New plan to return Amtrak to New River Valley gets state authority’s OK

A new plan to bring Amtrak passenger train service to the New River Valley has been given a green light from the state’s rail authority.

Members of the Virginia Passenger Rail Authority’s board on Tuesday unanimously endorsed the proposal to extend passenger service on Norfolk Southern’s main line to Christiansburg’s historic Cambria train station. The authority, which manages the commonwealth’s state support of Amtrak service, also will acquire Norfolk Southern’s Manassas Line in Northern Virginia.

The new plan has a net price tag of $444 million and calls for running passenger service, which currently ends in Roanoke, to the New River Valley no later than 2027. Officials say this path forward will be cheaper and faster than a previous plan that would have used a different line and a different station location in Christiansburg. It also sets the stage for possible train stations in Bedford and Radford and puts a future extension of the line to Bristol on stronger footing.

“We are exceedingly pleased to see that extending passenger rail service to the New River Valley is back on track … a much faster track than before,” Raymond Smoot, co-chair of the New River Valley Passenger Rail Initiative, said in a statement. The organization was formed in 2013 to advocate for returning Amtrak service to the region and is supported by the New River Valley’s local governments as well as Virginia Tech, Radford University and the New River Valley Regional Commission.

Smoot, who also represents the Salem District on the Virginia Commonwealth Transportation Board, said the new agreement shows that Virginia “has once again invested in passenger rail, this time affording new transportation connections along the nation’s increasingly urban Mid-Atlantic region.”

“Personally, I look forward to standing on the Cambria platform catching a train just as I did almost six decades ago as a young Virginia Tech student,” Smoot said in his statement.

Backers of extending passenger rail service to the New River Valley say it would serve tens of thousands of customers each year and would connect the region to major metropolitan areas to the northeast, which would also help relieve Interstate 81 of some traffic congestion.

“We look forward to finalizing this agreement, which will make passenger rail a viable option for even more Virginians,” DJ Stadtler, the rail authority’s executive director, said in a news release.

Norfolk Southern Chief Strategy Officer Mike McClellan said that the railroad is “proud to play a role in helping VPRA in its mission to support and expand the availability of passenger and commuter rail service in the Commonwealth.”

“We want to thank VPRA for its partnership and dedication in reaching an agreement that has the potential to benefit generations of Virginians with reliable, convenient rail travel, while also balancing the needs of the freight rail network the economy relies on,” McClellan said in the release.

Gov. Glenn Youngkin praised the plan as “a better, faster, and cheaper solution to bring passenger rail back to a historic location in the New River Valley while also providing opportunities to bolster service in Northern Virginia.”

“We are excited to deliver these benefits as we continue to accelerate results not only in these two regions but across the entire Commonwealth,” Youngkin said in the release.

Acquiring the 24-mile Manassas Line from Norfolk Southern will provide the Virginia Railway Express, a commuter train service in Northern Virginia, with an opportunity to add more trips there, including evening and weekend service, the rail authority said.

The VRE is expected to contribute $155 million to the new plan’s total price tag of $599 million, bringing the rail authority’s net cost to $444 million, according to documents shared at Tuesday’s board meeting.

Stadtler told the board at Tuesday’s meeting in Richmond that Norfolk Southern will continue to use the Manassas line and will pay access fees to the rail authority, while the authority will pay Norfolk Southern to have the New River Valley extension on the railroad’s main line, called the “N-Line.”

Before the latest proposal came up, officials were weighing three versions of a plan that would have used Norfolk Southern’s Virginian Line, or “V-Line,” to carry passengers to a different location in Christiansburg, likely not until at least 2028. Those three options varied in price, and Stadtler told the board on Tuesday that the latest estimate of the most expensive option had risen past $1 billion.

Even the cheapest of the three, estimated around $545 million, would have cost more than the net price of the latest plan.

The two more expensive of the three options called for major renovations to the mile-long Merrimac Tunnel, which was built in 1908 near Christiansburg to transport coal, so that passengers could safely exit in an emergency. Officials have said that under the V-Line plan, such upgrades would be necessary to extend passenger service farther southwest to Bristol and yet would be so expensive that service to Bristol would be impossible. The new N-Line plan avoids the tunnel entirely.

Using the V-Line was the focus initially because Norfolk Southern wanted the New River Valley passenger service extension to avoid the N-Line. After getting more information about the V-Line proposal’s various costs and timelines, as well as public input that showed residents preferred the N-Line, rail authority officials went back to Norfolk Southern to revisit the plan.

In 2022, Virginia bought a 28-mile stretch of the V-Line for the New River Valley extension but now plans to transfer it back to the railroad as part of the deal.

Stadtler said that the latest plan carries less risk for the rail authority than previous ones because Norfolk Southern will construct a platform, pocket track and layover facility at the Cambria station in Christiansburg and will assume responsibility for those procurement and construction activities. The VPRA will own those assets once they’re complete, and a local group, the New River Valley Passenger Station Authority, will manage the station.

“It’s a huge win for us,” Stadtler said. “It will allow us to get it done faster. They [Norfolk Southern] have folks that can do this work in their sleep.”

Norfolk Southern is expected to begin construction at the Cambria station in January and convey the site to the rail authority by August 2027.

Using the Cambria station will mean a return of passenger rail service there after more than 40 years. The station saw riders from the early 1900s until 1979, when Amtrak discontinued its Hilltopper train that also served Bedford, Lynchburg and Roanoke.

In 2009, Amtrak added daily service between Lynchburg and Washington, D.C., on its Northeast Regional line. In 2017, it expanded that service to Roanoke, and in 2021, Virginia reached an agreement with Norfolk Southern to bring passenger rail service to the New River Valley.

The new plan provides opportunities to add stops in Bedford and Radford, but there is no timeline for them yet.

Returning passenger rail service to Bedford has been a matter of discussion for years. A 2021 study by the state’s Department of Rail and Public Transportation estimated the cost of building a station there at about $23 million.

Stadtler said Tuesday that under the new plan, after letting passengers off at Christiansburg, trains will continue to Radford, where Norfolk Southern will build a layover facility to service and store trains overnight.

“It is intended at this point to just be a layover facility,” Stadtler said of the Radford location. “That being said, we understand and Norfolk Southern understands when there’s a layover facility there will likely be demand for a service extension, and we’d be naive to not think that was part of the next discussion. We’ve got to get to Christiansburg first.”

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