Virginia-North Carolina Interstate High-Speed Rail Compact Meeting   9/8/2026

And are we live?

I think we are now live.

All right.

Well, I will kick things off just by welcome everyone.

I'm Mariia Zimmerman.

I am the director of the Department of Rail and Public Transportation for the Commonwealth of Virginia.

We will be doing introductions here shortly.

We will start first with Senator Surovell from Virginia, who is one of our co-chairs for the Virginia North Carolina Interstate High Speed Rail Compact.

Great.

Thank you for everybody for being on here today.

I'm very excited about this compact.

At this point, I might be the longest serving member on it, although I haven't gone and compared the

My North Carolina colleagues notes.

I think delegate word actually might be longer than me, but my name is Scott Surovell.

I'm a state Senator from Northern Virginia.

I represent the Mount Vernon part of Fairfax County.

I'm also the Senate Majority Leader here in Virginia.

And I think I've served on this commission now, this compact now for about at least 10 years.

And I'm really excited we're having meetings again.

We've made some really exciting progress here in Virginia.

On high speed rail, we've got the Long Bridge under construction over the Potomac River, which is the worst rail, passenger rail bottleneck on the entire East Coast.

I know people all the way from North Carolina to New Orleans are waiting for us to get this bridge done.

And I know we had about a billion dollars of another billion, $1.7 billion grant on the S-Line between Petersburg and Raleigh, which I think is a lot of why we're here today.

I'm just I'm really looking forward to having more conversation, figuring out how we can work together to make high speed rail reality.

And I am joined here on this call from Senator Glen Sturtevant from Chesterfield County area, Colonial Heights area, which is south of Richmond.

And also I'm joined with my colleagues from the House of Delegates.

I'm not sure if they're on, but Delegate Jeion Ward, who's the chairman of our Commerce and Labor Committee, who has served on this as long as I have.

Doug and Jackie Glass from Norfolk, and delegate Eric Phillips, who is I believe in Southside.

Thank you so much, Senator.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and glad to be aboard, especially looking forward to hear about the Long Bridge.

We have talked about it and had conversation about it on many, many occasions and over the course of time and years, and I am so thankful and so happy that we're seeing evidence of it moving forward in an expedited way.

I do think, I just got on late.

I've been in meetings all day, so I'm not sure who's on.

I know that Senator Lazzara I think might be on, and I'm not sure who else got on.

So at the appropriate time, I'll let them announce themselves.

We have a lot to cover in a short period of time, and we want to also be able to allow some time for compact members for discussion.

We will have public comment at the end of this meeting, so if you would like to provide public comment, just keep that in mind.

We will be using our end portion of the meeting to be able to allow for public comment.

We thought that we would start things off here as well by just getting a little bit of quick background about the compact goals.

and what we are working on kind of a staff level and then provide updates on lots of the activity that is happening in Virginia and North Carolina.

I'm also really excited to see we are joined today by someone from the Federal Railroad Administration who has been an essential partner for us in the work that we'll be talking about today.

So let's kick it off and we can go to our next slide here and we will start our program.

As mentioned, we're going to kind of give you updates on everything that's going on.

We want to spend a little bit of time to talk about the future of the compact, as Senator Surovell mentioned.

It's been a little while since the compact met.

And so I think we're really interested to hear from the delegates of like how you would like to engage with each other and with us as a compact here over the coming year.

We are here to support you through that work, both the staff at the Department of Rail and Public Transportation and Virginia Passenger Rail Authority, as well as our partners at the North Carolina Department of Transportation.

So we also want to allow some time for that.

So lots to cover.

So next slide, please.

So just a little bit about the compact.

And it gets a little confusing because we have two sort of parallel but supportive efforts with each other.

The Virginia North Carolina compact was created in 2004.

It was passed in legislation both by the Virginia legislature as well as the North Carolina legislatures.

And it identified 10 members, five from each of the

States to serve on the compact and we were really formed with the goal to advance high-speed passenger rail between and within our states as well as to look for opportunities to study, develop, and promote a plan for the design, construction, financing, and operation of high-speed rail service.

This was coming out of the time where there was a lot of activity happening

kind of nationally and particularly here in the southeast to look at ways that we could improve passenger rail service and identify ways for more dedicated and or reliable funding to meet the investment needs for our passenger rail improvements along the southeastern corridor.

The compact, starting with those two states and expanding into the Southeast Corridor Commission, these are two separate

Efforts, but they're very much aligned efforts.

The Southeast Corridor Commission broadens our geographic footprint beyond Virginia and North Carolina, where we also work very closely with our partners in Georgia, in Florida, and kind of all points in between as we are looking at opportunities through the Carolinas into Florida.

with Georgia and really promoting and expanding opportunities for passenger rail between all of our states.

I should also note that the Virginia North Carolina Compact is one of several federally designated corridors by law that was created in 1992.

Our states are very much involved in the state Amtrak intercity passenger rail committee to also help work with Amtrak as we look at very close coordination around state supported Amtrak service, which I know we'll hear more about today too.

So that's a little bit about us.

The next slide is just showing you the map where you can see

these designated high-speed corridors that were created because we have that special federal designation that does enable us to secure some federal funding to support those corridor and commission activities and so Julie will talk about that next but we have been able to utilize that funding

to support some studies that we have undertaken collectively through the Southeast Corridor Commission, as well as specifically for the Virginia North Carolina Compact and to be able to support efforts happening in each of our states.

Thank you, Mariia.

Julie White, deputy secretary at NCDOT for multimodal.

And one of those units includes the rail division.

Can we advance the slide?

So we're excited today to share with you that the compact applied for and won a $200,000 federal grant matched by $100,000 each from the state of Virginia and from North Carolina DOT to advance our Southeast rail network analysis.

The funds were obligated a few months ago and will begin this fall with our consultant team to execute the study.

One of our key challenges in the Southeast is the shared freight and passenger infrastructure.

And the purpose of this study is to identify bottlenecks and plan for future improvements.

Where there are freight bottlenecks, there cannot be the advancement of passengers.

So this is one of those win-wins we always seek when we do work in the Southeast to find the wind that is both for freight and for passenger.

The outcome of this study will be a coordinated plan among the Southeastern states, identifying projects with the highest benefits and the potential funding sources.

So there's our hope that what we are able to do is identify future grant applications to address those bottlenecks.

Next slide.

The study will build upon our prior successes and knowledge, the Southeast Rail Plan, which was done in cooperation with the FRA,

In the SEC Commission, we've done the Economic Benefits of High Performance Rail in the Southeast Report, and we've done the Development Strategy for High Performance Rail in the Southeast.

They've all been helpful in setting the stage, and at the end of this current study, we'll have actionable items to pursue funding for.

Emily, you want to introduce yourself?

Sure.

You can go to the next slide, please.

I'm Emily Stock.

I'm Chief of Rail Transportation for the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation.

And I'm here to give Virginia updates from DRPT.

Next slide.

And I'll hit the highlights of these slides in the interest of time.

You're welcome to reference links and details and reach out to me anytime with questions.

I'll start with an overview of DRPT.

Virginia is unique in that our rail and public transportation functions have been housed outside of the DOT since 1992.

Like VDOT, DRPT reports up to the Virginia Secretary of Transportation and the Commonwealth Transportation Board.

We offer Commonwealth wide technical support and advocacy toward our mission of innovative transportation solutions.

The current six year improvement program for DRPT allocates over seven billion dollars in state and federal funding through capital operating and planning grants that support transit and rail.

DRPT's rail team carries out a freight rail grant function and a planning function, including long range passenger rail planning,

that dovetails with the Virginia Passenger Rail Authority's work to implement passenger rail projects.

All of this is covered in a statewide rail plan.

So DRPT is in the midst of updating the Virginia statewide rail plan right now.

We update the plan every four years according to Federal Railroad Administration guidance.

It includes short and long range strategies for passenger and freight rail, and it measures the impacts of rail improvements, most of which are true public-private partnerships with the Virginia Passenger Rail Authority, the Virginia Railway Express in Northern Virginia, our commuter service in Virginia, as well as freight partners, Norfolk Southern, CSX, and Virginia's nine short line railroads.

Next slide.

We've conducted extensive public outreach for this plan already to develop innovative strategies and understand where our partners and the public want rail to go next in Virginia.

Next slide.

And you're in luck because this evening at 6.30, we're hosting our second virtual public meeting for the rail plan update.

This slide shows a QR code to register and participate.

Please do so if you can.

Next slide.

Potential expansions and new corridors.

Next slide, please.

DRPT expects to wrap up the rail plan in January, but Virginia rail planning will not stop there.

We're continuing to work with our partners to advance Virginia's FRA accepted corridor identification and development program corridors, also known as CID corridors.

CID comes with the potential for federal funding to develop service development plans,

for enhancements to the corridors you see on the slide.

Some are fully developed, some are less so.

In red, you'll see the Amtrak-led Cardinal Corridor effort to bring that long-distance service from three days a week to seven days a week between DC and Clifton Forge and beyond.

The VPRA NCDOT-led DC to Charlotte Corridor is shown in purple, and you'll hear more about that in North Carolina's remarks.

DRPT is poised to advance the two corridors that it sponsors.

In green is the East-West Commonwealth Corridor that would link Hampton Roads and Richmond to Charlottesville and the New River Valley with passenger rail.

And the DC to Bristol Corridor is in blue.

It would eventually extend service down toward the Tennessee border.

Sorry, I think you may have lost us.

We were wrapping up on this end, and we will turn it to you, DJ Stadtler, to give an update on the projects that are underway.

Wonderful.

Thanks.

Good afternoon, everybody.

And again, my name is DJ Stadtler.

I'm the Executive Director of the Virginia Passenger Rail Authority.

And as Mariia said, I'm going to give you an update on some of the projects we're working on in VPRA.

So if you could forward the slides, please probably

Two more.

One more.

Perfect.

So for those who don't know, VPRA was created in 2020 by the General Assembly.

We are here to add the infrastructure that is required to give us more frequency.

There's information here on who we are and how we're created, but I think folks here, for the most part, are up to speed on that.

So if we go to the next slide, I think you'll hear what or you'll see what Senator Surovell was talking about.

We are doing projects in Virginia, but the projects that we are working on are going to impact the rail network from as far north as Boston, as far west of Chicago, all the way down to New Orleans and down to Florida.

So you can see all of the different passenger and freight traffic that goes through Virginia.

What we are working on to add capacity will benefit both freight and passenger really for a long, long time in the entire region.

Going to the next slide, you'll see just a background of our ridership.

One of the things that Virginia has really benefited from is we have dedicated rail funds, starting from 2006 when the Rail Enhancement Fund was created.

This was a small fund that was used for freight projects.

You can see the course of our ridership.

Our first train was the Lynchburg train, which was the first Priya train under 2009 that was started in 2009.

Our ridership has been consistently increasing.

You see the different kind of milestones where we have made progress both on infrastructure and on funding.

We had a dip in 2020 and 2021 as I think most public transportation networks did because of COVID but we very quickly at the end of 22 and in 23 surpassed the records that we were setting in 2019.

So what this shows is a couple things.

Number one, dedicated funding allows us to put more trains out there for passengers and the more trains you have out there

folks will definitely ride them and we've seen that as in 2025 and we're about to get final 2026 numbers we continue to set records as we move forward.

So if you go to the next slide you'll see a slide after this just a breakdown of our financial information this is a pie chart that shows you again the next slide please all of the different move that that moved

All the different funding that goes into our almost $8 billion financial plan.

Now part of that is what we pay for operations, operating the train, the subsidy that we pay Amtrak and our partnership with them.

Some of this is for the capital investments that we are delivering.

The most significant is the $2.7 billion Long Bridge that we'll talk about in a couple minutes.

But what this shows you is that we rely on a variety of different sources to fund this program.

The biggest piece is the bottom, kind of bottom left, that's our VPRA fund.

that's the Commonwealth Rail Fund that comes directly from our tax dollars and through the Transportation Trust Fund in Virginia down to to VPRA and then if you look around the wheel and I'm not going to go through each and every one of these but we get money from passenger ticket revenues we get a contribution from Amtrak who's contributing to the infrastructure improvement as well and a lot of different places a billion dollars in federal grants to move this forward so it's really a group of different sources that are delivering this entire program

Looking at the next slide, you see how our Virginia Transportation Trust Fund works.

There are a lot of small writing and a bunch of different boxes, but basically there are taxes on things, be it motor fuel, DMV taxes, motor vehicle rental.

All of that money goes into the Transportation Trust Fund, the Commonwealth Transportation Fund.

As you see on the right, almost half of that goes into the Transportation Trust Fund.

and then seven and a half percent of that transportation trust fund goes to what's called the Commonwealth Rail Fund.

That's where we get our money.

93% of that goes to VPRA and 7% goes to DRPT to continue running the freight programs and other programs that they run.

The bottom line, literally the bottom line, you can see between the start of this process through 2031, we're going to pull in about $1.9 billion to contribute to the work that we're doing, both train operations

and Capital Improvements.

So moving forward to the next slide.

This is the

Network of grants that we have opportunity to go after and also what's been obligated on the right hand side.

These are the grants that have been awarded and you see they're varying from small station projects to money for a layer facility that we're putting in Richmond to big 729 million dollars to contribute to funding all of our phase two projects to include the completion of Long Bridge and some of the other sightings that we'll talk about in just a minute.

And then on the left side, you'll see the grants that are currently open or just closed that we're continuing to move forward in the process, hopefully will be successful in those.

FRA has been really, DOT has been really supportive of the work we're doing because

We the Commonwealth have been very transparent.

Hey, this is what we're going to deliver.

This is what we need to deliver it.

And this is what you'll get when we deliver it.

And we've really done a good job of following that spectrum of planning, constructing and moving things forward.

So on the next slide.

You'll see a little bit about our capital projects.

Moving ahead one more.

The biggest project that we've already talked about is the Long Bridge.

So the Long Bridge is the bridge that crosses the Potomac River during peak times at 98% capacity.

On the left hand side, you see it's currently two tracks that are shared passenger and freight.

And then they go north to three tracks to right around the Palm Plaza.

And then you split two tracks up into Union Station and two tracks go further through the Virginia Avenue Tunnel.

That's a freight line.

The right-hand side shows you exactly what we are building at least north of Alexandria.

We are building a second Long Bridge that will give us two dedicated passenger tracks, one north and south, and then we're adding a fourth track in Alexandria that will take us all the way through Alexandria down to where the rail kicks off to the west.

So what we have currently is basically like a highway that goes from five lanes to three lanes to two lanes back to three lanes to two lanes.

This is going to give us a dedicated four lanes or four tracks freight and passenger all the way down south of Alexandria, where we have the most congestion right now.

This will all be done in 2030.

And while it's a Virginia led project, we've had great partnership from North Carolina, from the District of Columbia, from folks all around, because as I said earlier, it truly does benefit the entire region.

So next slide, I'll go through these pretty quickly.

One of the things we had to do to build the Long Bridge, if you see the picture on the top right, you see the existing Long Bridge and the new Long Bridge.

They're separate entities crossing the river, but as you go north into the District of Columbia, they become one structure.

And so we're going to have to do a lot of work on a live railroad as we push this forward.

As I said earlier, we started this process in 2020.

We believe the bridge will be done in 2030.

We are still on schedule to get it done in 2030.

But to do that, we've got to have time to work on the bridge where there are no trains there.

Unfortunately, in the District of Columbia, you can only work from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

There are noise and vibration limitations.

So in order to give the team time to work on the bridge, we set up work windows, which means no traffic goes through that area between 8.15 in the morning and 1 p.m., giving them just about five hours to work every day.

Significant schedule changes had to take place.

Amtrak, VRE, North Carolina, really great partnership in getting that done.

And what we're looking to do is get the bridge done as quickly as possible so we can get service back to Nord.

And you see just some construction pictures there.

On the next slide, you'll see just a little bit more about the service that we have during Long Bridge.

As you can see on the bottom right, service from Virginia Beach going north.

What used to be trains, we have replaced with buses.

We've got bus service from Richmond, from Virginia Beach, the Hampton Roads area, also stopping in Williamsburg, supplement what used to be train service.

We, more than anybody, are looking forward to those becoming trains again.

And then you see the other routes, the long distance routes that Emily talked about.

You see the Carolinian that goes down to North Carolina and some of the other long distance routes headed south all the way to Savannah and then to Florida.

Next slide please.

Here you see what it's going to look like when Long Bridge is done and you see all of the additional frequencies that will give you basically hourly service from

Richmond up to DC.

The congestion that we have here just outside of the District of Columbia and on I-64 is significant on the highways.

These trains will give folks another option to get where they want to go when they want to get there.

Next slide just gives you a brief overview of some of the other projects.

I'm not going to go into these in detail, but when we signed this deal with CSX back in 2020, we talked about the Long Bridge, we talked about the fourth track through Alexandria, but then we also identified different strategic places where we can add sidings, third tracks along the entire network.

And you see them there, phases three and four, which are not funded.

are contemplated to fill in these gaps.

And if you look closely, you'll see where there are third tracks that end here.

Many times that's right by a big body of water because there's a bridge that needs to be replaced.

We're looking to do that in phases three and four.

Our end goal is to have three tracks the entire way from just south of Fredericksburg up to DC because that's where our commuter trains run, the VRE trains run, and having that a full three-track network will give us much more flexibility to have many, many, many more trains.

Next slide just shows a couple of the sidings south of Fredericksburg.

Those are in motion and they are continuing to move forward.

And then the next slide

We'll just talk about the S-Line.

So this is really where we unlock the service all the way south.

The blue line that you see there is the existing line.

The dotted line is the S-Line.

And I know Jason's going to talk a lot more about this, so I don't want to steal his thunder.

But this is where we're doing the design work now that will give us a passenger only option from just south of Petersburg

all the way down to the North Carolina and further south, adding a station in La Crosse, Virginia, which is a town steeped in railroad history.

This is the work that we are partnering with North Carolina on.

And when this work is done, it'll take an hour and 10, hour and 15 minutes off of the trip time between Charlotte, Raleigh and Washington, D.C., just making the trip much more attractive.

And then the final slide, I believe I have

Thank you, DJ.

We will turn it now to Jason.

Jason will present and then we'll have some time for discussion and questions as well.

That is an excellent segue.

Thank you, DJ.

And thank you, compact members and staff.

Really appreciate the opportunity to provide a brief update on North Carolina's work

Next slide, please.

I am the Rail Division Director at NCDOT for those that don't know.

This first slide just kind of captures North Carolina's side of the equation as far as what is the impact of passenger rail on our state.

On the left is the ridership of our state supported services, which is the Piedmont Carolinian Services.

We've seen a 59% increase in ridership since 2019.

year over year increases in ridership.

And we're definitely seeing that trajectory continue as we move forward.

Our system map is there on the right side.

The state supported services are currently collected in the corridor, which is our high density corridor between Charlotte and Raleigh.

And that's where the Piedmont operates.

We have four round trips a day.

And then we have another round trip that operates daily from Charlotte to

New York through Virginia in both directions.

Both trains are very successful and certainly are providing a place to build future services in North Carolina.

Also on top of those services are Amtrak's system services.

They have four long distance trains that operate through our state as well as an existing system of throughway bus service that is an Amtrak branded shuttle service connecting Eastern North Carolina to Wilson.

and that's represented on the map.

Next slide, please.

So we've had several years of success in winning grants over the last several years.

The grants, I'm not going to go through every one of them here, but they represent over $1.2 billion, basically focused on the S-Line corridor.

In addition to this, we've just recently won a $300 million grant from the Federal River Administration

for more work between Greensboro and Cary, which is sort of in the center of that drawing.

That's a very heavily used piece of this network and part of the overall southeast quarter network.

So that will add additional safety and capacity improvements.

But what we're doing right now on the S-Line really is advancing the completion of the acquisition of the quarter North Carolina and the preliminary engineering in concert with between us and Virginia.

for the full line between Raleigh and Richmond, and then funded for construction between Raleigh and Wake Forest.

And we're working with Federal River Administration very closely on all of those activities to make sure we advance them in the smartest way possible.

Next slide, please.

So this map essentially shows you what that centerpiece, the S-Line, does in connecting our two states together.

DJ and Emily did a great job of talking about the expansive work that Virginia is doing.

North Carolina has a bold vision.

I'll go into a little more detail next.

But what's really missing to connect those two

is the S-Line to ensure we've got a frequent, fast, and reliable service that is flowing between our two states and completing journeys for the citizens, both our states and beyond the two states.

Currently, the A-Line is the route that passenger trains take.

It's a very heavily congested route connecting Virginia, North Carolina, and then all the way down to Florida.

and a large number of freight trains on it.

And the S-Line provides an opportunity for us to really expand the ability to connect number of frequencies.

And as DJ mentioned, reduced, significantly reduced the travel time, not just between our two states, but folks traveling from North Carolina all the way into the Northeast.

And as I mentioned, we have Penn Engineering and right-of-way acquisition underway, and we have the award for construction for Raleigh to Wake Forest.

Next slide.

We call it the missing link because really it is that missing component.

There's not capacity on the A-line.

Really, we build the capacity on this new route and we can do it in a way that we create a core of this fast and reliable, which are really what we're looking to achieve through the project.

Again, this slide shows you the advancement of those activities, what is happening with engineering between Raleigh and Richmond,

and as well as the funded for construction component from Raleigh to Wake Forest.

Again, at the bottom left is the, again, we have about a total of $1.2 billion in funding available to advance this project between our two states.

Next slide.

The S-Line really is the core corridor as part of the Southeast Corridor connecting through North Carolina to Raleigh, Greensboro, Charlotte, and then points south.

But we've also, similar to what Virginia presented in their CID program, there are several quarters in North Carolina that are also advancing on the same FRA program.

Those are listed there as the top seven quarters on the left side of this slide.

And then we have some potential future applications to the program at the bottom left.

But I did want to highlight one important component of this, and that was

that we're really focused in addition to the S-Line, focusing on an Asheville to Wilmington corridor that flows through Asheville, Salisbury, Greensboro, Raleigh, and on down to Wilmington utilizing pieces of the existing corridor, adding some new segments that we call the East-West Connector.

This is on the next slide.

and this corridor will basically connect our mountain regions that do not currently have passenger rail service to our coast, which also doesn't have passenger service to the core network to two major projects, Asheville to Salisbury, which is a project that we're currently estimating at $665 million and would require 20% non-federal match of about $133 million to complete that segment.

Similarly,

The Raleigh to Wilmington section, which we call the Southeastern North Carolina Passenger Rail Project, is about $810 million and will require about $162 million non-federal match.

Next slide.

We did an economic impact analysis of just

the Asheville to Salisbury quarter and determined that just the implementation phase of this project would generate over a billion dollars in economic output.

Then the annual recurring impact of having, of providing that service would be $60 million annually as for the operation of that service.

Both, I mean, this quarter would provide a very needed sort of long distance,

Travel opportunity for our citizens in the western part of our state and would provide those citizens the opportunity to connect to this quarter into the National Rail Network.

Next slide.

And then this is sort of a close up on the Raleigh to Wilmington quarter.

It would operate through Goldsboro.

Again, both quarters would have three round trips daily.

and of course there's the requirement for the non-federal match there as well, $162 million for this quarter as well.

And it would connect directly into the heart of Wilmington, into the convention center and the college district right there in Wilmington.

So a great growing section of Wilmington that will receive raw service.

Next slide.

We continue our work with communities across the S-Line

all the way from the northern part of the state in Henderson all the way to Sanford and Point South, including Southern Pines to work with these communities on the visioning of how the rail system would connect with the rest of their transportation and economic development needs.

And we've done some great partnering with these communities to create renderings and advance some coordination

on how the different transportation modes would connect to the stations and how the stations would be vital centers of burgeoning commerce in these towns.

So it's been a great matter of coordination with these towns as well.

Next slide.

And we couldn't really do a lot of the work without some significant partnerships.

There are groups throughout our state that are advocating for and supporting

Rail development in our state and have been great voices for how we need to sort of develop and manage our development of the system going forward.

Next slide.

And that concludes my update.

Thank you.

Yep.

Thank you, Jason.

As folks heard, there is a lot going on in our two states.

I should also note there's a lot going on nationally that also creates, I think, important context of both what's happening now, but also the future and some unknowns that we are closely tracking.

Folks are probably well aware.

There's the merger application between Norfolk Southern and Union Pacific.

Both of our states have been tracking that proposal before the STB and are keeping a close eye on what it may mean and the implications for the passenger rail and our agreements that we have with those freight rail partners.

There is also a proposal for Amtrak restructuring which is underway and we will be hearing more about that.

Later this year, that's something that the U.S. Department of Transportation is also very closely involved with as a major partner with Amtrak.

And so again, we are monitoring that situation because of our involvement on St. Percy.

We are also, you know, feel it's important for both of our states to have a voice and be engaged in those discussions and that information as it becomes available to make sure

Our state supported Amtrak routes will continue to receive the support and the priority that we feel is important.

And then as if that weren't enough, there is also the Federal Service Transportation Reauthorization.

The current Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act expires at the end of this month, September 30th.

And so there's a short term continuing resolution that Congress just approved.

I think that was last week, but we are also

Closely monitoring and weighing in and looking to see how things unfold for the longer term.

Again, it was important for the IIJA, the Infrastructure Investment Jobs Act, that it created a number of rail programs that enabled a lot of the work we just talked about.

And so really, as we look to see what the future for federal rail investment and partnership will look like over the next five to six year period will be important.

So we don't have a lot of details on where those things are at because they are all in play, but we did want to

Note that each of our states collectively are tracking that.

And I just want to give a shout out Julie White, who is the chair of the American Public Transportation Association's Intercity High-Speed Rail Committee as well is closely tracking that from a national level.

as is DJ Stadtler is our executive director who's been closely involved too.

So I will pause there.

And we really just wanted to see if there are questions, if there are comments, things from our delegate members that you wanted to follow up with what was presented, as well as we kind of talk about where we want to take the compact going forward.

So I don't know, I can't see, so I'm gonna rely on the tech team or folks just wanna come off mute and chime in.

And again, kind of introduce yourself for folks.

This is Glen Sturtevant from Virginia.

I was just curious, the Long Bridge funding was before my time and

I think this is my first meeting as a member of the Compact.

But is the S-Line sort of our next big project?

DJ, do you mind taking a cut at that?

Sure, I'd be happy to.

And the Long Bridge was really funded in full because folks were able to understand how important it was to both freight and passenger up and down the East Coast.

And it was a project that had literally been talked about for decades before.

And Virginia stepped up and said, you know what, we are willing to bring money to the table and get this work done.

I think it was the work of the Virginia DRPT group before I got here and the coalition of folks that petitioned the General Assembly, petitioned the feds and said, look, this is how important this project is.

Getting that same energy around the S-Line is the key to moving that forward.

The S-Line is one of many projects that are going to be important, and as Jason talked about, we're in the early stages of design now.

When next February comes and we have a better understanding of the costs, I think this group will be in a better position to say, okay, what's next on this?

If we were to do the whole S-Line all at once, that number might be big, but if we looked at it and stair stepped and said, all right, here's piece one, here's piece two, and here's a plan for how over a period of time we can get everything funded, I think that's the right approach.

My personal opinion, until we know February ballpark of what those numbers are, I think the decision would be premature of what comes next.

No, no, I appreciate that.

And I think the partnership with Virginia on this topic is critical.

We're working through the engineering together.

Also, the Federal Railroad Administration is very heavily involved with this process and helping us package this thing to make it as efficient as it possibly can.

And February is that that's when the engineering consultant report comes back?

Or what was February?

We'd know in February what the numbers are.

Yeah, so the design work is underway now and they have a due date of coming back to it's not exactly 30%.

It's

up to 30% design.

There are six segments and some will be further along than other on the S-Line.

But in February of 2027, we'll have a much better feel of the ballpark that these numbers fall into.

We will also have around that same timeframe, Senator, for Virginia, the update for our statewide rail plan, which also is kind of looking at the next 20-year horizon, including projects like the S-Line, but also other

Corners that have been identified and kind of, again, for Transforming Rail in Virginia that has been funding the Long Bridge work.

We are in phases one and two of that.

Actually, this is Mike Fox.

I know Senator McInnis had to jump off.

He had another engagement.

I'll introduce myself.

I am a member of the compact appointed by the governor.

Our compact has one gubernatorial appointment and two appointments from the House and the Senate.

I joined the compact in 2017.

I'm also a member of the Board of Transportation, have been for almost 14 years.

was chairman of the Board of Transportation in the last eight years.

And so I've been on and glad.

I will echo all the comments.

I'm glad we're meeting again.

And we've got a lot going on.

Jason and Julie do a great job.

I guess I neglected to mention, I'm also the governor's appointment to the North Carolina Railroad, which is a pretty key partner in all of this as well.

I guess a couple of questions.

One, would y'all make sure that you forward all the slide decks and information to the compact members?

Because there's some really great information in there.

The second one is, I know when we met last, we'd received a grant from then Congressman, gosh, who was it?

Congressman Price had helped with a grant for us to look at engaging and expanding the North Carolina Virginia group to the entire Southeast.

And maybe not for this meeting, but maybe for our next meeting.

Would love an update on that because I was recently, along with Jason and

Julie at the Regional Southern Transportation Group.

And the board members from Georgia and South Carolina are very interested in rail and would love to become a part of the greater effort.

Thank you, Mike.

Appreciate that.

And I can give just a quick, Mike is referring to Sashto.

We were at Sashto recently and our board members were there.

And so to your question about growing the compact, so the Southeast Commission is the way we currently all engage in order for the other states to become members of the compact.

They have to pass legislation

into their statute exactly in the words of what Virginia and North Carolina did.

And to date, the commission members, which are their point people to that conversation have indicated that the state legislature isn't quite there yet.

I think in my assessment over the years I've been doing this, I think it is growing.

I think as Virginia and North Carolina continue to show record ridership and the incredible investments and return on investments we're seeing,

I think we're getting the attention of our fellow Southeastern states.

So we remain ever hopeful.

But the great thing is through the commission, we all still work together on all of these research products and studies.

Like our study that we're gonna be undertaking right now with our most recent grant, it will be across the whole Southeast.

So all of the states will benefit and we'll be working closely with them on it.

But we hope you'll keep having those conversations and keep encouraging those states to go ahead and join the compact.

Great.

Thank you, Julie.

I had a couple questions.

Again, this is Surovell.

Virginia.

I thought I had read that we got like a 1.1 billion or multi, it was over a billion dollar grant for the S-Line during the Biden administration.

But when I saw the numbers that were lined up on one of those charts, it didn't seem like the federal, the FRA grant was a billion.

Did we get that full grant or is it spread over time or something?

Yeah, so I'll take that.

So shame on me.

So my chart was just the Virginia grants, but the billion that you're talking about went to North Carolina for a segment near Wake Forest.

Right, so yes, the billion, it was 1.09 billion federal funds.

It was awarded for the first and most complex segment.

It's kind of like our Long Bridge project on our side for the Raleigh to Wake Forest complex.

Project coming out of the very urbanized area of Raleigh to build that first segment of the S-Line coming north.

So that is that is the first construction segment.

And yes, we are seeing FRA kind of release that funding as we hit milestones, you know, kind of like we've talked about.

So I thought at some point I'd seen somebody mention that this S-Line thing is probably a seven to eight billion dollar proposition or something, I forget.

when I saw that or whether that number is still the case.

But it seems like the big money on this stuff, I mean, we've been putting a lot of money in Virginia and you all have been putting in your state money as well, but the real big money seems to come from the feds.

And I know that rail was a big priority to the Biden administration.

President Biden famously used to ride the Amtrak every day to work or whatever, and he was a big train guy.

Has any of the

Federal activity that's happened over the last couple years sort of affected the ability to get big rail projects like this funded in the short term because I sort of felt like while that money was there, we scored whatever it was, the billion for North Carolina, Virginia got $800 million for the Long Bridge.

I'm sort of wondering whether that window is still open or sort of how we need to be thinking about going after that big money.

And at one point,

We had talked about having a meeting with ourselves and the Virginia North Carolina delegation in DC.

We had it on the books, and then I think it got taken off.

Now it's a great question.

I will start and I also want to note we're almost at public comment time too.

We do have and we will make sure all the compact members get and we will make available publicly on the website too kind of a summary that we had a little bits and pieces here, but a summary of the federal grants that have been received for the two states.

I will say my understanding from North Carolina and also our experience here in Virginia, the current Trump administration, the FRA administrative, they've been a very good partner for both of our states.

The administrator has come and visited our projects.

He's met with us.

Secretary Duffy has also been very supportive, again, has kind of been out in the field and looking at what's going on.

I think speaking to

the importance of our two states of what really can happen nationally with us.

So I think we have had progress.

Of course, the need is always greater than the resources are there.

So we haven't been successful with every grant application but we are continuing to put those in.

We're waiting to see, Chrissy is the next kind of big announcement that we're waiting on that both of our states have put in investments.

I mentioned, I think the bigger questions editor is what happens with the next surface transportation reauthorization.

There are some proposals to consolidate passenger rail programs.

There are questions of what the future really will look like.

So I think we've got a lot keeping us busy right now, but I think we're really interested to see what the future holds.

So I think continuing to have conversations with congressional delegations for both states makes a lot of sense.

And I'll pause there and we'll kind of follow up via email with commission members, but I do think we would like to keep the momentum going of convening you all.

and thinking it's very hard to schedule things in person, but we are not opposed if it makes sense to meet in Virginia or North Carolina or DC.

It really is a moment of opportunity and we want to kind of keep that momentum building and not have another couple of years go by before we meet up again.

So we'll circle up with that.

But I do want to just pause for a minute.

We promised public comment, so I'll wait.

Jeffler might be for public comment.

And I'll just note, all we can do is kind of listen to you.

We won't engage according to our rules around public comment, but certainly welcome, Mark, if you'd like to introduce yourself.

Mark Schreifler at the Prince William.

I just recommend that the unbuilt section of the S-Line be designed to a feature-proof 300 kilometers per hour.

with considerations for near-term electrification, take advantage of the new air trains and reduce energy costs.

Thank you, Mark.

We have one last minute.

Would any of our Jewish members like to make any comments who haven't had a chance to speak yet?

All right, well, as mentioned, we, the staff team at North Carolina DOT and at DRPT slash VPRA, we will make sure, I think folks got materials beforehand, but we will follow up to make sure everyone has information, the PowerPoint showed today and other materials.

We will also be posting those and a recording from today's session on our website.

and we'll follow up to see you know hearing that we may have some good things early in the year both kind of further details to inform the S-Line and our corridor ID projects that again we're working very closely with FRA as well as our statewide rail plan.

I know that's a tough time for legislators to meet early in the year but I think we will have some good information and so maybe we can work with you all to hopefully find a time

here in the next six months at a minimum that we can reconvene.

So in the meantime, feel free to reach out to myself or to Julie White or to any of our staff.

If you have questions, I know that DJ Stadtler and his team are always great at providing information on the status of our Virginia projects as well.

Thank you.

It's great to have the meeting again.