Youngkin, Kaine kick off groundbreaking for $264.5M New River rail project

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine and other dignitaries broke ground Thursday on the long-awaited New River Valley Rail Project in Christiansburg, which will return passenger service to the New River Valley for the first time since 1979.

The $264.5 million project involves railroad infrastructure upgrades that will allow the Virginia Passenger Rail Authority to extend its Amtrak Virginia service from Roanoke to Christiansburg. It includes a new station platform with canopy, a parking lot and access roads, track improvements, an updated signaling system and an Amtrak layover facility in nearby Radford. Preliminary construction on the project began in late February and full construction will commence this spring.

The new station stop is being developed at the historic Christiansburg station building in Cambria, which previously served the community from 1906 to 1979.

“Today’s groundbreaking represents a lot of hard work, determination and collaboration,” Youngkin said in a statement. “We are here today because people came to the table and worked together to execute a new and dramatically better deal — one that accelerates the return of passenger rail service to the New River Valley years earlier, on a better line, and at a much lower cost to Virginia’s taxpayers — than the one I inherited.”

The extension of service to Christiansburg will be through Norfolk Southern’s main line, the result of a 2024 agreement between VPRA and Norfolk Southern. As part of that agreement, VPRA purchased the Manassas line and gained access to Norfolk Southern’s main line.

According to the governor’s office, the New River Valley Passenger Rail Station Authority — created by the Virginia General Assembly in 2021 — has the lead in renovating the historic station in Cambria, which will be called the New River Valley Station.

The governor’s office says Amtrak Virginia service is expected to begin in 2027 with two daily round trips between Christiansburg and Washington, D.C., with stops in Roanoke, Lynchburg, Charlottesville, Culpeper, Manassas, Burke Centre and Alexandria.

“Expanding rail service and connecting people across the commonwealth is great for local economies, cuts traffic and improves air quality,” said Kaine, who helped secure federal funds for the platform study that landed on the location for the extension to Christiansburg, in a statement.

Ray Smoot, co-chair of the New River Valley Passenger Rail Initiative — an advocacy organization backed by local governments and higher education — said he had advocated for the project since 2013 and was “delighted” to see it finally get off the ground. Seeing it become a reality, he said, “restores confidence in being able to work on something with the government. We feel like a lot of long, hard work and capacity has paid off.”