Potomac Creek Community Advisory Group (CAG) Meeting #1   4/9/2026

All right, I think we have enough people to get started.

Hi, everybody.

Welcome to the first Community Advisory Group meeting for the Potomac Creek Third Track South project.

Thank you so much for taking the time to meet with us today.

We'll go over everything that we're going to cover in this presentation today, and there will be time for questions at the end.

So if all my presenters could take a minute to introduce themselves, I'll start.

My name is Jenna Friedberg.

I am the Community Affairs Manager here with Virginia Passenger Rail Authority, and I oversee the public outreach for projects south of Alexandria and west towards Christiansburg.

Sure.

Good afternoon, everybody.

Rob Pinckney, Senior Director of Projects for VPRA.

I have the pleasure of overseeing about a dozen or more projects that are located in the southern and western portions of the Commonwealth.

John Griffin, Senior Engineering Project Manager, and I work primarily on the Siding A project.

Hey, Bill Sawin.

I am John's Assistant Project Manager supporting the Siding A project.

I work for Kimley-Horn.

Hi, good afternoon, everyone.

My name is Brent Epps.

As Bill mentioned, I'm also with Kimley-Horn, and I assist John and Rob with helping to manage the Leland Road overpass bridge replacement portion of the project.

Hello, I'm Christine Fix, Director of Planning at VPRA, and my role is two-fold long-range planning as well as environmental planning for all of our projects.

Thank you, everybody.

So if you have any questions, my team here should be able to answer anything.

If not, we can always follow up after.

If we don't mind moving to the next slide, we can go over our meeting today.

So we'll go over

Quick review of VPRA and our Transforming Rail in Virginia program and then we'll move into more detailed discussion about the projects and their updates.

When we refer to Siding A, that is also the same as Potomac Creek.

You might hear us refer to Siding A, Potomac Creek, or Leland.

We're talking about the same suite of projects here.

We'll give an update on right-of-way acquisition, as well as future field work and construction impacts that you might see.

We'll go over the Leland Road overpass project as well, and we'll also discuss some service changes that one can expect.

in the near future or that are already happening and I'll give a quick review of our public engagement activity and then we'll have time for question and answer at the end.

If you have any questions during, feel free to put them in the chat and we'll make sure that we address them and at the end during Q&A you can either use the hand raise function or put your questions in the chat.

I think we can move on.

So a community advisory group, that's what you guys are here gathered for.

So you are our sounding board for community concerns and impacts regarding this project, and you represent a diverse group of interests in the community surrounding the Potomac Creek Third Track Project.

We have

residents from the surrounding community, HOA representatives, property managers, business owners, special interest groups, and other Northern Virginia agency representatives, as well as staff from elected officials.

and other key stakeholders all here on this call.

The idea is to hold these quarterly and virtually.

We hold them virtually so we can provide as much information and as much access as possible to anybody who is interested in learning.

And then I of course will also upload

All of the presentations, the recording and transcripts to our website.

So if anybody misses any information or would like to review or a colleague or friend wants to know what's going on, you can reach out to me directly or you can find this information on our project page.

We can move on to an overview of VPRA, which I will pass to Rob.

Great.

All right, so

As a new authority, I wanted to take a minute and cover a few slides on an overview of things.

So who are we?

Who is Virginia Passenger Rail Authority?

We're a relatively young authority.

We were created in 2020 by the General Assembly.

And we have a 15-member board that governs our actions, headed by the board chair, who is also head of DRPT.

And what are we here for?

We're here to implement the Transforming Rail in Virginia program.

and that's to really expand and build on the passenger capacity throughout Virginia.

So we manage passenger rail in Virginia.

We design, build, finance, and maintain rail facilities.

And you're gonna hear about that with the Sodding A project today.

And we also wanna expand passenger rail options, right?

So frequency and locations.

So we have a pretty robust program and a big undertaking.

So we're excited to share that for those who might not know who we are.

And you're gonna hear me say a couple of times, we partner with several different key stakeholders

But we want to highlight here Amtrak and VRE, which many folks might be familiar with, but they are the ones who operate on our behalf on the corridor as we build these projects out.

So next slide, please.

So what are we doing?

So you hear us talk about Transforming Rail in Virginia, or TRB.

That's basically our big overview program.

It's about a $5 billion program that we're delivering.

So it's really, again, partnering with some key stakeholders beyond the Amtrak area, which I already spoke of, but also with the Class 1 freights in the Commonwealth, so CSX and Norfolk Southern.

Because as many folks may not know, we share corridors with the passenger and the freight on the same rails.

So that always leads to challenges and working together with key stakeholders.

So building and

Capital programs and projects in acquiring right-of-way.

So we're up to almost a couple hundred miles of rail that we own in the corridor.

So as a result of that, we're able to increase rail capacity and deliver more frequencies and options for folks.

And we like to connect with our communities.

Like Jenna said, this is one of our options to outreach and connect and hear from you all as what we're doing and get some feedback and implement them in our designs.

And obviously, as we expand options,

from a freight benefit as a passenger benefit, we're expanding economic growth.

So next slide, please.

So here's the program or a quick overview of the program, at least with the eye towards the Richmond to DC area.

So tough to see on the graphics, but just gives you a little bit of smattering.

These are phase one, phase two projects.

On the left side of the inset is north is the Union Station in Washington DC and all the way down on the right side to the bottom is the Richmond.

As you can see by the little blue graphics, those are the concentrated projects that really start in Spotsylvania and head north.

So we're here to talk about Siding A, which is that highlighted one in the middle right near the Leland Road Station.

And the program is really, you know, key to unlocking more service and more opportunities.

You can hear a lot about VRE, obviously the Leland Road Station within this project footprint, but excited to work with that.

And when we finished the TRB program,

We're going to be able to unlock more and more frequencies.

So we're going to have hourly service out of Richmond towards DC and vice versa.

VRE is going to be able to have evening and weekend services, which will be exciting to expand upon that.

And then we'll be looking to increase efficiency and reliability of all of these services.

So you'll see trains that are more frequent and with more reliability.

The Saturday Night Project is basically a four mile track extension up in Stafford County between the Brooks Station and the Fredericksburg Station with the VRE passenger service.

So basically we're building four miles of track to add more capacity in this area of the corridor on RF&D corridor.

that we share with CSX to be able to get more service and to be able to increase network fluidity throughout the life cycle of our program and as we move forward.

So what it entails is we have to build new railroad bridges over Herald Road and over Claiborne Run, which is a major creek in the area.

And we also have to put crash wall protection on the Primer House Bridge.

So what crash wall protection is is basically making

the abutments of a particular bridge more stout in case a train crashes into it, but I've never seen it happen, but just to make provisions for it.

And then after we do construction on this particular project, the VRE station will basically have a dedicated track to be able to

service passengers in the corridor and in this area.

So right now it's toggling between freight and passenger service, but when we get the additional third track built, it'll be more so passenger related in the area, especially at the VRE station.

So I think we can toggle to the next slide.

So we can toggle to the next slide.

So in the future, primarily,

The corridor is going to look like this, where we have the two existing tracks.

And then on the east side, this is looking railroad north on the east side of the corridor, you will have a new third track.

But there are areas on the project where we do have to build new infrastructure on the west side of the corridor.

But primarily, you know, the east side of the corridor, it will look like this.

So we'll have that dedicated track.

What is deciding its purpose and what are we trying to accomplish with building this new siding is being able to give trains the ability to get around one another or being able to sequence trains in such a way that it really makes the whole operation more efficient, so to speak.

And I think Rob alluded to and he spoke to

Once this project is done, once our whole program is done, we'll be able to get more VRE night and weekend service.

And definitely the Potomac Creek, Third Track South project does add benefits and it does contribute to that particular initiative, I would say.

So we could talk to the next slide.

What is a siding?

We give this particular breakdown on some of our presentations where we go through

We say, what is the ultimate purpose?

As I just said, meeting past trains, you definitely want the siding to be long enough to be able to accommodate the existing length of, the typical length of most of the trains that railroads run in the area, which is now it's up to two miles or 14,000 feet.

So our siding is almost four miles long, so we don't have to worry about any capacity issues with the siding aid project.

Being able to, as I just said, run around trains, being able to stage a train, whether it be an Amtrak train that needs to get out of the way of a freight train, or a freight train most likely, as the corridor operates today, having to get out of the way of an Amtrak train because of the speed and timing of a particular network.

Alleviating Congestion, so this is what this siding is going to be able to do once we get it complete and most sidings do the same exact thing or they serve to do the exact same thing.

If you can toggle to the next slide if you will.

Right-of-way acquisition, that's a part of doing the siding aid project.

A lot of things we have to do to really be able to push it through to completion.

We have environmental aspects of the project, we have right of way aspects of the project, we have design aspects of the project, and of course we have the construction aspect.

Right now we are heavily engrossed in acquiring right of way to be able to build the project.

If you look at a typical railroad section, to be able to build it to standard, you need a certain amount of space.

So that's why we have to acquire right-of-way.

But the process, typically as it's depicted here, you have to get survey.

We need to understand what our right-of-way lines are.

now, and that way we'd be able to determine what additional limits we need to go to.

Environmental site assessments, that's more along the lines of just understanding what's out there.

Is the soil contaminated?

Is it any like hydrofuels, hydrocarbons, things of that sort that we need to mitigate?

Title, who owned it before?

Are there any existing obligations, you know, if we acquire the property?

and then appraisal, just making sure we have a good price of what we're going to offer eventually to particularly impacted landowners and then negotiating and giving them the amount of time to review offers.

And speaking to that, just some general notes I have that I got from my right-of-way group.

They were not able to join the call.

The actual point person for our right-of-way acquisitions wasn't able to join the call.

So most of our offers will go out in late April

and we'll also be putting most of them out in May and June, but all of them won't be coming out at the same time.

So that's a part of that negotiation process.

And then relocation, if we impact someone such that it's determined that they need to be given just relocation, we will do that.

And then settlement is, of course, when they'll actually be getting a check at some point for us to take possession of the property or be able to,

Finalize the acquisition process.

In a nutshell, that's what our right of way acquisition process is.

I think we can toggle to the next slide now.

And this was more of some of the same bullets that were on the previous slide, which gives a timeline of in 2023 and 2024, what we were doing, moving through the design and making sure that we had a good boundary line in terms of where we knew and establishing what was our ownership and then, and working through the design of the new project.

And then in 2025 and 2026, definitely more design and a more refined understanding of

Right-of-way we needed to get acquired.

And then toward the end of this year, we are planning to have all of the acquisitions completed, which means that here in the next few months, we'll be going through negotiations.

We're pretty much putting out the offer packages, as I say it, and then moving toward negotiations and final sediment toward the end of this year.

So that summarizes this slide.

Can we toggle to the next slide?

Field work, definitely.

We have a lot going on, a lot that's upcoming, but we'll definitely be engaging the public to let them know as a result of that, we're having this meeting and we'll be having more meetings.

We recently completed some environmental field work to make sure that we are in compliance with the associated regulations and regulatory bodies.

Definitely, we've done some tree clearing to aid in preparation for doing utility relocations, which is, we have some ongoing right now out on the corridor.

So if you see spools of cable and fiber optic cable and carrier cable, that's what that's related to.

And then coming toward

the fall and toward the end of this summer we will be doing more fiber optic relocations and just overall utility relocations toward late fall we'll be getting into tree clearing for the relocations for utilities and as well as to build the actual new infrastructure that we're planning to build with this the new track and then

In early, early 27, you'll see some major, major, major, I would say, effort and progress toward us going out on the corridor and building the new track infrastructure.

So that's what's upcoming, what we've been doing.

And I think you could toggle to the next slide, if you will.

Thank you, John.

Here's a graphical representation of what John just finished talking about.

The project has been under design since 2023, as you can see by the top milestone bar, and we're in the final legs of wrapping up that final design.

Some of you have probably observed that there are some forces out in the field starting to do preparations for early works tree felling.

and in preparation for relocating utilities in advance of the project.

Project construction itself is really slated to start in 2027.

Really things that you'll likely see are forces mobilizing the end of 2026 and starting to prepare for the work activities in Q1 of 2027.

Thanks, Bill.

One of the components of the Citing A Potomac Creek South project is the need to replace the Leland Road overpass bridge.

It is a structure that is owned and maintained by VDOT, so we are working closely with them.

And the project includes fully demolishing the existing bridge

and rebuilding a new one in the same location.

It's necessary because the current structure cannot accommodate

The rail expansion and the replacement, the new bridge, will increase both the horizontal and vertical clearance and enable the construction of the third track and provide space for a future fourth track.

Next slide, please.

We can take a look at a graphic image of the existing bridge.

As you can see, the piers or the supports that hold up the roadway are extremely close to the tracks and do not allow for the construction of the third track, nor does it provide any room for a future fourth.

So the existing structure will be demolished in its entirety and replaced with a new bridge.

To facilitate that demolition and reconstruction,

We have worked with VDOT to determine the most appropriate detour for vehicles as well as for truck traffic.

And we have, VDOT has approved both of the detours that you see on the slide here.

The image on the left represents the passenger vehicle detour.

and the image on the right is the separate truck-only detour.

These detours are anticipated to begin early in 2027 and be in place for approximately 22 months towards the end of 2028.

Next slide, Liv, and we'll talk a little bit about schedule.

Currently we have final design underway and VDOT as a project partner is leading the acquisition of the necessary right-of-way and relocation of the utilities that are currently in conflict that will need to be moved in order to facilitate construction of the new bridge.

We anticipate that process taking the remainder of 2026 and then clearing bridge demolition, construction, and the detour going into effect as I just mentioned in early 2027 and culminating towards the end of 2028.

What to expect during construction, definitely.

It's not going to be atypical from what I think most of us understand what happens in construction anyway.

Definitely have to have the equipment to build the actual infrastructure that will be out.

It will be visible.

Definitely dump trucks and work trucks out on the corridor adjacent to the corridor.

and then as well as train noise in the area coming through.

And more so because we need to sound the horns on the train when work crews are nearby because of the federal regulation safety rules associated with that particular operation.

So you'll probably hear

Hear that and just know that any increased levels of noise with trains is probably because of that particular effort and that particular federal requirement.

So the Amtrak trains, VRE trains, as well as CSX trains that will be traversing through working limits with workers out on the corridor.

So that's basically what to expect during construction.

So can you talk to the next slide?

Excellent.

Thanks, John.

So speaking of construction, we're already under construction in different areas of the corridor, and we are having some corridor service impacts.

Basically, we are having some impacts to service to our Amtrak trains, BRE, and even CSX freight trains.

And this is due to the fact that we need to get folks out on the rail line

To be safe while they're under construction, we need to stop train traffic to allow for a good window of time, a work window to access the tracks.

Pardon my tongue here.

So what we needed to do was we created a plan.

We have been thinking about this for a long time and we developed a service plan that

has in this area from 8 a.m. to about 1 p.m., a time where our construction crews can work safely.

And we're primarily doing that because of the Long Bridge North project.

And that will be underway for pretty much the lifetime of that project, which is five years.

Our goal is to maintain, again, as much service as possible, knowing that peak time for VRE is early morning.

and then we also want to maximize the work window for construction productivity.

We also had a lot of constraints when we were planning this out.

In Washington DC, noise and vibration laws restrict us to significant noisy work, as John was mentioning, to daytime hours between Monday and Saturday.

Again, we took into consideration that high VRE ridership during the peak work hours and then high congestion at Union Station, we also noticed in the afternoon.

and not to forget, but we are just a connection.

We're a connection between the north and the south areas of this country and we are being impacted by service changes and construction happening in the northeast corridor.

So that requires us again to take into a lot of things into consideration and there are also service impacts that are happening to long distance trains that are points north and south as well.

Anyhow, all this to say is that we understand that there are service impacts.

Citizens will be impacted in their daily commutes and will have to change their commuting patterns.

But we have much more information on our website and we have a service guide to help citizens plan their trip and understand our work windows and then what that means for them in the day to day.

And reaching out to

Thank you, Christine and everybody so far.

So public outreach is a huge part of any of our projects, actually.

You might have seen us out in your communities in the past year or two.

We hosted a public hearing back in November of 2024, and we did some neighborhood tabling

at the Mossad Family YMCA, as well as at the Leland Road VRE station.

That was last year.

We have regular coordination with Stafford County and VDOT regarding this project and especially those detours.

And some of you may have been at the right of way acquisition meeting that we held November of last year.

Such outreach is going to continue.

This CAG group will meet quarterly, so our next meeting will be sometime in July.

Please keep an eye out for an email from me.

And we will have continued ongoing coordination with Stafford County and other stakeholder agencies as well as additional community outreach as needed.

We can move to the next slide where you can learn how to follow us on social media or keep up to date with the projects.

If you visit our project website, which you can see there is listed, you can sign up for email updates on our website.

There is an option to sign up specifically for this project.

And if you're interested in any of our other projects, you could sign up for those as well.

We have this newly created construction information hotline, so if you or any residents in your community have questions about construction that they're seeing, please reach out directly to us via that construction hotline and we'll get back to you.

You guys also all have my email address and my cell phone is listed in that as well, so questions you're welcome to send directly to me.

Those are our socials on the side.

I encourage you to follow any and all of those, and I think it's time for question and answer.

So Linda will be operating the question and answer session.

Absolutely.

If you will hover down at the bottom of your screen, you will see some options that show you can mute, unmute, turn your video on or off, and then

Under React, there's a little heart.

If you hover over there, if you click on that, you will have an option to raise your hand or actually have other reactions if you are so inclined.

But that will allow you, if you raise your hand, we will call on you to ask your question.

So we're happy to get started.

We'll take some questions and then Jenna will close us out.

I'm not seeing any raised hands yet.

Am I missing anybody?

We have a question in the chat.

Good afternoon.

I know you mentioned the Leland Overpass.

Does this project still, I'm trying to read this whole thing here, sorry.

I'll take that one.

The project is definitely building a new railroad bridge over Harrell Road and we are maintaining the existing conditions in that particular area according to the prescribed and the mandated

Obligations that we had to fulfill that was doled out to us by VDOT.

So that's what we're doing there.

And that's how we will be addressing the situation at Harrow Road.

Any other questions while the technical team is here?

There we go.

Jenna, I can answer that if you like.

So really, over the next 12 to 24 months, we're focused on implementing the phase one and phase two projects for the TRB program.

So, Siding A and the project we're speaking about today fits into that role, but it also does Long Bridge, and if you go back to the slide, not that you need to, but you can find the graphic for all of our Phase 1 and Phase 2 projects on our website, but it's a slew of about 20 total projects, and then we are

As we're implementing those capital projects, both design and construction, we're looking ahead to the next phases, phases three and four and the next iteration of our program across the Commonwealth, whether that be in Richmond or down the corridor towards Culpeper.

So we're working with our stakeholders as well as DRPT to come up with a statewide rail plan and identify some of those different

questions and concerns.

Thank you.

We have a question from Ian Alice.

The detour is supposed to be in place early 2027, more specifically, in the late January, early February time frame, and then it'll be in place for the 20 months that we've agreed to have it in place with VDOT and associated program partners.

That's when it will be closed for demolition.

We'll have that ability to go in and start that construction work.

Thanks.

So January, February, it'll be closed.

I'll make sure that there's notifications going out before that so that it's not a

We don't tell you now and you forget in a year.

So we will send reminders.

Some people may notice that in the chat, Christine put a link to our website with all of our capital projects.

Don't think I see anyone's hand raised unless I'm missing it.

Any other questions in the chat?

Maybe they're missing.

Here we go.

I believe this was probably shared.

I can answer that one.

Thank you for offering to help.

That would be very much appreciated.

Everything that we spoke about today is public knowledge.

This presentation is recorded and will be posted to our YouTube video.

And I will send out also a link to the presentation itself.

You are more than welcome to share that with your community or any other concerned members.

If there are other concerned individuals that would like to be a part of this community advisory group, you can send me their name and I'll have them added to our invitation list.

When we do more community outreach, like in person out in the communities, I will send a notification to this group as well.

Would love to see you or any other concerned members there to help out.

Again, ask any questions, anything like that.

And you can share our construction hotline information.

I'm sure I have.

Something I believe we have a fact sheet already.

So I was from Mervin.

Mervin, I can send you that fact sheet.

I have your email from your registration, so I can send you that directly.

You're welcome to share that.

You can also add a link to this presentation and this YouTube video in that newsletter as well.

And if you got any more information, just let me know.

If there's anybody else on the call that is interested in seeing that one-pager, I believe it's on our website, but I'm happy to send it to you directly too.

Just let me know.

Any other questions?

I'm assuming we can get a copy of your slides.

Absolutely.

I'll be sending the follow up to this either sometime this afternoon or tomorrow, depending on once the recording is ready.

Ian, I was actually going to reach out to you to see if we could do just an informal update to your TAC committee, if that works.

And of course, if your board wants an update, we can do that as well.

Anytime, reach out to us, we're happy to do that.

But specifically, I wanted to reach out to the TAC.

We're seeing lots of projects in the area that are interacting with the rail and wanted to get together with

That'll be great.

Our tech meets again in May.

Lovely.

I'll send you an email.

If there are no other questions, I will close us out.

Thank you everybody for your participation and taking time this afternoon to listen to us.

We really appreciate the opportunity to speak directly with concerned citizens in the community because you're concerned.

We really do want to hear them and they really do make an impact on the project.

Our next CAG meeting will be in July.

You'll receive that information from me probably sometime in June.

If you have any questions leading up to the July meeting that you would like us to address directly, feel free to send me an email and I'll make sure that we have that addressed in our notes.

If there are no other questions, I'll let us close out.

I'll give everybody back a little bit of their afternoon.

So thank you so much again, everybody.

Thank you all.

Thank you.