Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, May 21, 1995                   TAG: 9505200026
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: C2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

FIVE YEARS TO CATCH A TRAIN?

But go ahead anyway - get your hopes up.

Certainly, the odds of passenger-train service returning to the Roanoke Valley and Southwest Virginia are improving. Based on the state's completed feasibility study of passenger service linking Bristol with Richmond and Washington, D.C., passenger trains could be operating here by the year 2000.

What a terrific development that would be. Indeed, consider the impact on Roanoke alone.

Roanoke: historic railroad town; the Virginia city most identified with railroads.

Roanoke: a city where expectations for economic development and increased tourism continue to flow, in part, from its railroad heritage - from the reopening of Hotel Roanoke to plans for a railside-linear park and a spiffed-up Virginia Museum of Transportation.

Roanoke: sad to say, the largest city in Virginia without passenger-train service.

The final phase of the state's feasibility study essentially confirmed earlier findings, that passenger service - operated by Amtrak, under contract to the state, or by the state itself - could break even financially in six or seven years, and could recoup its initial investment and be turning a profit in 20 years. (Operating costs, including the purchase of four trains, would be $284 million or less over 20 years; operating revenues over that period would top $304 million.)

Earlier estimates that more than 500,000 people would use the service in the first year held up in the numbers-crunching by the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation for its completed report. And, the department figures, more than a million people a year would ride the rails by the 20th year of restored passenger service for this area.

You don't have to believe in each of these figures to the last decimal point to appreciate the general potential of this region-enhancing service. Nor does every service have to be profitable - according to the most immediate and direct accounting method - to be valuable. Virginia would benefit from Washington-area tourists visiting this region for a day or two, for example, in ways that wouldn't show up in ticket sales.

What next? Even a highly positive feasibility study does not guarantee results, of course. As the next step, the report goes to an advisory group of transportation experts. Then public hearings will be held. After which, the General Assembly will have to act on the department's recommendations, based on the public hearings and experts' advice.

As a critical part of this process, Norfolk Southern - over whose rails the passenger trains would move - will have to be involved and somehow accommodated. Though the rail giant has been less than enthusiastic, David Goode, its chairman, president and chief executive officer, has signaled a willingness to consider making room for passenger trains, provided that his company's freight business is not jeopardized and NS isn't expected to subsidize passenger service.

Fair enough.

Meanwhile, though the process seems slow-moving, advocates for rail service in our region ought to keep up their enthusiasm - and patience. It was, after all, only a couple of years ago that the return of passenger service came up for serious discussion. Given the results of the just-completed feasibility study, it now has entered the realm of real-world possibility.