, for this particular site, and this is,

Okay, so the roll-on is kind of like, Virginia really has one level boarding platform in the state and that's in Roanoke.

So kind of roll-on, roll-off is maybe a misnomer where you'll be able to roll it, but you have to maybe bring it up the steps with the help of the Amtrak staff.

But Colin, won't the newer Valley Station be a high-level platform?

So when it's constructed, people can roll their bikes on easier.

They can get them on at any station in Virginia.

Might need a little help, but to answer the person's question, the high-level platform make it easy to roll bikes on and off.

Yeah, correct.

Thank you for that.

The next person who has raised their hand is Lee Rohn.

Good morning.

I'm Lee Rohn.

I'm a former Blacksburg resident in Burlington, North Carolina.

Now, I have a question about the trek from the Virginian in Merrimack up to the proposed station site.

Is there any plan to use the existing Virginia Anthracite and Coal Railroad site

There's an existing grade there that would certainly ease construction.

Do you have any plan to do that?

I'm sorry, that last part kind of broke up there.

That's correct.

The old Blacksburg Branch originated from the Virginia Anthracite Coal and Railroad Company.

That's the original

and it was bought by Norfolk and Western, but there was a grade-level crossing of the two railroads at Merrimack at one time, and there is an existing grade southeast, I believe, but it's on the New River Mall side of the Virginian, which is what you guys call the Merrimack, or the White Thorn District,

at Merrimack that could be used and reduce construction.

Are you aware of that?

Sir, is that about a half mile west of the tunnel?

Is that what you're referring to?

Existing grade.

We know the track is at grade on the Virginia line when you go west of the Huckleberry Trail.

Yeah, at the Huckleberry Trail bridge, below that bridge, and I believe a little bit toward White Thorn at that particular area, there is a transition grade that goes up from

Sorry, this is Connor.

I'm aware of a grade level crossing that existed before the African Western built the trestle across the Virginian, that there's an easy grade going up toward the Merrimack Trail on the New River Valley side, New River Mall side of that grade.

Yeah, I was out there a couple times.

I railed it and I've been out there multiple times.

And I think the area you're talking about was one of the station options we considered earlier.

I'm not asking about that.

What I'm saying is that land track, railroad track, from the existing

White Thorne District, North... You're talking about the Y. Yeah, exactly.

Not the Y.

Keep going, keep going.

That one.

Yeah, okay.

What we have, sir, is we have two considerations right now for access to the future station location.

And the one as is shown in the picture that's up here actually would cut through the fairly steep hill that would be required to get us to the elevation and position and alignment with the Blacksburg branch.

that would be the one that would be on the east end.

And the one that's on the west end that you're referring to is the other option.

But what we would be encountering on that side would be quite a bit of work with the environmental relocation and or bridging of the stream that's out there today.

and so we've been kicking a few things around with different means of accessing the station.

If we do a complete Y, we've developed the entire area.

If we do just one side or the other, it gives us access, but then that means that we still need to maintain a push-pull train system.

I'm sorry, I missed that slide.

That makes good sense.

A Y would work better because you wouldn't have to push-pull, but push-pull with just a single leg makes sense too.

Okay, from Craig Moore, chronologically, what is the conceptual order of construction currently?

Access for the transit to get to the future station location.

Our efforts would be to combine both of those to where we would increase and improve the existing rail line and then get through, as we've said earlier, one or the other of these methods to cut and build between Blacksburg branch line and the Virginian line.

So with those two in mind, that exercise will take quite a bit of time and in parallel with that we would expect that the station would be well underway and it's a potential that those could align.

We are working those features out as we continue to develop the alignment considerations here, as I said earlier, relative to the environmental issues and also utilities and other features out there along with properties adjacent to this.

Related, Marion in Gary Silverman asked,

Completion was initially targeted for an earlier timeframe in 2025.

I really wouldn't be able to commit to any timeframe.

We are in the early phases of this to get through all of the requirements to align ourselves with the intent of this design and then ultimately the service that is requested

2025 is approaching us pretty quickly.

We're working to do everything we can to move this forward as quickly as we can.

We hope to be able to put some more information in front of everyone in the future presentations that shows how this actually will be playing out.

Thank you, John.

Any further questions?

Oh, there's a follow up from Craig Moore.

Yeah, thank you, Craig.

So currently there are two separate projects and we are going out to our bench consultants for these right now.

Currently they are two separate, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the contractors will be separate.

We haven't decided, we haven't had a consensus meeting and scored all the proposals yet.

We have to have that wrapped up soon.

But I guess the answer is

We are considering multiple contacts, but we're also considering one contractor.

And Larry, if you still like to have your question answered, you could use the chat function.

Unfortunately, the webinar only allows me to enable you to unmute yourself, but not actually unmute you.

So if you would like to

ask your question, you can ask it in the chat.

All right, Mike, you'll check later with us.

I just want to thank everyone for coming on board and putting up my hoarse voice.

Sorry, I'm just trying to get past something I called last week.

But I appreciate everyone coming on today, not only today, but your activity in the past few years and activities as we move forward.

We can't do this without you.

We need coordination and cooperation.

Thank you all.

This concludes our meeting this morning.

Please feel free to follow up.

This meeting will be posted on the Virginia Passenger Rail Authority website and also on our YouTube.

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Thank you for joining us.