Virginia beach light rail route how to#

“We can’t talk about light rail without talking about these other multimodal changes. “We want our redesign in Norfolk to be a modern version of what we did in Richmond,” Inman said.

Over the coming months, Inman plans to lead a city-wide dialogue among transportation planners, local leaders, and residents on how Norfolk could shift its bus routes and expand its light rail to better serve its people. Depending on which route HRT selects, a Tide extension could support another goal of Inman’s: making the Tide the backbone of an integrated transit system. HRT faces a choice as to whether a second light rail line should either pass through “rider-rich urban neighborhoods or take the path of least resistance along wide suburban highways” to the city’s northeast (and to its detriment), according to GGWash Editorial Board member Dan Malouff. One possibility under consideration is a new north-south light rail line that would link Naval Station Norfolk (the city’s biggest employer), Old Dominion University (an institution with a student body of 24,932), the airport (which currently has no transit connection at all), and Military Circle Mall (a popular shopping center). Image by Pi.1415926535 licensed under Creative Commons. Geographic map of The Tide light rail system in Norfolk, Virginia.

Virginia beach light rail route how to#

Hampton Roads Transit (HRT) is studying how to change that. By running down Broad Street on an east-west axis across Richmond, the Pulse serviced one of the city’s busiest corridors and linked together Richmond’s hottest neighborhoods (Scott’s Addition and the Arts District), biggest employers (Virginia Commonwealth University, and state and city government), and areas with high transit dependence (downtown and Shockoe Bottom).Īlthough light rail has become woven into Norfolk’s downtown, the Tide as it is currently built fails to serve several key destinations across the city, such as Military Circle Mall, Norfolk International Airport, and Naval Station Norfolk. Leveraging her experience as one of the top players behind Richmond’s transit transformation, Inman knows just what Virginia’s capital got right. The Tide by City of Norfolk’s Transportation Division. That means within its first year in operation, the Pulse is already beating the passenger volumes Norfolk hopes to achieve within a decade. Hoping to boost the Tide’s passenger volumes, Inman and other Norfolk city leaders have looked westward to the Greater Richmond Transit Company’s Pulse bus rapid transit (BRT) line for reference.ĭespite Richmond’s slightly smaller population, the Pulse has reached an average daily ridership of 7,326. Richmond’s former Multimodal Administrator, Amy Inman, is at the helm of Norfolk’s newly-minted Department of Transportation (DOT). Stable ridership alone won’t help Norfolk reach its goal of 7,130 passengers by 2030, but the city has expert help.

In the eight years since the launch, the number of passengers served each day has hovered around 4,500. To the chagrin of the Tide’s detractors, ridership overshot initial estimates of just 2,900 by over 68%. Norfolk powered on and completed a line entirely within its city limits in 2011. When the Tide-Virginia’s first and only light rail-was first proposed 20 years ago to connect Hampton Roads’ two largest cities, voters in Virginia Beach overwhelmingly rejected it. Norfolk is hoping to attract more people to its bus networks and expand its light rail system to be more useful to riders throughout the Hampton Roads region. After years of stagnating ridership, Norfolk hopes to rejuvenate its transit system by modeling it after the City of Richmond’s successful bus system update.