New River Valley Passenger Rail Station Feasibility Study Public Meeting - March 1, 2022   3/1/2022

Thank you everyone for joining us.

It is right 12 o'clock, so we'll get started.

My name is Michael McLaughlin.

I am the Chief Operating Officer of the Virginia Passenger Rail Authority, and on behalf of our Executive Director, DJ Stadler, and our Board of Directors, thank you for joining us here today.

I see some people are entering as we speak, so I'll give folks a few more seconds.

I'm gonna have folks around the table here

introduced themselves.

We did have a meeting last night, so this is an alternative time of day.

Last night was a night meeting, and this is a day meeting, so we try to accommodate more folks.

Sure.

Hello, everyone.

I'm Catherine, or Kate Young-Blue.

Hi.

Good afternoon, everyone.

My name is Collin Birch.

Thanks, Colin and Michael.

And I think we're also our consultants.

Good afternoon.

My name is Wayne Hyatt.

And good afternoon, everyone.

This is Amanda Zullo also with Moffitt and Nickel.

I am the community outreach specialist and will be helping to monitor the chat.

So feel free to use the chat at your advantage throughout the meeting and we'll be doing live Q&A at the end.

Thanks so much, Amanda.

So last night when we started the meeting, there was a slowdown in the video.

We tried to change some things up today.

As the meeting went along, it resolved itself.

And there's a lag, might be a lag for the first couple slides, but after that, if the last night was any indication, it should, when we changed slides, it should be immediate.

And I think the technology finally caught up to us.

Great, thanks, Michael.

Thanks.

All right.

So good afternoon, everyone.

And thank you again for participating in this afternoon's meeting.

As you'll see on the slide, this meeting will be recorded and moderated.

And we will be posting this presentation along with the recording to the project website tomorrow.

As I mentioned, you are welcome to use the chat box.

It is your opportunity to engage with the project team and ask any questions throughout the course of the project meeting today.

And at the end, we will have a live Q&A.

How we're going to do it is we're going to be monitoring the chat and grouping all the questions and comments coming through by subject.

So please bear with us as we

Navigate the chat and make sure that we are hopefully able to address all your questions and comments today.

And having said that, for any questions that we will not be addressing today, we are compiling all the questions and comments as part of our public meeting summary.

And we will be able to address those as part of that.

Thank you, Amanda.

A little background before we delve into the reason why we're here, which is, of course, the station location of New River Valley.

Take a step back for a couple years.

Back in 2020, the Virginia passenger rail authority was enabled by the Virginia General Assembly.

That came on the heels of a preliminary agreement with CSX to acquire rail property and rail track and to build a rail infrastructure.

that was focused primarily on Northern Virginia.

And the picture on the right is a picture of a proposed new Long Bridge over the Potomac.

In case you're wondering, what does that have to do with the New River Valley?

Well, doing the agreement with CSX allowed us the ability to expand passenger rail statewide.

And the biggest bottleneck in Virginia is actually the bottleneck over the Potomac.

And we have two tracks

over the Potomac right now for both freight and passenger.

And by expanding to four tracks, that's going to allow passenger rail in Virginia, all of which passes over Long Bridge, including Virginia Railway Express and Amtrak to expand.

So hence, and then, and I'll get into the next page in a second here, not yet, as to what does that mean for all of us here, assembled here today.

Do you want to mention that in addition to the powers to

design and build the infrastructure that I was alluding to.

In addition, the VPRA will own rail assets from right of way.

We do own some already, and we're in the process of purchasing other property, which we'll get into here in a few minutes.

We do have a 15-member board, which includes partners such as VRE and Amtrak, and also 12 members appointed by the governor.

Next slide.

Again, I alluded to some of the background already.

Late in 2019, we did have an agreement with Amtrak and VRE and CSX that was primarily focused on the Washington to Richmond area when it came to infrastructure.

It did allow the service to increase two RONOs, two Hampton Roads down to Richmond at some points thereabouts.

and in March of 2021 we finalized that agreement.

There were definitive agreements we finalized with the parties.

And on the heels of that, actually at the same time we're working on that, we're also working on a term sheet with Norfolk Southern to add a second train on the Virginia State supported Amtrak route that goes from Roanoke not only to Washington DC but to the Northeast Corridor to places such as New York and Boston.

And we finished those definitive agreements

in January just less than two months ago.

However, the agreement with Norfolk Southern is not yet final.

We're still waiting on financial close and also approval from authorities such as the Surface Transportation Board and we're doing some other due diligence with Norfolk Southern.

Next slide.

So a little bit of background on the Roanoke route, and again, why we're here today.

So there's been a lot of demand on the route to Roanoke and Southwest Virginia, and that background's helpful to know why we're pushing for more service.

So back in 2009, it was estimated that the annual ridership of the Lynchburg route, which that was determined as before extended to Roanoke in 2017, would only be 33,000 passengers,

As you can see from the screen, it more than tripled the ridership forecast in that first full year.

And again, the service expanded to Roanoke in 2017, and in 2019, the route carried over 220,000 passengers.

So this is one of those examples of build it and they will come, and passengers sure did come to this route.

So for the past few years, we've been talking to Norfolk Southern about expanding passenger rail along the route and also to New River Valley.

And again, we

Found some success with Norfolk Southern and we are adding a second route to Realm Milk and once infrastructure is complete in about five years or so, four to five years, we will expand to New River Valley.

An important part of this transaction is also the purchase of 28 miles of the Virginian Line from Norfolk Southern.

That is from Salem to Christiansburg.

That is just north of Norfolk Southern's main line that runs closer to I-81.

Next slide.

The infrastructure, so this is much like the deal I mentioned with CSX where it was purchasing land and also building infrastructure.

The same paradigm here with Norfolk Southern.

In addition to purchasing the Virginia Line, it'll also be $200 million worth of infrastructure that'll benefit passenger rail.

All the way as far north as Manassas, where we're adding seven miles of double track with a location called from Nokesville to Calverton.

And also some infrastructure will be built in the West Roanoke Yard and also on the Virginia Line that we're purchasing.

and the main reason we're here today is building the track to the platform and station in the New River Valley.

I do want to note that we did a ridership estimate, a ridership study, and estimated 80,000 net new riders in the first year along the whole corridor with the extension of New River Valley.

So that means by adding the second train and extending to New River Valley, there'll be 80,000 net new riders on this corridor.

and as you can see from the screen, this is the first passenger rail service to the New River Valley since 1979.

Thanks, Michael.

So I'm here to talk to you about the study approach, and we'll talk about the timeline for the project and then the results of the project after that.

So this slide is really to illustrate the study area that we narrowed down for locating a New River Valley passenger rail station.

So the way to look at this slide is first look to the map on the left.

The map on the left in the circle there indicates where the study area was for the passenger rail station.

The way we approached indicating where this circle would be located was to rely on the past studies in the region that have happened over the last decade.

A number of entities had taken on studies in the area in the circle.

and we utilize that good work to be able to identify potential locations for the station itself as part of the feasibility study.

So after we located this study area, we took a look at the rail line relationships within that study area.

So if you look to the right of this slide, you'll see three lines indicated.

First, on the bottom of your screen in the red, there is the

what's known as the Norfolk Southern Railway Christiansburg District, also labeled as the former NW Line.

But for purposes of this conversation, I'll be calling it the NS Main Line.

And in addition, there's another line indicated on this slide that's kind of light and it travels up and down the screen, labeled as the Norfolk Southern Railway Blacksburg Branch.

that branch itself terminates over by Corning where the label Business 460 is on the map.

Finally, the line in green is labeled as Virginia Line or the Norfolk Southern Whitethorne District and for purposes of this conversation I'll be calling it the Virginia Line.

That in green represents

Virginia's best opportunity to have passenger rail.

It's a part of the 28 miles that Michael just described that the agreement for a passenger rail service would be located on.

So for us, the best place to put a station is on that green line.

Next slide.

So you'll see when we were locating and relying on the existing studies, we identified five primary station potential areas.

for a station as indicated by those studies.

So our best opportunity based on the agreements and the 28-mile purchase is really on the top of the page.

So all four of the ones on the top of the page were retained as part of the feasibility study screening.

And the one on the bottom of the page that's labeled as North Franklin East is on the NS mainline.

And that is not an opportunity that Virginia has to provide passenger rail service to.

So as a result, we focused and screened out that North Franklin East Station location, instead focusing on the remaining four that were accessible from the Virginia Line.

Next slide.

So I'll talk you through the project timeline, and on this slide you'll see the overall timeline indicated.

So there is a We Are Here arrow.

and that indicates that we're almost done with the feasibility study, which we began last fall.

After the feasibility study is concluded, we will move forward with what is known as NEPA, or the National Environmental Policy Act documentation.

This is a federal environmental action that has complementary engineering with it to examine impacts and mitigate for those impacts as part of the study documentation and moving forward with an engineering design.

will complete the engineering design within the 2024 year and hope to go to construction within 2024 and conclude in 2026.

Next slide.

This is a focus on what we've been doing with the feasibility study, just to orient you with the work we've been doing so far.

So from this point backwards,

We have been focusing on developing the technical analysis regarding impacts of each station study area and we've been working on the NEPA class of action to determine what type of federal environmental documentation that we will want to file with the Federal Railway Administration at the conclusion of the study.

Additionally, we've been doing community outreach and that includes focused

focus groups with key stakeholder groups, so business community, educational organizations, the government agencies that are within the area, including state government officials and local government officials in town, and advocacy groups that are focused on rail and other initiatives within the region, as well as a certified mailing to those property owners within each station site.

that we identified and I'll speak about momentarily.

So you can see where we are in terms of the timeline and we're embarking on our public meetings.

We concluded one yesterday and we'll conclude the public meeting outreach today.

So thanks for joining us.

Next slide.

So for those of you who are not familiar with NEPA, NEPA is the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 and essentially the umbrella to your right is

what NEPA includes as part of its analysis.

And you'll see bulleted underneath that slide a number of federal policies, acts, and regulations that any alternatives that were identified as feasible as part of our study would move forward through the federal environmental documentation.

We intend to file the documentation for the class of action.

with the Federal Railway Administration.

So from here, we'll develop the NEPA class of action.

We have been doing that for several weeks, and we'll file that with the federal government this spring.

Next slide.

So the objective of the study, as are outlined on this slide, is really a three-step process.

Step one I've described to you, and I'll move forward with step two and three, but essentially what we did is we identified the potential station study areas,

through that process I described several slides ago.

And the next step is to describe to you what the purpose and need identified for the project, the feasibility project was, and develop a screening criteria based on that purpose and need statement.

And finally, the final step is to file that NEPA class of action that I just described to you in the former slide.

Next slide.

So here's an image that illustrates our purpose and need statement.

And I'm not going to read every element to you, but as you can see, we relied on the existing studies to observe and record purpose and need statements within those many studies that have happened in the region in the last decade.

And these were themes that we identified for both purpose and need of a rail station in the New River Valley.

So you'll see that there are

Three purposes and three needs identified.

One primary purpose that ran across the elements was to improve multimobility to and from the region.

So folks wanted to have an option to either don't have to take their car or a bus, get on the highway.

They wanted an alternative that let them get out of a car or a vehicle and travel by rail.

That's shown by the purpose to meet multimodal demands, but also provide transportation alternatives and the ridership demand that we observed as part of the study work.

Another need and purpose is to increase regional economic development in the area.

And we saw that across several studies.

So, all in, we developed from this purpose and needs statement.

The next slide.

and so this next slide is our process.

This is how we screened out the station study areas that we identified several slides ago.

So the way to read this slide is to look at the left side of the chart first.

Those are each of the purpose and need elements that we examined as part, identified as part of those previous slides.

From that column, we developed three screening criteria to try to

associate impacts to each element within the screening criteria with the impact of a station and appropriately remove those stations that were identified as most impactful to the criteria that's in each column.

So if you look at column one, you'll see that we'll examine railroad operations based on the purpose and need element that's identified in that left column.

So you'll see improved mobility was a purpose and need that we identified as part of our previous slide.

And within the rail operations column, operations was identified to meet that.

In terms of looking at the study area, we were not able to provide passenger service on the NS mainline.

That removed the North Franklin station site from consideration since our best opportunity

to provide passenger rail station was from the Virginia line.

As a result, the four remaining stations were retained to be screened by the second column, which identified the environmental station study areas, and then the third column, which developed a refined station concept design

and then identified precise impact areas at a pretty high level.

We did everything at a desktop level for information that was readily available within records to examine impacts.

So if you go to the next slide column, you'll see that this illustrates how the screening resulted.

So you'll see after the first screening criteria, which I described to you on the previous slide,

that North Franklin East Christiansburg site was eliminated from consideration because we were not able to operate passenger rail on the NS mainline.

The second screening criteria actually retained all four remaining elements.

So we developed that further criteria to determine what impact the four would make and

be able to better illustrate which station siting would be most impactful and thus eliminated.

And you'll see on the right side of the screen the retained alternatives, which means as part of our NEPA work, our NEPA federal class of action, we will be retaining both of the New River Valley Mall sites.

One called New River Valley Mall North, one called New River Valley Mall West.

Next slide.

So Wayne will take you through what

Thank you Kate.

In order to design the station at any location, there has to be a basis for that design for the station passenger rail station.

That is the annual ridership annual number of passengers.

Our approach for the station design was to take a conservative approach.

So what you will find is that we

The largest values to identify what would potentially be the greatest impacts that a station development would have.

So therefore, the 87,000 annual passengers was the driving number for the size of the station.

Amtrak's planning and development guidelines for stations indicates that for 87,000 annual passengers, that would be a caretaker station.

You'll see an example of that in the picture in the upper left corner.

with community amenities attached to either side of the station.

That size station will handle between 20,000 and 100,000 annual passengers and can grow as the ridership grows.

The size of it at its maximum size is about 3,500 square feet.

So that's the square footage you'll see as you look at later concept layouts for the station itself.

Platforms for new stations through FRA requirements are a 48 inch above top of rail.

They're called a high level platform and the freight railroads for safety of both their freight as well as the passengers on the platform do not allow a high level platform adjacent to their track.

What you will see on the concepts as a sidetrack

A station track for the passenger platforms to load.

And as you see in the center drawing, this will provide for level boarding.

And an example of a high level platform is in the top right picture with the passenger track in front of it.

In addition to the actual passengers for ridership and the station size, other factors involve the transit circulation and drop-off areas.

vehicular, what are commonly called kiss and ride where a car drives up, drops someone off and drives off the parking.

And then to make sure that the other modes of cyclists and pedestrians were provided for as well.

The final aspect of the station proper was a request for sizing about a 10,000 square foot community amenities area.

Whether that's offices or other community amenities, that is to be decided in the future, but you will see an elongated rectangle on the designs for that.

So we took a very conservative approach.

This is potentially the maximum area that could be impacted that you will see as the designs come forward.

Thanks so much, Wayne.

So keep in mind that this is a

very conservative station design and what ends up being constructed will look likely different than what you see on your screen.

So what I'm going to do on this first slide is to orient you with the colors and how we organize the siting and then that will carry forward to each of the other slides so you'll see similar colors and labeling on the other slides as well.

So this is a concept that looks at the

impacts of the New River Valley Mall West Station site.

So the way to look at this slide is first take a look at the lower bottom left.

You'll always see the screening criteria, how that result was achieved as part of our analysis on the lower right.

And you'll see the three green check boxes mean that this was the least impactful station that we

examined as part of our work.

The New River Valley Mall north site is also identified as a concept that had lower impacts than the others.

So after looking at that, take a look at the parking lot that we have identified for this station.

Again, this won't be the layout, but we wanted to put a concept together that examined what a layout could be for that parking lot.

So you'll see that 150 spaces Wayne spoke about in the last slide.

indicated in orange and also labeled as 150 parking spaces.

The next item to look at is the transit drop-off area, which is in the light blue or is just north of the parking spaces site.

That serves as transit drop-off, but also a passenger drop-off as well for individual cars.

So like if you were taking a shared ride here, a taxi cab or other shared ride,

or your friend or family member was dropping you off, you would be able to be dropped in this location to access the station itself.

So we recognize at this point that the parking lot and the transit access is higher than where the station would be and the station access would be.

So in this slide, the station is in the darker blue color, labeled as station with an asterisk, and that is where passengers would be able to

wait for a train internally and provide some services for ticketing as well.

To access that and the grade that's below, so the way to look at this is that the passenger station is at the Huckleberry Trail Station grade, which is below the parking lot.

And to access that we would provide a pedestrian bridge.

So that bridge serves both the station and would provide stairs or an elevator, some other such

to provide access to that station, but it would also serve the community on the other side of the railroad.

This is bringing in the multimodal element that we identified in our purpose and needs statement, and it was a good way to allow access to that neighborhood and the land uses on that side of the track to direct connections with the station and the mall itself and the trail.

So that's in the hot pink or pink color that you see labeled as proposed pedestrian bridge.

The next identifier here is to look at the potential community space.

And again, Wayne outlines that the footprint is linear, so it is unlikely that that community space would be in this shape.

It could be somewhere else entirely, but for our purposes, we had a request from the Regional Commission to take a look at potentially

identifying a space that was adjacent or joint construction with the station for community space.

So we've done that as part of that request.

In terms of the Huckleberry Trail, so you'll see that the Huckleberry Trail is in the dotted green or the dashed line that you see to the right and to the left of the concept.

It would have to be relocated, and I'll talk more about what that means in a moment.

but the relocation is identified in the yellow there, just in front of the station site itself.

And there is also a platform identified.

That's the passenger platform.

That's the high-level platform that Wayne just described.

Wayne also described the need to get the passenger rail cars off of the mainline track.

So from the Blacksburg branch, which is identified in the

line type that looks like a railroad track with ties in black.

We would create a new pocket track which would be an orange and immediately adjacent to that passenger platform.

Once a passenger train arrives here, it would have experienced some light servicing.

So they would clean the train from that passenger platform area.

and they would be able to do light maintenance as they needed between boardings and a lighting for passengers themselves.

So that's essentially what would happen as part of this design.

Next slide.

So this is the new River Valley Mall North site and this is actually just adjacent to the north section

of the mall on the Corning property primarily.

So you can see here that there would be a new road connection to the parking spaces that are indicated by this image.

That road access would come from the new River Road, which is the ring road around the uptown Christiansburg shopping mall.

and once you arrive you would be able to either park in the orange that you see here or provide passenger drop-off through either transit services or that kiss and ride feature that Wayne described previously.

You'll see that the station and the community space is sited just adjacent to that transit drop-off and that the pedestrian bridge is also retained to provide access from the neighborhood over to

of where across the track to either the Huckleberry Trail, the parking and mall area, or the station itself.

And on the Huckleberry Trail, it is relocated in the same fashion in terms of the line types.

So if you look at the green dashed line to the right and left of the parking lot, you'll see the relocated trail indicated in yellow primarily.

it would go around the back part of the parking lot and then cross the new road connection at the tail end of the parking lot before you got to the new river road connection.

Next slide.

So this is a zoomed out version of that relationship of the station and then some improvements that we will have to make to connect the Virginia line, which is on the right side of the screen, to the Blacksburg branch.

Those of you who are familiar with the area that the new track would have to be created know that there used to be a rail track that connected underneath the Virginia line.

And that has been unused for a number of years.

Our intent is to create a new connection in the orange indicated on the right to the Blacksburg branch to be able to be, again, accessible from that Virginia line.

So you can see the connection there in orange with the station.

And we've coordinated with Corning regarding their freight operations.

And we will have to work with scheduling.

But we have all the confidence that we'll be able to work out the scheduling of the passenger rail operations with the freight.

Next slide.

So this is a close-up of that, again, connection from the Virginia line to the existing Blackford branch line.

So the way to look at this slide is that we've reoriented you and the Virginia line is on the top of the screen.

The existing Blacksburg Branch is on the bottom of the screen and that serves either the New River Valley Mall North or West site depending on what we'll be able to move forward to construction.

So you'll note here that the Huckleberry Trail is labeled and that the track will have to encounter that trail as part of its work.

We'll also note that the topography here is quite severe.

So there will be some excavation that is required to provide to the new track connection.

And we recognize that as part of our impact.

In terms of the Huckleberry Trail, the location on a permanent status will be retained.

And the way we look at that is to really think about how it already crosses over the rail tracks in the Virginia line.

So if you see where the Huckleberry Trail crosses right by the Norfolk Southern label on the slide,

It does cross on a bridge and it would be likely similar to that as it crossed the new track here with the connection.

On a temporary basis we would be able to provide a trail detour and that would just mean that we would build a trail to accommodate the Huckleberry Trail during construction work.

Does it mean that the trail will be closed?

Maybe on occasion.

but proper notification will be provided to the public to assure that they are properly notified should any trail interruptions or generally traffic interruptions occur on behalf of the project.

So that could mean you are on the New River Road or on the Mall, we have to close the road for some reason, we would properly notify any impacted users prior to construction.

But those details really are for a different day.

In terms of feasibility, we did consider that at a high level.

The rest of the project will consider the details and impacts and properly provide guidance for mitigation in the future.

Next slide.

So the next slide we looked at here is the ELLIS station site.

And this was the concept that we created to determine the impact that this station site would be.

And as you can see here, the parking layout, the station design itself,

and the platform affected a number of property owners immediately, but the greater impact is actually on the Janelle Road.

So the way we looked at how to service the station was not just the station itself, but also, if you go to the next slide, Colin, how we get to and from the station.

So this slide illustrates the transportation connection

that would need to be improved to and from the station so passengers could actually use the rail service.

The yellow line represents a road improvement.

And as you can see, that road improvement is several miles.

The elements included in the road improvement were to take forth the purpose and needs statement, which included multimodal access.

So it was important for us to improve the road so that transit services such as buses

could easily traverse that Janelle Road and Yellow Sulphur Road as indicated on this slide.

It also included an improvement for a multimodal user.

So somebody who didn't want to take a bus or a train or a car, they could just walk or bike to the station.

So to accommodate that user, we included a trail connection, a multi-use trail connection.

which meant that not only the road needed to be widened but we also would include that off street trail connection which made the impact far greater than the majority of the other station sites that we just discussed in terms of them all.

Next slide.

So this is the Merrimack site and so you can see the layout is much different than the others indicated previously.

And that was really because of the topography challenges here.

So you'll see that the 150 parking space lot is far removed from the station.

The others have the parking lot immediately to the back of the station, and that was because of the topography challenges in this location.

The siting was really the best siting for the site.

Additionally, you'll see that the transit service and the Kiss and Ride access is to the right side of the station.

and that community space we indicated before, as well as the location and connection to the Huckleberry Trail.

The platform and pocket track, which removes the passenger from the mains for the Virginia line, is also indicated.

But what is also shown is what's in the light blue dashed line, which means that there's a stream here.

This is a low point of the line.

and flooding is a significant concern for us.

Flooding and stream impacts.

So because of this topography and because of the flood zone that this station site is in, this made it not a good candidate and a pretty impactful station site.

Next slide.

To get to the station of the Merrimack, which is on the left side of the screen,

You'll see in the light blue that we would need to create a new road connection.

You may be asking yourself, why did we choose this routing?

We did consult with VDOT on the road improvements.

And again, this was one that we thought because of the access from 460, the need to widen these roads that you see here and make intersection improvements.

and include a multi-use trail, that it would be very impactful in terms of a station site.

So this was one of the primary reasons, along with the topography and stream concerns I illustrated in the last slide, that this was removed from consideration.

Next slide.

So to summarize how we looked at the station, we really focused on the impact, but we were also interested in learning what the costs associated with those stations were.

And so on this slide, you'll see how each one of those stations were examined in terms of cost.

So the way to look at this is each station, of course, is listed on the left side of the screen.

And then we developed high level estimates based on the information we knew regarding the station system cost itself, which is the next column, and then the off strike infrastructure improvement that was required.

So those are things like the roads and the track improvements that I described in the previous slide.

So if it was a road or a track improvement, it was listed in this middle column here called off-site infrastructure costs.

Finally, the totals are here on the right side of the screen, and you'll see they estimated from below 50 million to the high of 170, about 175 million.

Next slide.

Amanda will take you through what we've done.

Amanda?

Thanks, Kate.

As Kate had indicated in one of the earlier slides that showed the project timeline, we have been conducting community outreach now for several months.

As part of the outreach, we conducted our first survey, which launched on December 22nd and closed on January 31st, and we had an overwhelmingly great response.

Over 2,600 people took the survey.

The survey itself took about five minutes to complete.

And what's great about that survey is a lot of the concerns and sentiment from the public were very much in alignment with what the feasibility results are showing on this presentation.

So it was great to see that synergy showing up.

In addition to the survey, we also conducted several types of meetings.

We had property owner meetings with all the property owners that were impacted by

Each of these four alternative station sites and we also met with key stakeholder groups this month to show them this information and really get their feedback as well.

As Kay also had mentioned, we had a meeting last night as well as the one today and both of these are getting recorded and will be available on the project website.

and we'd love to hear your feedback one more time.

So we have created a second survey.

It launched last night and it will be live until March 15th and it will be your last opportunity to provide any other feedback or comments based on what you are witnessing as part of this afternoon's presentation.

And all these public comment meetings and recordings and all the questions and what's coming through from the public, we are gathering all that information and cataloging it into our public outreach summary.

On the next slide, we will show you the link and I'm also going to drop it into the chat for everybody.

The survey too takes, you know, maybe five minutes to complete.

And again, it's your last opportunity to really share your thoughts with the project team and provide your input on what you saw today.

And it will be open until March 15.

Great, thanks, Amanda.

So here's a bulleted list of next steps, and I described to you these as part of the conversation to this point.

But we will complete our technical passenger feasibility study.

That's the narrative that we'll post on the website in the near future.

And we'll have announcements regarding that posting.

We have already released Survey 2, so if you have comments or want to be involved in that survey, please access that information.

by March 15th here, and then we'll file the NEPA class of action with the Federal Railway Administration this fall, this, excuse me, this spring.

And we'll begin work on the NEPA study itself and the complementary concept design.

We'll continue to meet with stakeholders until the project is actually constructed and construction is completed.

So this won't be the only time you'll see us.

This won't be the last time you'll see us.

You'll see us throughout this process.

And that's about it.

Alright, thanks, Kate.

So this presentation is concluded and we are now entering the live Q&A portion of the meeting.

As we mentioned earlier, please feel free to use the chat box to enter any of your questions and comments.

We will keep it open for about half an hour or until no other comments or questions are coming through.

And as we had mentioned previously, all the questions are getting compiled as part of that public meeting summary.

We will provide that to the public on the project website in due time.

And any questions for some reason we don't address them, they will be collected and addressed as part of that public meeting summary.

And that QR code will also be directed you to the project website.

In the event that you don't have it, I'll be happy to put that in the chat for you as well.

And with that, we are going to go into the question and answer portion.

So as we mentioned earlier, we're going to break this out by topics or themes and that way, hopefully,

I will note that several questions had come through the chat during the meeting itself and the team had addressed those questions already.

So we have noted them, but we won't need to address them since answers have already been provided.

So I guess the first topic that we will go through will be financials.

Yes, it does.

All right.

No other financial questions on that.

And I guess, yeah, some questions will be coming through.

So we'll come back for that.

The following topic will be for operations.

So we've been working, as I mentioned earlier, we've been working on Norfolk Southern for a few years.

They have a

Traffic on the main line.

They do not want to be disrupted by passenger service.

They have more traffic on the main line than they do on the Virginia line.

Second operations question from James.

I'll be happy to take that as well.

So we have been working as part of a team with other states with Amtrak on a procurement where the Amtrak is procuring some new train sets, some new Siemens train sets that they announced recently that will actually allow for push-pull operations.

So there would not be a wire turnaround necessary in a push-pull operation, much like VRE has push-pull operations.

There's other operators around the country in the world who have push-pull operations.

Yes, Norfolk Southern will still use the Virginia Line for freight.

They will still be the operator of record with the Surface Transportation Board.

They will pay

All right.

And one more question under operations.

Carl had asked, would it be possible to connect the new station to the NNW mainline via the Blacksburg branch?

and he followed on saying, advantages compared to use of the Virginia Line would A, be shorter distance to the NNW Mean Line and B, leaving the Virginia Line corridor unused and potentially available for a multi-use trail connection between New River and Roanoke Valleys.

We only have authority from Norfolk Southern to operate passenger trains on the Virginia Line.

That's if I'm getting the question correct.

There could be an opportunity to connect to the main line.

And looks like we have one more question regarding operations from Robert.

Sure.

No, there will be no backing up due to the push-pull operations of the trains that I mentioned.

And I understand Robert probably had that question before I answered the other question.

Okay.

All right.

Let's see, that should be it for operations right now.

We can pivot to

Planning.

Lee had asked, we just got all this right here.

So with regard to service further to Bristol, I should mention a few things.

One is that DRPT, Department of Rail and Public Transportation, has done a study that I believe is on their website, a preliminary study with regard to Bristol service.

To clarify, the Miramax station is no longer in the running as I described in the station examination and impact slides earlier in this conversation.

So Miramax is not an option.

Great, thank you both.

Looks like that is it for

Planning type questions for now.

We're going to pivot back to financials as two other questions came in.

Just going to drop this in for you guys.

All right.

Can you ask that question one more time so I can make sure I get it correctly?

I don't know.

I do not believe so.

We do have in our budget have some money set aside for safety improvements to the Merrimack Tunnel.

Okay, and then one other financial question.

How much of the estimated cost will be funded through local taxpayer dollars?

So we don't have a definitive answer to that yet.

We are there is a station rail station policy that was developed by Department of Rail and Public Transportation where all three of us used to work.

that was blessed by the Commonwealth Transportation Board that is currently undergoing review as part of the state rail plan.

And the localities with regard to that past practice did pick up the cost of the station house itself and local parking and other pedestrian improvements.

And we are in conversations with both the Commonwealth Transportation Board and the Virginia Passenger Rail Authority Board as we take another look at that rail station policy.

Great.

Thank you, Michael.

Looks like that is it for those questions.

We can pivot to service and routes.

Oh, that is dependent on the schedules with regard with Amtrak, and I believe there will be one overnight of the two round trips.

One went overnight in the New River Valley area.

The extension of the current train that leaves roughly in the 6 a.m. time frame would be extended further south to New River Valley.

The other train, I believe the schedule we have, it is now not yet set in stone, would actually overnight somewhere in Washington D.C. in the Northeast corridor.

It's kind of a somewhat of a reverse trip, if you will.

Great.

Thank you, Michael.

Let's see.

We just had another question come through from Danny.

Sure.

I just dropped it in the chat as well.

The Commonwealth Corridor is a study being, it's a corridor proposed by various entities and it's being studied by the Department of Railroad Public Transportation.

So I'm just giving that background for the other listeners.

That is east-west service that would go from the western part of Virginia to the

to the Hampton Roads area.

And that is something that if it were to come to pass, we would have to take a look at the infrastructure needs.

There's also a question of whether or not that route would go to Clifton Forge or go to New River Valley.

But I believe one of the options is to go to New River Valley and we'll have to look at those infrastructure needs if that were to come to pass.

I should mention though, the Commonwealth Quarter, there would be a lot of infrastructure upgrades necessary.

Thank you, Michael.

Yeah, through the connection of the...

Alright, right now it looks like that is it for questions.

I'm just going to circle up through the chat.

Gail had just sent one, so I will look at that real quick.

Gail, thank you for sending that.

And again, if anyone else has any other questions or comments, we will be here until there aren't any others.

So thank you for people starting to populate the chat.

Gail says, I live in the community that is shown as being connected to the station via a pedestrian bridge.

I personally am very opposed to the community being connected in this way or any direct way.

I feel the existing Huckleberry Trail connection is sufficient.

Sure, we'll be conducting further community outreach as part of the NEPA work and examining the impact and refining the concepts that we're examining for this future rail station.

So any comments like that we'll collect both now and in the future as we refine and determine impacts associated with elements that we presented today.

Yeah, I answered the question narrowly.

I answered the question with regard to Bristol service.

I should mention that the question was, how would you connect to the mainline for Bristol service?

I answered that via the Blacksburg branch.

I should note, though, that we do not have the authority from Norfolk Southern to take the train to Bristol.

That is their mainline track.

and that would be a different negotiation.

And right now we're focused on getting the train to New River Valley.

So just as anywhere with the host railroad, you need their permission to ride on the track.

Thank you.

So will there be future commuter options for the line?

That's a good question.

We have the option for obviously the two Roanoke trains, once we get the second Roanoke train, to extend both of them to the New River Valley.

We also have the right to another daily round trip from Roanoke to the New River Valley.

and is to be determined who the operator would be.

Next question is from Steve.

Having high rail the line, I think that's a question with regard to properties that have, a person might have property on both sides of the tracks, and those are private crossings.

It would be the same regime that Norfolk Southern has, so the maintenance would fall to the owner, and I should note that

Norfolk Southern will be maintaining this until we begin passenger operations, and after that, VPRA will be responsible for maintenance.

We could work with Norfolk Southern or a third party to maintain, but as far as who maintains what, that will stay the same with regard to the private entity and the railroad, so those relationships aren't going to change.

The name behind the relationships could change, but then again, we could continue to use Norfolk Southern.

Thank you, Michael.

So the NEPA process is much more detailed than the feasibility study, we take more of a close look at the precise property impact of the station siting, the relationship of the station outline that you info print, you saw

today to determine impacts, but we take a much more closer look in terms of the federal regulations in the NEPA umbrella that we showed on the slide previously and examining the technical analysis of the impact of that station site as well.

So it's a heavy lift actually to meet those technical NEPA requirements and those Bolted Act policies and federal regulations in which we must

construct and conform with and to.

So, in terms of what will be determined, it will be, again, the least impactful site that we're examining as part of that NEPA federal environmental work.

Thank you, Kate.

Someone had brought in a comment which actually is interesting.

It looks like there's some back and forth between opinions on the pedestrian bridge.

And the comment is by eliminating the community to the station bridge that was mentioned, pedestrian safety would be negatively affected.

So interesting to see some differences of opinions on that.

The community space is not one item or another.

We were requested by the region to examine a 10,000 square foot space as part of a potential joint development for either office or some other community designated space for either government entities, non-profits, some sort of space that the community itself could benefit from.

That would not be developed as part of our project necessarily, but we wanted to examine the impact should it be co-located.

Thank you, Kate.

It looks like we have one more question that has come through the chat.

And again, anyone else who has any outstanding thoughts or questions or comments, feel free to drop them in and we will relay them to Kate and Michael.

Lee had asked, has VPRA reached out to NCDOT

to gain operational knowledge through the three current Piedmont round trips.

So they had indicated several different types of trains.

So has VPRA reached out to NCDOT to gain operational knowledge?

We work with North Carolina DOT quite often.

Jason Orford and his group, and I just saw them last week, and we do talk to them often about their

experiences and operations and so on and so forth in North Carolina.

So I hope that answers the question, and we're always interested in learning more from their operations.

And they say the same to us.

Thank you, Michael.

Looks like we had a comment come through.

And thank you again, Lee, for providing this.

The comment is, the new Raleigh Union Station has, quote unquote, community space.

which my model railroad club has used for public layout demonstrations.

It looks like that might be something interesting to look into.

So thank you Lee for that.

And that seems to be it for any questions.

We'll leave the chat open for you know, another couple of 30 seconds to a minute or so in the event that you know, you have any other thoughts or questions you want to ask.

And on that last slide, Kate showed

There was a contact email address.

So again, in the event that any other questions or comments come up after this meeting concludes, and you know, if you're in survey two and you want to ask them there, go for it, or you're welcome to email the contact form.

It's also available on the website and the team is open to hearing your thoughts.

So.

Yes.

Yeah, I want to

Say something I said last night with regard to access to the station that I think has been alluded to before.

We, our staff, and more importantly, our board, executive director and board, think it's very important that we have multimodal access to a potential New River Valley station.

When I say multimodal, that means car, that means transit, that means pedestrian, that means bicycle.

And it's very important for us, not only New River Valley, but throughout the Commonwealth,

that car should not be the only way to gain access to a station.

And it's very important to us that if there are communities that are within a short walking distance that they'd be provided that walking distance to be able to access the train rather than have to drive a mile or two to go around the area and then to park and then walk a long distance.

So if there are opportunities for us to bring access to people

Thank you, Michael, for that.

That was very helpful.

All right, well, it doesn't look like we have had any other comments or questions coming through other than people saying thank you so much for giving this presentation.

And again, it will be made available on the project website as well as last night's recording as well.

Starting sometime tomorrow, so please double check back on the website for that.

I've also dropped in the email address in case anyone wants to jot that down and send any questions or comments to the team.

We are collecting all comments by March 15th, so we appreciate your time on that.

Well, thanks everyone again for your time this afternoon.

We appreciate

the participation by all and feel free to take the survey, use the email address, access our website and look for outreach via social media but also you can sign up for a listserv as well to retain access to all of our upcoming events.