VRE wants to begin service to Haymarket, Gainesville by 2022

Residents Tuesday night packed the lecture hall at Gainesville Middle School to hear about plans to extend Virginia Railway Express to their neighborhood.

The state’s only commuter railroad is conducting a 2-year, $4 million planning and engineering a study to examine the impacts and costs of extending VRE’s Manassas line west, and building a new station at Innovation Park at George Mason University in Manassas, in Gainesville, and in Haymarket.

Up to two trains per hour would run along the new line, dubbed the Norfolk-Southern “B-line” which branches off VRE’s main Manassas line to Haymarket. The B line is used today by freight trains, but the addition of up to two more sets of tracks would clear the way for commuter rail service to begin in 2022.

AECOM Technical Services was awarded the study contract. The firm will examine potential impacts such as noise, as well as the effects that a new commuter rail line would have on historical sites and the environment.

Norfolk-Southern owns the rail line on which VRE operates its Manassas line and the B-line. If new tracks are built, it’s possible taxpayers could foot the bill for construction, and Norfolk-Southern would be responsible for building and maintaining the tracks. A similar deal was struck between the state and railroad operator CSX, which owns tracks VRE uses to operate Fredericksburg line trains when VRE completed a recent expansion to Spotsylvania County.

The Manassas line currently ends at Broad Run at the Manassas Regional Airport, where the parking lot is consistently full of vehicles parked there by train riders during weekdays. Maps presented by VRE show riders who use the station come from all over western Prince William County, as well as Fauquier County and points further west.

New stations on the B-line would attract some riders who now use Broad Run station. That would free up parking for new riders who would use the station today if they could, said Christine Hoeffner, VRE’s planning manager.

Some residents say extending the rail line west would only cause more out-of-county users to board trains at the newer stations, creating more traffic on area roads. They likened a new station in Haymarket to the Vienna Metro rail station at the end of the system’s Orange line, which draws hordes of commuters from the western suburbs who use Metro to get to work in Washington, D.C.

“If you put a station in Haymarket, you’re incentivizing people who live in Warren, Shenandoah, all the way down to Orange to drive here to use it,” said Bob Wier, a former Haymarket Town planning commissioner.

Wier also asked about a 2009 study that was conducted by VRE to examine train noise that would be generated by a rail extension to Haymarket. Hoeffner said the results of that $1.7 million study are still available to the be viewed by the public, but that the study underway now will provide a better overall view of what it will take to expand the commuter rail system.

Prince William County paid $5.7 million in jurisdictional contributions to the commuter rail system in 2014. It is consistently the highest-paying contributor of the nine counties and cities that pay into VRE, to include the cities of Manassas and Alexandria, and Fairfax and Arlington counties because more riders from Prince William use the system.

That number is likely to rise with any new expansion of the Manassas line. Prince William County officials are asking VRE by how much, said Hoeffner. Those numbers won’t be available until spring when a new series of public meetings will be held to update the public on the progress of the study, she said.