Ground broken for Long Bridge project to expand passenger rail capacity in Virginia

There are many infrastructure bottlenecks that constrain the expansion of passenger rail in the United States, but construction of new infrastructure to remove one of them got underway this week.

On October 15, Federal and Virginia officials broke ground on a series of new bridges across the Potomac River at Long Bridge, a structure currently at 98 percent of capacity. 

“On Long Bridge today, freight and passenger rail that share the tracks that cross this bridge at a time when passenger ridership is on the rise and when capacity is virtually maxed out at peak hours, are depending on a structure that is more than 100 years old,” said Pete Buttigieg, the United States Secretary of Transportation. 

Planning for the project began in 2011 at a time when the Commonwealth of Virginia was beginning to fund passenger rail as an alternative to highway construction. The project has been shepherded by the Virginia Passenger Rail Authority, an entity created soon after former Governor Ralph Northam announced the investment of $3.7 billion in passenger rail in December 2019. That was just over ten years since the Commonwealth first began investing in passenger rail by paying Amtrak to run several routes including the Northeast Regional which now travels between Roanoke and Boston. 

“Back then, we weren’t really sure what was going to happen,” said D.J. Statdler, VPRA’s executive director. “We expected about 30,000 riders in that first year. Twelve months later, 100,000 people rode that train.”

By the time the bridge is completed in 2030, Stadtler said there will be 13 round-trips each day between Richmond and D.C. 

Funding for the project is authorized through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act that passed Congress in 2021. Gerry Connolly, Virginia’s 11th District Representative in Congress, said that was a transformative bill and an investment in the future. 

“Today, we’re celebrating $729 million for the long bridge as part of that bill,” Connolly said. “But that bill is the largest investment in roads and bridges since Dwight Eisenhower’s interstate highway system. It is the biggest federal investment in public transit in American history.”

Seventh District Representative Abigail Spanberger said additional rail opportunities take people off of highways like Interstate 66 and Interstate 95. 

“I represent people who rely on passenger rail to get back and forth to work,” Spanberger said. “And it will be transformative and really life changing for us to know that we will have millions of Virginians who will be able to travel across the long bridge on Amtrak or Vre to get where they want to go and to do so on time.”

Buttigieg said the country is investing in rail’s future and this is just one example. 

“Earlier this year, I was in Las Vegas, where we broke ground on a project that will be the first true high speed rail operating on American soil, connecting to southern California,” Buttigieg said. “I was in Raleigh to break ground on a passenger line that’s going to connect to Wake forest and eventually on up to Richmond, which means one day trains starting there could find their way all the way through these new and improved bridges into DC.”

Another project of the VPRA is an extension of the Northeast Regional line to the New River Valley. In September, the agency announced the purchase of railways from Norfolk Southern that includes a stretch necessary for the train to make it to Christiansburg. (learn more)

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