Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Area deserves passenger rail service
From the RoundTable blog
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Jerome N. Margolis
Margolis, of Boones Mill, is a composer, a retired music teacher and substitute teacher for Rocky Mount.
There is no passenger rail service from Roanoke. The closest is in Lynchburg, almost one hour away, and Clifton Forge, 90 minutes away. I wonder why this is so and why the state has not seen fit to use the extensive network of railway lines, yards, stations and repair shops in and closely adjacent to the city.
Roanoke and surrounding Roanoke County have a combined population of about 200,000. The metro area has sought to improve its tourism and business opportunities for years. As one of the major locales of Southwest Virginia, it has an airport -- one with fares that are high in comparison to those in North Carolina. Otherwise, those who wish to travel to cities in Virginia and to Washington, Baltimore, New York and other major cities on the Eastern seaboard have no recourse but to use their automobiles. This, during a historic period in which our dependence upon oil is a universal concern and when the price of gasoline makes it prohibitive for most of us to travel.
That rail service once existed in Roanoke and towns such as Boones Mill provides ample evidence that their passenger stations were once active and successful parts of a good passenger railway system.
An extensive track system throughout the area is now used for transporting goods on a daily basis. In Boones Mill, we have trains carrying coal moving through our hamlet several times daily.
Having discussed this with so many families and business people who want and need to travel to cities beyond Roanoke, I have to wonder why Lynchburg and Clifton Forge have passenger service but Roanoke has none. The service from Clifton Forge is not even daily.
Every time we drive into Roanoke on U.S. 220 we pass the huge railway yard and old station in Roanoke with its repair shops, loading facilities, etc. Indeed, this facility takes up as much space as downtown Roanoke on the other side of U.S. 220.
Surely, the 200,000-plus area residents deserve a viable passenger rail system that would provide them access to other places for travel and business. Surely, the entire business and tourism industries of Roanoke and its surrounding towns and cities would greatly benefit from the influx of people that a viable passenger rail system would provide.
Roanoke's Airport cannot now or in the future provide that viable form of travel. At the very time that so much opportunity is apparent, one must ask why passenger service to and from Roanoke, with its extensive rail system, is not being implemented at the earliest possible date.
Finally, I would suggest that two points ought to be considered by those who have a responsibility to provide a practical and viable transportation system in the state of Virginia:
1. Increased mobility among retirees has brought large numbers to the Roanoke area (including Smith Mountain Lake). Surely these folks, having so much free and unscheduled time, are interested in traveling, not only to visit family and friends, but to explore the nation -- and most would prefer railway travel over the increasingly costly and poor service provided by air travel.
2. Roanoke officials often claim to have an abiding interest in drawing college students to return both in terms of holiday travel back to their families and, even more important, to settle permanently in the area. Without proper rail connections from Roanoke and its immediate area, they know full well that they would be literally stuck in a community without passenger service.
