Regional Rail Service sounds like more silliness January 12, 2007
I was a little harsher than I wanted to be at the Chamber breakfast Tuesday morning.
I called the idea of regional rail service “somewhat idiotic.”
That was probably a little harsh simply because I wasn’t trying to impune anyone who may have come up with the idea.
I like brainstorming. I think it’s needed. And, often, a good brainstorming session will lead to some good ideas.
But, rail service between Charleston and Huntington?
Am I the only one that thinks this idea is completely silly?
Tell me how this would work…
You live in Huntington and have a meeting in Charleston, so you drive 10 minutes across town to catch the train. You wait for the train for another 10 minutes. You get on the train and take a 20 minute ride to Charleston. You get off the train and catch a cab that takes another five minutes to get over to wherever your meeting is. You have your meeting, you take a cab back to the station and start the process all over again. So, you’ve now invested at least 45 minutes to travel from Huntington to Charleston.
Isn’t that the amount of time it takes to drive from Huntington to Charleston?
Rail service is public transportation - NOT ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT.
You use public transportation either to make your trip quicker or because ample, convenient parking is not available in your destination city. OR (and mainly for this reason) because traffic is so bad, it’s just way too inconvenient to try to to drive into a city. That’s when and where rail service works… and even in those cases, rail service still struggles (ask New York and DC).
None of the above cases for needing rail service are the reason for going down the road of rail service between Charleston and Huntington.
Sometimes people, Chambers especially, seem to get sidetracked on issues that are shiny bobbles. Remember the time, effort and millions put into the regional airport study? Pheewww… let’s not go down that road again.
I know advocates say, well, we’d use the same tracks and wouldn’t have to build new ones.
Say what?
I wouldn’t think your major investment in rail service would be the actual tracks themselves. I would think it would be in trains and personnel and the infrastructure to actually move the people. The other investments would be the train stations themselves, parking areas for car storage, etc.
Again, as I said today, I wouldn’t be opposed to spending a FEW bucks to investigate it a little further.
But, it doesn’t make sense to me. Nor will it to most who look at it objectively.
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8 Responses to “Regional Rail Service sounds like more silliness”
This idea, as many others, smacks of desperation to scratch and claw ones way out of 49th place in the nation, thanks to 70 years of monorule by the democrats. As with metro government, it has no chance of success. The chamber of commerce would better serve the cause of economic development by focusing on the real problems that represent the true impediment to growth — massive, out-of-control state government. Maybe they should use the rail service to remove the excess state employees from the Capitol.
Charleston and Huntington simply do not have the congestion problem that other cities with rail transportation have. In New York City, Los Angeles, and Washington D.C. it is pure agony to drive in the crazy traffic and find a parking spot near the place you are trying to go. That is largely what facilitates the need for rail transportation. Our two large cities do not have that great a problem with parking or congestion relating to other cities with rail transportation. Democrats and labor unions would love this idea though because it would mean more construction and service personnel jobs.
If properly constructed and operated, regional rail service would be a viable transportation option - that is a mighty big if. IF there could be guarantees of open track; IF supporting transit systems like the buses were scheduled to meet the trains and take commuters downtown; IF there were enough riders to justify the cost/expense to set it up (remember Amtrak and how far in the red it operates); IF you could get enough riders to switch from driving their cars to riding the rails to make it economically viable. All of those IF’s aren’t going to happen anytime in the near realm of what the Legislature needs to be concerned with…It is a good idea, in theory, and for a metro area with a population of 2.5 million as opposed to 300,000… Hey! here is an idea…How about the Chamber focus on the progressive concrete economic development steps necessary to get our metro area up to 2.5 million in population!!! Then we can worry about playing with trains…
I’m not sure of the reasons the Chamber suggested the rail system, but I can tell you the Long Range Transportation Planning Committee did look at this as a means to alleviate traffic from I-64 and better serve the communities, and found the cost to be extremely prohibitive.
Name another place in the nation where there are two cities with population with less than 50,000 that can support rail system.
You are right Vic, a well-trained educated workforce that can draw the jobs we want will not use commuter rail in this circumstance. We barely can support commuter bus lines.
I-64 can be a mess a times, but it is nowhere near the mess the DC beltway and other metro areas are.
We need to complete the I-64 upgrade, route 35, US-52, and the Coalfields Expressway.
Looks more to me like an attempt to get the middle to lower income folks off the roads and out of the parking areas.
Think about it. Who uses public transportation? It isn’t the well-to-do, it is primarily those on the margin and below.
Doctors, lawyers, accountants and the like won’t risk their careers on taking public transportation. Neither will politicians or members of the Chamber.
Rail service?? Hey those of us who live in Southern WV need to have the new highway out of Beckley and south finished. Have you ever driven Saulsville Mountain every day going to work in Beckley..in the winter??? Do you know the number of idiots who pass on double yellow lines all the time because you are doing the speed limit?? We desperately NEED the Coalfields Highway finished! Then try driving to its end and taking the road through the little town of Slab Fork! So very narrow in so many places and potholes as deep as 10″ and wide as a tire!! SO lets build a rail system and forget the southern part of the state and it’s highways..after all those people down there are just stupid hillbilly coalminers..who give their lives every day to a dangerous job!! And How about putting more GOLD on the building in downtown Charleston!! I have an idea…lets chip off the gold, sell it and finished the road the good ol’ boy Byrd started and never finished!! Hey..I’d settle for some patching of potholes in Slab Fork!!
I agree with your take on rail service between Charleston and Huntington and would add that we just spent tens of millions if not more in an ongoing effort to improve the interstate between the two cities. Rail service should only be implemented if there is an ironclad guarantee that it would run at a profit and there is no way that is possible. Not to mention that the population of the region is shrinking and dispersing in wider and wider areas. Jackson County is growing into a suburban area much as Putnam County was a couple decades ago. Southridge is attracting more residents. Rail connections only make sense if the areas have dense concentrations of population that are interested in using it. Like you point out, it is more convenient to drive. Looks more like a plan for taxpayer funded useless jobs.