Amtrak ridership in Virginia has beaten pre-COVID levels by tens of thousands of passengers every month since 2022, yet trains in the commonwealth still run at a maximum of 79 mph. That gap between demand and performance frames the question the Virginia Passenger Rail Authority (VPRA) is now answering publicly: not whether high-speed rail is possible, but whether the state needs it.

VPRA Executive Director DJ Stadtler was blunt on the first point. "Sure, high-speed rail is definitely possible in Virginia," he said. Then he posed his own question: "Is high-speed rail what Virginia needs?" His answer, laid out against the authority's current capital programme, is no.

The definitional ground matters here. Stephen Mattingly, a professor at the University of Texas at Arlington, applies the transit industry's common threshold of 150 mph. The US Department of Transportation sets the bar lower, at 110 mph. Japan's Shinkansen exceeds 200 mph. The fastest US train, Amtrak's Acela between Washington and Boston, reaches 160 mph on limited segments but averages far less.

Virginia's ceiling is set by infrastructure, not rolling stock. Freight railroads in the state maintain their track to federal Class 4 standards, which cap freight at 60 mph and passenger service at 80 mph. Most of the network is owned by freight operators — CSX and Norfolk Southern — and Amtrak and the Virginia Railway Express (VRE) must schedule around, and sometimes sit behind, freight movements.

"It's like being on a highway. If you've got a real slow 18-wheeler and you've only got two lanes and you're stuck behind that, you're frustrated in traffic," Stadtler said.

The commonwealth has already moved to change the ownership equation. In 2019 it announced a $3.7 billion agreement with CSX to acquire rail and right of way, and in 2020 the General Assembly created VPRA to oversee the expansion of state rail ownership, added train frequencies and improved reliability. Stadtler said Virginia will own more than 400 miles of freight track in the coming years, including all of VRE's western line from Washington Union Station to Broad Run outside Manassas, and half of the route from Washington to the North Carolina border — a corridor carrying Amtrak, VRE and CSX freight trains.

The authority was created, he said, in response to congestion on Interstates 81, 64, 95 and 395: "We're here to get people out of cars and onto trains."

Ownership alone does not deliver speed. Much of the existing right of way carries only two tracks, one each way, so a train running between Richmond and Washington could still be trapped behind a stopping commuter service or a train with a mechanical fault. "It's complicated on the best day, even if everything's running as well as it should," Stadtler said. "That choreography is critical to a well-run network, but as soon as you have a problem with one of the trains anywhere … the whole network is really at risk."

The state's response is selective capacity: adding third and fourth tracks at pinch points so any train can route around an obstruction. That removes freight as a constraint over hundreds of miles and, in Stadtler's assessment, delivers higher-speed rail — 80 to 110 mph on some stretches.

Reaching the 150 mph threshold is a different proposition. Existing Virginia right of way carries too much curvature for safe operation at those speeds, and straightening it would require new alignment, massive expense and likely eminent domain takings of developed land. High-speed track also carries much higher maintenance costs, Stadtler said.

Instead, Virginia is prioritising frequency and punctuality, including a planned doubling of Amtrak service between Richmond and Washington. The flagship project is the Long Bridge across the Potomac River — which Stadtler called the biggest bottleneck for both passenger and freight train traffic on the East Coast, sitting at the junction of the Northeast and Southeast networks. The current work adds passenger-only rails to improve reliability and cut delays.

Ridership growth, he argued, will follow reliability rather than headline speed: "The train gives you freedom to work, freedom to sleep, freedom to get up and move around. The car gives you freedom to look ahead of you — hopefully not at a car in front of you — and get white-knuckled on the steering wheel."

Virginia is scheduled to update its statewide rail plan, a 20-year planning document, later this year.