Virginia-North Carolina Interstate High-Speed Rail Compact Meeting   12/11/2023

Yeah, thank you.

I'll just do a quick roll call of the compact members to make sure we have everybody.

Senator Tom McInnis from North Carolina?

Here.

Representative Matthew Winslow?

I see you on the screen.

Representative Ben Moss?

Secretary Michael Fox, Senator Surovell, I'm here, Delegate Coyner, I'm here, Delegate Reid,

Good afternoon.

Can everybody hear me okay?

Can anybody hear me?

How about now?

Can you hear me now?

Yeah, there you're back.

We can.

Okay.

I'm sorry.

I got kicked off line there.

This is Tom McInnis here in North Carolina.

Yes, sir.

Thank you very much.

I want to welcome everybody and let you know how great it is for us to be together today in this group and especially given the recent news.

I want to congratulate, of course, our partners in the Commonwealth of Virginia for their $729 million federal state partnership award for the Long Bridge project at the Potomac River.

We're very happy to support you guys in that application for that important project and we appreciate your support of our Raleigh to Richmond grant award.

The partnership between our states has been key to the success of the Southeast Corridor and our efforts working together work.

The compact plays a critical role in continuing the work of our two great states in developing high performance passenger rail service while supporting important freight services as well.

We anticipate more opportunities for federal funding for this corridor in our two states.

to connect the north and the south ends that are now funded through construction.

We know that North Carolina and Virginia are the main gateway from the northeast to the rest of our neighboring states to the south.

Our partnership and cooperation will provide our citizens, businesses, and future generations with more transportation options and our towns with increased economic development opportunities.

We have much to talk about today and updates to share with each other on rail programs and projects in both states.

Thank you, Senator.

It's good to see you again.

I think it's probably been about.

Since 20, maybe 16, since we got together, I think, and

and I've been itching to get together because there's a lot going on and a lot of exciting stuff happening.

And you're right, I suspect our staff has gotten us together in light of the nearly $2 billion the federal government just agreed to give us to help us with this process.

But the Long Bridge over the Potomac River is the biggest passenger rail bottleneck on the entire East Coast.

And I think there's people all the way from New York to New Orleans waiting for us

to get this done.

And I think we share this common interest in expanding rail because it presents so many huge opportunities for everybody in our states with the passenger service that it's likely to open up.

And I remember the last time we met, we were talking about getting more people all the way to New Orleans on these passenger trains.

And we're making in Virginia lots, sort of millions and millions and millions of dollars of investments on top of these federal grants.

I think we've had 20% passenger rail growth year over year the last few years in Virginia.

I think we're one of the leading passenger rail growth states in the country.

And pretty soon I think we're going to put that on steroids once we start shipping people into North Carolina and bringing your people into Virginia.

So I'm glad we're able to meet again.

And these federal grants, I think are going to really turbocharge our efforts.

And I agree with everything you said, it's going to be

Lots of good business and economic development opportunities for everybody.

So I look forward to the presentation.

And welcome to Delegate Coyner, who I don't think has been on one of these before.

She's one of our, she used to be a newer member, but not anymore.

And Scott, this is Delegate Reid.

I've also joined.

Oh, good.

And Senator McInnis, this is Mike Fox, Chairman of the Board of Transportation in North Carolina.

Thank you, Mike.

Glad to have you on board.

I believe we're ready for the compact goals for Virginia North Carolina collaborative efforts.

Thank you Senator McInnis and it's a pleasure to be here today and I will say while we have not brought this body together since I think it was 2017, I will tell you that the collective staff in Virginia and North Carolina has been really really hard at work during that period of time.

We are blessed to have a great partnership with our colleagues at NCDOT

A lot has happened over the past several years and when we picked this date on the calendar a couple of months ago to get this compact group back together, I don't think we had any idea at that point in time how truly historic a week we would be coming off of at that point in time between the federal grant awards for both Virginia and North Carolina and the great partnership that has gone both ways with us helping each other to get

Both of our grants across the finish line.

It really goes to the spirit of what the compact is and why we're here.

We've had a lot of change on the Virginia side.

We've had legislation that's created the Virginia Passenger Rail Authority.

On the Virginia side, we have our own partnerships between the Department of Rail and Public Transportation and the Virginia Passenger Rail Authority that you'll see come through in our updates today as well.

With that, I just share my greetings and my absolute gratitude for

Thank you so much, Jennifer, and I'm really going to echo what Jennifer said.

It has been a while, as she said, since the compact has convened in person, and I'm grateful we figured out how to do this virtually, which will make it much easier to schedule this body to be able to get together more often.

But rest assured that your two staffs have been working together in lockstep

toward, as she said, a monumental announcement.

Senator, I'm so glad you got to kick it off with sharing the news of both the Long Bridge Award and the S-Line Award.

As the FRA said to us, awarding to both those urban centers and building together toward the middle is the plan.

And so a lot of people have been saying it's really nearly $2 billion toward the efforts that this compact started.

This really has been the framework

that has led to our success over the last week that we've all seen between the two states.

We often here in North Carolina refer to ourselves as the little brother to our big brother in Virginia.

They really show us the way.

Y'all cut the path and do big, bold things.

And then we go and right behind y'all and try and do them even better.

So I know Representative Winslow was with us this morning at our big announcement of the billion dollars.

It was a really monumental day for two decades worth of work.

and so now we get to start actually doing the construction.

But like Jennifer said, we've been busy at work under the partnership of the compact doing many things together.

And Jason's gonna go into great detail on what we've been doing but wanna say that Jennifer has announced her retirement.

So I wanted to thank her personally through this for everything she's done to help us, help me and North Carolina.

She is a phenomenal leader.

and I'm grateful for the friendship that we developed through this compact.

I am not going far, so I will still be in Virginia and still be working to advance multimodal transportation.

I can assure you that

Before I turn it over to Emily, I do want to recognize Delegate Ward who's been able to join us.

We have all of our Virginia compact buffers with us today.

With that, I'm going to turn it over to Emily Stock, who is our Chief of Rail Transportation here at DRPT.

She's going to get us started and then hand it off to VPRA for our Virginia update.

Hi, I'm Emily Stock.

I'm here to tell you a little bit about the statewide rail plan.

This is our 2022 update that came out actually early in 2023.

And you may be asking what a state rail plan is.

It is a snapshot of rail infrastructure and conditions and planned investments in the Commonwealth for both freight and passenger rail.

And it aligns with V-Trans, which is the Commonwealth's long range multimodal transportation plan.

It's required by the Federal Railroad Administration every four years.

And as I mentioned, this is an update of our 2018 plan.

And it also requires for us at Department of Rail and Public Transportation in Virginia very close coordination with our partners, the Virginia Passenger Rail Authority.

And some of you all may be familiar that that's our partner agency.

The Department of Rail and Public Transportation still handles much of the long range planning for both freight and passenger rail.

And we also administer freight grants.

And if we go to the next slide, I can talk about that.

The rail plan documents changes since our last rail plan.

And here we highlight the benefits of the Commonwealth's rail investments for the last four years.

And this slide is focused on freight rail investments.

This slide shows the results of our freight grant programs that channel growth in freight volumes to the rail network rather than Virginia highways, which is an advantage for us.

So since 2018, we have added, our funding programs have added 21 industry sightings.

We have improved through state of good repair projects and capacity projects, 2.5,000 rail miles.

And we've captured growth for the rail network, 13 million rail carloads, which translates into 44 million trucks diverted from Virginia's highway.

Next slide.

The rail plan also outlines planned investments.

And you'll see here that we have fiscally constrained short-term investments documented and also long-term investments which are not fiscally constrained on this list.

We break things down by freight projects, passenger rail projects, which also

which also include Virginia Railway Express, Commuter Rail in Northern Virginia and also crossing projects.

And it's important to note that the passenger rail improvements that we invest in in Virginia also help with our freight network as well.

And DJ Stadtler from

VPRA will be talking a little bit more about transforming rail in Virginia that really represents the bulk of our passenger rail projects that are documented in the rail plan.

Next slide.

So this is an overview of passenger corridors that we're developing in the Commonwealth.

Now with the help of FRA's Commonwealth, or sorry,

Commonwealth Corridor ID Program.

So we have strategic developments in the pipeline that include the S-Line to Raleigh, which is in the Eastern Corridor, partnership with North Carolina, of course.

And then we're developing the corridor from DC down to Bristol with this stop in the New River Valley, and also an east-west corridor for the future known as the Commonwealth Corridor.

So we did get an announcement on Friday that all three of the corridors that the Commonwealth submitted for the Corridor Identification Program were accepted by FRA.

So we're looking forward to getting started on service development planning for these corridors that are all in different stages of development.

Next slide.

So this is something that's new for the rail plan, rail crossing projects.

The IIJA through FRA has offered some rail crossing elimination grant funding to improve, close or grade separate public and private crossings.

And we applied for, in Virginia, we applied for a grant of 3.2 million for some rural crossings.

in just north of Richmond in what's known as the DC to RVA corridor between DC and Richmond.

And so we are going to be improving four quad gates in rural areas for some of these crossings, for four different crossings that only have double gates at this point.

So we're looking forward to getting started on that project.

And we also have an at-grade rail crossing evaluation study that DRPT put together a couple of years ago that lays out priorities for future grant applications through the RCE program.

Next slide.

Thanks, Emily.

It's great to be here to brief you all on what's going on both in Virginia and then later in North Carolina.

I just need to reemphasize what folks have already said.

Our two states just work together with such a close, collaborative partnership, and we really are proud to say that between North Carolina and Virginia, we set the example for the rest of the country.

It's exciting to talk about what we're doing now and just see what a difference, what a transformation these projects are going to have over passenger rail over the course of the next five to seven years.

So a lot of folks ask, what is the Virginia Passenger Rail Authority?

As you can see from this slide, we were created in 2020 by the General Assembly, and it's our job to support

enhance and sustain passenger rail here in the Commonwealth and beyond.

We are not running the trains.

We obviously, we partner with Amtrak as our provider, but we have the authority to own the infrastructure, to build new infrastructure, and to ensure that the capacity is in place where it's needed to have a fluid network, both for passenger and for freight.

So that's important.

If you go to the next slide you'll see that Virginia actually has a strong history in passenger rail.

It's not just in 2020.

Virginia started funding direct rail funds in 2006 and as you can see from this timeline it's been an evolution

2009, we had the first train to Lynchburg, the first state supported train, and that has evolved to where we are now going forward.

So we've got a great history in Virginia of supporting passenger rail, and that is really shown from our results are part of that.

The next slide will show you exactly what the network looks like today in Virginia.

So on the left hand side, you see that we've got eight daily round trips that are supported by Amtrak.

5 Amtrak long distance round trips, and then of course the Carolinian goes right through Virginia as they go from North Carolina up to the Northeast quarter.

We also have 16 daily round trips on our Virginia Railway Express, and that's the commuter type service in Northern Virginia, two different lines that go from Manassas and Fredericksburg up into Washington DC.

And I say commuter type because one of the things that V-Ray is doing is they're looking at the

current ridership trends and realizing that folks aren't working in the office like they used to so the in the city in the morning and out of the city in the afternoon is not as prevalent that ridership as it used to be so they are looking at changing their service model and we're working with them as we add more frequencies to have more weekend and late night service so

While it's right now a commuter route, I think over the next five to seven years, you'll see it being much more of a transportation solution.

Next slide talks about the results that I mentioned earlier.

If you look, this is ridership starting from fiscal year 10 going up to today.

Pretty significant increase going forward.

And then in 2021 and 22, you saw the dip due to COVID.

We went from setting records in 2019 to having trains that had fewer than a dozen people on them at times.

What the graph does show, however, is that we have recovered.

And in fact, we have far exceeded the pre-COVID levels for ridership when we continue to do so.

We've done this through Transforming Rail in Virginia, and this was what Virginia Passage Rail Authority was created.

The backdrop for that was Transforming Rail in Virginia.

If you go to the next slide, you'll see this started with a set of agreements with the freight railroads, CSX and Norfolk Southern, that outlined projects that put capacity in place where they were needed.

Someone said earlier that the Long Bridge project really is the bottleneck from the now, the north to the south.

We went to the parade railroads and said look, we want to add more passenger trains.

Historically, freight railroads have said, look, we own the infrastructure, we're not going to let you have those.

So what Virginia did is they went to, we went to the freight and said, we want something that's good for you and good for us.

We want to change what you're doing so it helps the freight network and helps the passenger network.

And that really resulted in a portfolio of projects that added infrastructure in the right places at the right time.

So there's the map of the whole state.

You can see we have infrastructure going all across the state down to Newport News and Norfolk, out to New River Valley.

It currently goes to Roanoke.

We're extending to New River Valley.

We're touching the entire state when it comes to putting these projects in place.

So if you go to the next slide,

You'll see that extends further south into North Carolina.

You see the map in the upper right goes from DC down into North Carolina, and Jason will talk about that in a moment.

Connecting to Raleigh, connecting to Greensburg, connecting to Charlotte.

Take a look there at the dotted line that goes from Ettrick to Raleigh through Ridgeway.

We'll be talking about that in just a minute, but we continue to see as we add trains, we get more riders.

Go to the next slide and we'll talk a little bit about the projects going from north to south.

So this is a track chart starting up top at Union Station in DC.

Currently, there are two tracks that cross Potomac River, and that's the bottleneck that we talk about.

We go from three tracks into two, back to three, out to five.

If you're going northbound right now from the south, you've got two tracks that come in in Alexandria from the west, from Manassas and Charlottesville and there, and then another two tracks, then three tracks that come in.

So you've got five that are going to three at this point.

What we're doing, just like on the highway, when you've got lanes that combine like that, you're going to have bottlenecks.

What we're doing is you see in the red here, we're adding tracks.

So when we're done with Long Bridge and the fourth track project in Alexandria, we'll have two dedicated passenger tracks, two dedicated freight tracks.

Freight trains go a lot slower than we do.

We want to have unimpeded access to going up and down that corridor.

And then it goes further south, as you see, to the Occoquan River beyond.

So if you go to the next slide, we'll talk a little more about the Long Bridge project.

This is the big project.

It's a $2.3 billion project.

When we started to tackle this, we felt it was best to split it into two separate procurements.

The north package is on the right-hand side, and that goes from the top bank of the Potomac River into D.C. across Ohio Drive, Main Avenue, 395, the Washington Channel.

That is one package on its own.

Much more complex, candidly, than the south package, which is just a bridge over the river.

We earlier, last week, we had our board approve the contract for that construction project.

So we're now partnering with Skanska Flatiron.

They're going to be the construction company on progressive design build that finishes that design and then gets that bridge in place.

Exciting time.

We've got the contract signed, a strong partner moving forward.

South Package on the left, you'll see that's the actual bridge over the river.

If you go to the next slide, you'll see an aerial view of that.

That goes over the river connecting the DC to Virginia right at the Long Bridge Aquatic Center.

There will also be a pedestrian bike bridge there, a 16-foot wide bike bridge, so it'll be truly multimodal in nature.

If you go to the next slide, it's just an update on the work status.

We were out there a few months ago doing test pile work.

We were working on acquiring the property.

We're making great progress and we'll be done with it in 2030.

Going further down the corridor, we've got the Alexandria fourth track that we don't have a lot of detail on here, but that project is well underway.

The next important one, though, is the Franconia Springfield Bypass.

So I talked earlier about dedicated passenger track.

For reasons I can't explain, north of Franconia, the station stops for passenger are on the west side of the right of way.

South of Franconia, they're on the east side of the right of way.

So when you're traveling southbound, you've got to cut in front of all the northbound traffic to get to the other side of the right of way.

So what we worked with CSX on is the development of a bypass that lifts the passenger tracks up and over so they don't have to stop at a traffic light, for lack of a better term.

This is a $400 million project.

We also got this contract approved last week, and this won't be done in phase one by the end of 2026.

Once again, it gives us unimpeded passenger only right-of-way, which will go a long way to on-time performance and reliability and predictability.

Next slide, we'll talk just a little bit about the overall projects.

I'm not going to go one by one because Mr. Bruhl told me that I had 12 minutes and 12 minutes only, but this shows you that strategically we are putting infrastructure and capacity in place where the historic bottlenecks have been in place.

We worked with CSX and said, hey, when we look at the trains, here's where we have problems.

Let's put a siding here.

Let's put a third track here.

That will allow us eventually, back in phase three and phase four, to connect all of those sidings so we'll have dedicated track.

But in the short term, these are the places where the infrastructure is needed to really improve the fluidity of the network.

The next slide you'll see the different projects and some of them, VRE is doing the Lafont project, we're doing a couple of the bigger projects, and then we're working with CSX and Southern to deliver some of the other projects.

So it's a mixed project delivery responsibility.

I'm thrilled to say that we're all working very closely together.

We have regular meetings, we've got performance committee that talks about all of the different trains and if they relate, why they relate, how they can fix it.

it's a true partnership because at the end of the day we've got the same goals we all want the network to work well.

Next slide talks a little bit about the longer term and if you look at this is what I was talking about before the S-Line so going from Washington DC down to Petersburg currently we take that the A-Line which is on the right hand side it's a roundabout way to Raleigh

We're working with North Carolina and that was part of the funding that came last week, the $1.1 billion for the North Carolina work.

We're starting the design now in Virginia that will develop that unimproved right away.

So between Petersburg and Norlina there,

We, VPRA, purchased the right-of-way.

It's an abandoned track.

In fact, most of the track has been taken up, but we're going to do design work to say, okay, here's how long it'll take, how much it'll cost, put that S-Line back in place for passenger only, and that'll cut over an hour over the trip time.

So that's a huge, huge investment, but it's a huge, huge benefit for the entire East Coast.

Next slide talks a little bit more about that.

We've split those segments out into six separate segments and sometime in the next couple days we'll have the procurement out for designers to come in and give us bids on designing that.

I would be remiss if I didn't talk about the Western Rail Initiative.

That is on the west side of the state.

We are making improvements with Norfolk Southern on the line that goes out to Roanoke and then extending that service from Roanoke to the New River Valley.

Again, identifying key places where there are choke points now.

We're double tracking between Oakesville and Calvertine and we're making improvements.

We're funding improvements that NS is going to make in their Roanoke yard that will make that a much more reliable and seamless trip.

At the end of the day, if you look at the next slide, what we're really doing this for is not to build bridges and add track.

We're doing it to add service.

And you can see on the left where we were in 2021, we had six state-supported trains and 16 VRE trains.

On the right-hand side, we'll be bringing that up to 13 state-supported trains, the 11 on top and the two on west, and then 26 VRE trains.

That's what we're looking to do.

We want folks to have trains

getting them where they want to go, when they want to get there, and we're really thankful for the support we've had from the delegates and we're in a great place moving forward to continue delivering these projects.

Sounds glad to me.

It's Jason Orthner's turn representing the North Carolina Department of Transportation Rail Division as its director.

Thanks, Senator.

And thank you all for the opportunity to present.

And we're obviously very excited to have this meeting of the compact of both states.

I'll just begin by saying our partners at Virginia are critical and those relationships are wonderful to work with the teams at both DRPT and the VPRA in establishing and working together to really move both freight and passenger initiatives forward here between our two states and the work between our two states also benefiting those neighboring states both to the north and to the south as folks will have more transportation options.

Real quick, our division within DOT is a full service division with both freight safety and passenger programs and we're really pleased to support the industry as a whole in North Carolina with 24 short line railroads, two class ones, a North Carolina owned railroad company and NCRR and Amtrak as well.

supporting the full industry with freight improvements as well as safety improvements and then the overlay of a very successful passenger operation is what we do.

This map demonstrates the current service paradigm we have in here in North Carolina, what we call the starter kit of passenger rail service.

A very successful robust service between Raleigh and Charlotte with five trains each way a day.

One of those trains goes through Virginia today, Charlotte to New York, Carolinian service, our other service, the Piedmont service.

And then Amtrak operates several long distance services through our state for round trips a day.

And then there's connecting in Eastern North Carolina, connecting through a bus service, which connects to train service at Wilson, North Carolina today.

We are on track to have another absolute record year for ridership.

and while we did a fifth round trip this year, we're already looking at a sixth round trip for our service between Raleigh and Charlotte as we build out this program.

As this slide indicates, ridership has really grown.

Last year, in 2022, we were already 13% higher than the 2019, which was the full year before the pandemic with nearly 523,000 passengers.

We're going to be well above 600,000 passengers this year

We're already 23% higher than last year for the first three quarters.

And we had just had our best two months in history in October and November, both with over 66,000 passengers each.

So we are doing real well on ridership, which is a great leading indicator that folks really do want to use these types of services.

Next slide.

I'm just going to go through a couple real quick projects that are key to our current service.

One is the Charlotte Gateway Station.

We are moving the primary station for our busiest station in North Carolina at Charlotte from just outside the city, the downtown city core into uptown right next to the business district and the entertainment district.

Our division finished the construction of all the rail side infrastructure on time on budget last year and we are working with the city to deliver the actual station project which will allow passengers to board here by 2028.

That continues to be a very important project for us.

And we're also excited about the fact that intercity rail equipment will be built right here in North Carolina.

The premier intercity rail equipment manufacturer, Siemens Mobility, who has a single major intercity plant in North America at

Sacramento, California is building their second and larger facility in North Carolina, bringing 500 jobs to our state and putting the East Coast and our state on the map for delivery of the trains that we will need together, both our states and states up and down the East Coast as we start to build out a service map and deliver a product that folks really do want to use, a high technology advanced passenger rail product that will be great to ride on.

Next slide.

We are excited about the announcement today or last week and the event we had today, both for the announcement for the first segment of building the Raleigh to Richmond corridor with the Raleigh to Wake Forest segment announced for construction today.

Also very excited and supportive of Virginia's effort for the Long Bridge project, which we know is the single most critical bottleneck project here on the East Coast to ensure that our trains

can get through service, also the folks in the Commonwealth and get into the Northeast Corridor.

What is really key about this service improvement is it connects our two states' robust systems together.

As you heard DJ just mention, the Commonwealth's system

which includes robust service between the Tidewater region, Richmond and DC is growing significantly as well as our services between Raleigh and Charlotte.

What is missing is frequent, fast, reliable and safe rail transportation between the two services that's not impeded by heavy freight traffic corridors.

And that is what the S-Line is about.

So we're excited that that first segment is going to be under construction as soon as we can.

And I truly would like to have it done next year.

So we'll work towards that, but certainly we're gonna move it as fast as we can.

Next slide.

And one of the major reasons that we know North Carolina is the third fastest growing state in the union.

And of course our neighbors to the north are growing at incredible rates as well.

Between our two major urban areas, we represent over 20 million people in population, and we expect that to grow to 25 million by 2040.

And that means having more opportunities to move people with flexibility, with safety between our two states and across the East Coast.

This project, as you heard before, cuts over an hour of travel time off of the current route, but it also adds the capacity needed to run many, many trains per day.

It's also critical to further expanding our system so that in North Carolina we don't just have a North Carolina captive system, but we provide more destinations up and down the East Coast for our citizens and visitors to get to.

Of course, the environmental benefits and the expansion of the service to non-vehicular populations or folks that choose not to drive is a key component of this service.

Next slide.

We're doing a lot of activities on this quarter.

DJ mentioned on the Virginia side of the border that they are already underway with contracts.

We are as well.

In fact, we've already won several grants to support the acquisition as well as the development of the preliminary engineering.

On our side, we've already finished the survey work necessary in this first segment of construction.

So we're ready to start preliminary engineering really quickly here.

We also are working very closely, and we'll see in the next couple slides, with our community partners to make sure that the areas that are served by this quarter, both rural and urban, are ready for their developing communities to have both the station, a mobility hub, and that they're thinking about real estate and development around those stations so that they're engaged and ready to move with us.

Next slide.

We are building one of the most technologically advanced railroads in the Southeast.

And I would say one of the most technologically advanced transportation systems.

We're at 110 miles per hour.

This will be the fastest railroad between the Commonwealth and North Carolina.

And you have to go all the way to Florida to find something that fast.

We're looking at roadway grade separations.

A key component of this is a safe system.

that does not introduce new hazards but allows people both the passengers on board and the traveling public both in vehicles and on non-vehicle transportation to interact safely with this new corridor.

High level platforms to allow passengers to board at level boarding.

freight bypass tracks to ensure that freight trains have the capacity that they need to serve their customers both today and in the future.

And then the advanced signal systems that you would expect for a system that operates like this, including positive train control.

Next slide.

So we're working with these communities.

We're working with them on developing this system so that all of their transportation modes connect at the rail line.

and looking at ways to ensure that their development around the rail line has the appropriate density and appropriate activity to make sure it's successful through transit-oriented development.

So next slide, please.

So community engagement has been critically important to us.

For the last several years, we've been working with S-Line communities up and down North Carolina's portion of the corridor to ensure that they have a full understanding of the project

that we're having those conversations on a full community basis, not just the communities themselves, but as groups as well, so that everybody understands what is going on in the project.

We're focused on partnerships, the goals at the local level, not just at the state level, but the local level about what they want to achieve through this project.

Next slide.

So through that process we've developed visioning for what these downtowns will look like.

A lot of work with our more rural towns to make sure that the type of development that they see in their downtown settings matches what they really want to see come out of this project.

Next slide.

Last year we were awarded through the RACE program a grant to support the development of these mobility hubs, which is essentially a train station with all of the different transportation modes connected at one location.

And so you can see that there are several locations, seven on that slide right there where we're working with those communities to develop these specific hubs in those locations.

And what's great about this is that as we develop the corridor,

The rail corridor element, which is what this investment by the FRA is doing, we have a paired up investment from FTA to support the station development at the same time.

So both elements of the project can be delivered and have that surety of delivery.

We're also very excited about the other grant announcement that was made by FRA to start developing corridors all across North Carolina.

as far west as Asheville and as far east as Wilmington, really using the S-Line corridor connecting to our core route between Raleigh and Charlotte to create a backbone for a statewide network where citizens and visitors can get to really any location in our state with an efficient vehicle or non-vehicle trip to the rail line to get to a longer distance trip.

We're really excited about this program.

It's brand new by the Federal Railroad Administration, and it allows us to really put teeth into the development of these corridors, working with our freight railroad partners, developing a service plan, and then moving into the necessary components of project development and delivery, including environmental font design, right-of-way acquisition, and construction.

Next slide.

So our next steps.

are to continue preparation to submit grant applications.

Obviously, the federal grants is and the opportunities to the bipartisan infrastructure law are really what's gotten us here today recently.

And so we're going to continue to submit those, work with our partners in Virginia, work to support their grant applications as they have done with ours.

together to ensure that we can continue to build this full network.

We're going to continue to finalize our agreements between the DOT and the stakeholders, our robust coordination as I mentioned with the communities, our railroad partners, obviously the Commonwealth of Virginia and other key stakeholders, finding ways to expedite our engineering program and then expediting our construction program.

Our intent with this grant is to deliver this thing as fast as we possibly can

Thank you, everybody.

Thank you, Jason.

And next on the agenda is future of the Compact and additional discussions.

For Senator McInnis, I'll start off and just say that we will continue to work as we have very closely with North Carolina.

On our side, and I think you saw it today in our update, we've had a lot of changes with legislation in 2020 that created the Virginia Passenger Rail Authority to be the implementing body for passenger rail in the Commonwealth.

I have the great privilege of serving as the board chair by virtue of my position.

I get to serve as the board chair of the authority.

As we work to really get the authority stood up, they've issued their first construction contracts last week.

It really truly has been a history making endeavor for us.

We're starting to see how we need to change some other pieces of legislation like the compact to recognize

VPRA's role in delivering the rail program.

And so not for this legislative session, but we've started talking with Julie and the team in North Carolina about the need to go back and revisit some of the compact language to transition responsibility on the Virginia side from DRPT over to the Virginia Passenger Rail Authority.

And then also to look at some of the language in the compact

To Senator Surovell's earlier point, I think compact language says that we're going to meet twice a year.

We haven't done that.

But clearly we've continued and worked very closely with North Carolina to fulfill the intent of the compact.

There may be some opportunities there where we can clean up that language now that we have the ability to meet virtually.

It certainly gives us a lot more flexibility to pull this group together.

So just looking into the future, I think our relationship is strong.

The program is clearly very strong.

and I think that's an opportunity for us going into maybe 2025 to look at how do we clean up that compact language going forward.

But from our side, I couldn't be happier with where we are and what we have waited for the future.

Thank you, Jennifer.

Echoing what Jennifer said, we're happy to adjust the compact language however necessary to address the changes that Virginia has had.

We are also grateful for the virtual option to meet.

We think that will make scheduling much easier.

Know that your teams will continue to work together very closely as we build this corridor out.

We have a regular cadence of meetings, both virtual and in-person with our team up there that will also include Amtrak and CSX and others.

So know that we're like a swan in the water.

Okay, I believe we're ready for public comment at this time.

Yes, I think from a logistics perspective, if folks would use the raise hand function, we can manage traffic a little bit.

And I would ask Andy to facilitate that for us.

So if you would use the raise hand function, we'll get

First person raising their hand is Danny Plauger.

Yeah, I just wanted to send my congratulations to DRPT, VPRA, and obviously Jason Orthner and the team over at NCDOT.

Congratulations on the rail grants.

I see Senator Watkins on here.

It has been a little bit.

but it's exciting times and just to watch all the seeds start to come to fruition.

So my only public comment is congratulations and great work everybody.

David Lyle has raised his hand.

Yes, good afternoon, everybody.

Again, I echo the congratulations on the new funding.

That is a great win for everybody's economy and for travelers.

Just both transportation systems will win from that.

Speaking as a landowner of a segment of section of the S-Line,

Hi, David.

I'll respond to that.

This is DJ Stadtler.

We're going to go through the design process first, which as I said earlier, the procurement is going to go out in the next week or so.

And so the design will take place.

We'll award that contract in about 90 days after the procurement goes out.

And then only when we get the design done will we have a sense for what comes next.

So do you envision that?

Yeah, I certainly understand the timeline there.

What do you expect the design timeframe to be?

What are you putting in your RFPs?

Is that six months or a year or?

Yeah, it's between those two.

My sense is it would be between six months and a year.

We've had surveyors that have gone out and I hope you've received a letter.

We had letters go out to let you know surveyors would be on property.

Fantastic.

Hey, I live in Richmond, Virginia.

I'll start and then I'll probably get kicked off when I say something that's not right.

But look, we want as many trains to go through Main Street as possible because the ability to go from city center to city center, whether it's

Charlotte to Raleigh or Raleigh to Richmond or Richmond to DC, that city center is really what we're looking for.

Unfortunately,

If you want to go south of Main Street, the infrastructure just isn't there.

You've got a couple one-track sections that we just don't have the capacity.

Eventually, we would love for more trains to come through Main Street.

In fact, a lot of the 2030 plans are to have trains coming through Main Street.

Mr. Chairman, this is Mike Fox.

I was going to suggest it appears some of these questions are very technical and specific to a site location.

All right, well, we have two people in the queue.

If your question is policy related, please go ahead and ask if it's more specific to a project.

Like Secretary Foxx just said, we would ask you to put it in the chat.

Yes, thank you.

I am in the Raleigh, North Carolina area, and this is an exciting development for our state, for our area, and for the entire Southeast United States.

My question stems from the fact that I understand that the grant received for the S-Line, which is approximately $1 billion, is not enough for full build-out of the corridor from Raleigh to Richmond.

The first question is, what are the endpoints

that we do see for the likely, you know, what scope will this cover?

And the second is what is sort of like the planning efforts and expectations as far as what and when funding might be received to achieve full build out of the corridor all the way from Raleigh to Richmond?

Yeah, I'll take it.

Good question.

So quickly, what we are doing, what you're seeing right now in our current efforts is 30% engineering is being done for the entirety of the corridor from Raleigh to Richmond.

So there is a level of advancement through last year's grant award that is advancing the whole project over that length, over that particular segment, which is 162 miles.

So it is not a short length of corridor length.

The segment between Raleigh and Wake Forest actually is what's funded on the southern end.

Obviously, you heard on the northern end what's happening in Virginia with Long Bridge.

But on the southern end, it's construction of that first segment, the most complex segment that actually extends service from Raleigh up to Wake Forest.

One of the things that we need to do and demonstrate through this program is that we can have a service outcome

There was an extension of service that follows the completion of a piece of infrastructure.

All right, and this will be our last

Comment, Byron Armstrong.

Again, if yours is policy related, please go ahead.

OK, hi everyone.

Alright, I'm a lifelong Norfolk resident.

Very excited to see this.

I actually just came back from a drive from Greensboro.

Spent the whole time wondering.

Maybe I could take the train for this soon.

Anyways, is there somewhere I can maybe

I can answer that one.

Yes, we will post them to the DRPT website after today's meeting and we will share them with all of today's attendees in a follow up email.

OK, thank you very much.

OK, thank you very much and thank those for participating in the public comment.

And again, if you have a specific question about the project, be sure and put it in the in the question queue or the appropriate avenue for that and reach out to the appropriate folks, because this is an exciting event.

This is who would have thought three months ago or for that matter, three weeks ago, we would be having the conversations we've had today.

based on everything that's happened in the last, now going on six years since we've had a meeting.

So a very exciting time for North Carolina and Virginia and a lot of opportunities.

We're seeing an exponential growth as Virginia is as well as North Carolina.

And the main thing that I'm waiting on is when Virginia is gonna bring the J6-11.

back down to North Carolina and put it on the rail and ride us around in that great last passenger steam engine, which I had ridden before and anxiously await another ride.

Great.

I've transitioned to my car, but

I agree.

These are all very exciting developments.

It was especially helpful to see what's going on in North Carolina and all the opportunities that that S-Line connection will open up to Virginians.

And a lot's happened since we last met.

We now have our new Virginia Passenger Rail Authority, which I forgot we just created that in 2020 to basically coordinate all this stuff.

And we got a whole bunch of new compact members.

I know Delia Ward was on it with me originally, but my other Senate colleague, Senator Cosgrove, just moved on and retired.

I'm going to get a new senator on here soon.

But I feel like we're planning the future here and for both of our states.

And I think our work together can only benefit us all tremendously as we go forward.

We have two very thriving, growing states with a bunch of thriving, growing areas.

And it's all very exciting.

Absolutely.

Any other member on the line wish to make any closing comments before I ask for an adjournment?

Hearing none, I want to give a special invitation on behalf of myself and Chairman Fox and all our members of the

North Carolina side this coming year in 2024, the United States Open Men's Championship of Golf sponsored by the United States Golf Association will be in Pinehurst.

It'll be the second week of June.

We will be running some special trains from Raleigh to the cradle of American golf here in Pinehurst every day.

And I just happen to be sitting in Pinehurst right now.

and we'll be running those trips from Raleigh to Pinehurst a couple of three times a day.

I believe Jason's already waving the green flag that we've got the okay to make this happen.

So we're really looking forward to that.

We invite you to participate in that exercise and to come down and spend some money with us here in North Carolina and keep North Carolina green.