A campaign to bring passenger trains to the Shenandoah Valley has garnered local support in Harrisonburg. WMRA's Randi B. Hagi reports.
The Harrisonburg City Council voted unanimously last week to draft a letter to the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation in support of bringing a passenger rail network to the city. An advocacy group called Blue Ridge Rail is gathering petition signatures now through September 21, asking the state to include this area in its forward-looking Statewide Rail Plan.
GABRIEL MOREY: The state rail plan's only done once every four years, so we have this kind of narrow window to be able to get in. And the biggest two things we need to show … the first thing is public groundswell, that people in this region really want it. … The second is support from local institutions and governments.
Gabriel Morey is part of the campaign's steering committee. As of Monday, the petition had almost 900 signatures – they hope to reach 1,000 this week. Morey said they're open to any route that brings passenger rail to the Valley, but do not want to interfere with the proposed Shenandoah Rail Trail between Broadway and Front Royal.
MOREY: Generally speaking, there's a north-south route that goes through Luray and Page County up to Front Royal, and then connects, via Manassas Gap, to Northern Virginia. And there's an east-west route that goes over Afton Mountain, through the Blue Ridge Tunnel to Waynesboro and Staunton. And then both of those, between Harrisonburg and Staunton, use the Shenandoah Valley Railroad, which is a shortline. Today on all those routes, it's really just freight running.
He said the state already owns the east-west line.
MOREY: The Buckingham Branch Railroad, which runs from Clifton Forge to Doswell … the commonwealth actually bought that a couple of years ago, outright, so that is state-owned track, and a lot of it is already up to passenger standard, because the three-day-a-week Cardinal that serves Staunton runs there now.
That's the Amtrak Cardinal, which swoops down from Chicago through the mountains north to New York City.
Making passenger rail service a reality would require a feasibility study and funding dedicated by the General Assembly. Inclusion in the Statewide Rail Plan is the first stop on the tracks.
