Virginia plans to expand the Long Bridge connection with another crossing

The state of Virginia and the District are planning to add another crossing to supplement the rail capacity of the 115-year-old Long Bridge and expand commuter, intercity, and freight rail service throughout the region. Addressing the Long Bridge bottleneck is vital to Amtrak and the Virginia Railway Express’s (VRE) ability to run more frequent trains and prepare for expected growth in ridership, as well as growth in freight throughout the eastern seaboard.

The Long Bridge is a two-track bridge which carries the only rail tracks between Virginia and DC other than Metrorail. No other rail bridge connects Virginia to DC or Maryland south of the Long Bridge, and the next connection point north is at Harpers Ferry. The bridge is a critical link in the east-coast rail network for both passenger and freight rail traffic.

Being able to run more trains over the Long Bridge eliminates the bottleneck that currently constrains ridership potential on all commuter and intercity systems in the region, which adds to existing congestion and adds to parking needs in urban areas such as downtown DC and Crystal City and Alexandria. Virginia feels the constraint most acutely, and is leading efforts for the region to expand the bridge’s capacity.

“The Long Bridge is everything for VRE,” noted Fairfax Supervisor John Cook. “Without the Long Bridge, VRE probably disappears…If it doesn’t grow because of the economies of scale, it eventually gets to the point where it can’t fund itself.”

Widening Long Bridge is necessary for more rail in Virginia and DC

The District Department of Transportation (DDOT) has been leading planning for the bridge overhaul, while Virginia will be the entity in charge of doing the actual work. DDOT is currently leading the planning required as part of the federal environmental review process, and published a Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) earlier this year. DDOT and the Federal Railroad Administration narrowed the alternative plans to two prior to the release of the DEIS.

The preferred alternative would add a new two-track rail bridge north of the Long Bridge while retaining the existing bridge without modifications. The plan would cost approximately $1.9 billion. The existing span would retain its CSX ownership, and the new span would be Virginia’s.

Expanding the Long Bridge is “extremely important to Virginia and the Capital Region’s entire rail system,” says Nick Donohue, Deputy Secretary of Transportation for the Commonwealth of Virginia. The two-track bridge is “essentially the bottleneck that constrains the ability of the Commonwealth…to expand commuter rail or passenger rail service” into or through Virginia.

Virginia and Amtrak are unable to add additional trips over the existing bridge, and MARC is unable to run trains into Northern Virginia due to its owner, CSX Transportation.

“They do not want additional passenger rail service,” said Donohue. “They’ve said ‘thanks but no thanks’ as we tried to do one additional train.” DDOT has separately “confirmed with CSXT that they would not renegotiate the agreements with the railroad operators to give them additional slots,” he added.

Long-term plans indicate rail traffic between Virginia and DC is only going to grow. Amtrak plans to almost double daily trains from 24 to 44 by 2040, CSX data indicates it could run from 18 today to 42 trains if the new bridge is built, VRE would run up to 92 trains (tripling the current 34 daily), and MARC could run eight.

Virginia rail ridership was up 10% to 924,000 trips state-wide over the prior year, according to the Department of Rail and Public Transportation (DRPT) Director Jennifer Mitchell. Mitchell says state-sponsored Virginia rail routes are gaining more riders.

Finding funds for the bridge expansion is underway

Donohue told the Northern Virginia Transportation Commission (NVTC) on Thursday, November 14 that work to identify funding for the bridge is underway now so that the project can be advanced once the final EIS is published next year. The draft EIS estimates construction will take five years.

Funding from the bridge would come from three sources, according to Donohue: a third from the federal government, another third from the state of Virginia, and the final third from local jurisdictions, including the District. So far, no final decisions have been made regarding the breakdown of funding sources.

The total estimated cost of the new bridge and all the track improvements Virginia wants between the Potomac and Fredericksburg is between $3.6 and $3.7 billion, according to Donohue. $1.9 billion of the total would account for Long Bridge reconstruction, approximately $42 million to add two new main tracks on the Virginia side, and almost $1.8 billion to increase the corridor to four tracks down to Alexandria and three tracks down to Fredericksburg.

“If the Commonwealth were to advance with the Long Bridge project, we would intend to re-evaluate the use of the funds from the I-66 Outside the Beltway public-private partnership,” said Donohue. “That transit development plan was put in place where there was no ability to expand rail service. There was also no I-66 Inside the Beltway.”

Additionally, some projects included in the Outside the Beltway plan have already been funded by the Commuter Choice program that uses I-66 tolls to fund transit projects.

If the state moves ahead with the proposal and NVTC commissioners agree to it, funds from the I-66 Inside and Outside the Beltway projects would be used as revenue for the state to issue bonds against. NVTC would still receive $15 million per year to fund the ongoing Commuter Choice program. Virginia expects to receive $800 million over 50 years once the new I-66 toll lanes open outside the Beltway to build and operate transit projects, which now could include the Long Bridge.

Expanding the bridge is more cost-effective than widening highways

Donohue says Virginia has studied adding a new general-purpose lane to I-95 stretching from the Springfield “Mixing Bowl” interchange down to Spotsylvania, past Fredericksburg, but that would come at a substantial cost for not much gain.

A Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) analysis estimated that the cost of adding a lane would be about $12.5 billion. But congestion north of the Occoquan would be the same. It also showed while traffic Fredericksburg would improve for five to 10 years, after that it would be worse than it was today.

“Transit and carpooling offer [the] best opportunities” to provide “fast and reliable” trips through the I-95 corridor, according to a presentation Donohue gave to the Commonwealth Transportation Board in October. Adding two new VRE trains, each with a capacity of 1,000 people, moves the same amount of people that a general-purpose highway lane can move in an hour. “We think there will be real congestion benefits, but more importantly, it’s actually more mobility benefits to this region which will allow you to move more people,” he said.

Officials also want to re-evaluate the use of Outside the Beltway toll funds due to the benefits that widening the Long Bridge would provide.

“With Long Bridge,” said DRPT’s Mitchell, “if we’re able to expand VRE on the Manassas line with some additional new trains, that actually carries about three to four times more person throughput than the original I-66 Outside the Beltway plan, which was just the commuter bus services.”

Many expect the bridge will reduce demand for cars to enter the District as well, and reduce associated costs for storing private vehicles.

Trading train slots for bridge ownership

By owning the new Long Bridge, Virginia would have the ability to dictate who is able to run trains over it, when, and at what frequencies. State officials believe this is valuable enough to the expansion of passenger rail service that it isn’t requesting any money for the project from CSX, the current track and bridge owner.

“I would even argue that the value of those slots…may actually have more economic value than getting an upfront contribution of cash,” said Mitchell.

Widening the bridge would be beneficial to CSX as well since the two-track bottleneck impairs its ability to send more freight traffic up and down the east coast on its network. Virginia wants to obtain additional perpetual train slots for VRE and passenger trains to run on CSX’s network in exchange for building the bridge, otherwise the project may not move forward.

VRE train slots currently expire and must be renegotiated every few years with both CSX and Norfolk Southern. Widening the bridge allows VRE to grow but doesn’t itself buy more trains for the railroad to expand.

VRE’s long-term plan includes evolving the network into a rapid regional rail service with trains running as frequently as every 15 minutes. A proposal to scale the plans back in 2017 didn’t go anywhere, but funding for the additional trains needed to expand service still needs to be identified.