Picture a rail yard, but with bike lanes and parks on top
A roof deck over a rail yard north of New York Avenue could create new space for bike lanes, a park, or more development in the area. The Virginia Railway Express, a commuter rail line that serves Virginia and DC, is looking at the possibility as part of a project to build a new place to store its trains.
Where the VRE’s proposed storage tracks would go, north of New York Avenue. Amtrak’s Ivy City Yard is the space wtih the grey/white building in the middle with tracks on both sides. Base image from Google Maps.
Currently, 16 VRE trains currently run north on the Manassas and Fredericksburg lines into DC each weekday morning, and 16 run back in the evening. While VRE train schedules are fairly limited and none run in off-peak directions or on weekends, VRE has long-term plans for expansion and is working on more bi-directional service at more stations.
For now, VRE leases space to store its trains in Amtrak’s Ivy City Yard, which sits north of New York Avenue near 9th Street. But there isn’t enough space for one of VRE’s trains, so it runs to and from the agency’s storage facility in Broad Run, Virginia, each day, which isn’t cheap. Between that and the fact that Amtrak wants to use the space for something else anyway can start reducing VRE’s storage space next year, VRE is looking for another way to house its trains in DC every day.
To find a new location for its trains, VRE evaluated 20 potential sites within 12 miles of DC, and decided that the best move would be to purchase or lease space just off of New York Avenue, east of the Amtrak lot (and just below Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor tracks). In May, VRE released a Request for Proposal to find a builder for five new sets of tracks at that location.
New rails could bring bike lanes and space for development
As part of the project, VRE is looking at how to make the new rail yard fit into the surrounding area. Part of VRE’s request instructs its consultant to examine what it would take to provide “improved rail transit access to the surrounding neighborhood.”
VRE threw out a few possibilities that they might look at, including a possible new VRE and/or MARC rail station as well as walking and biking that connect the neighborhood to surrounding areas, including the NoMa Metrorail station.
The language in VRE’s proposal is pretty broad and vague, but it does ask whoever takes the project on to look into building a deck over top of the tracks. That’d make room for additional development, trails, a possible rail infill station nearby, or park space. In Manhattan, development above a major rail yard is underway:
Construction at Manhattan’s Hudson Yards, December 2012 through May 2016. Video from Hudson Yards New York.