After state reset, VDOT survey again favors trail-only option

Originally appeared in the Northern Virginia Daily

By Ryan Fitzmaurice

The report VDOT released Wednesday afternoon runs 279 pages. About 240 of them are the public's own words, including 63 pages of oral comments taken down by stenographers at three April meetings, and 175 pages of emails.

The numbers up front show a familiar split, even after the state reopened public input this spring.

The Virginia Department of Transportation received 8,150 surveys between April 8 and May 13 during its second round of public engagement on the Shenandoah Valley Rail-with-Trail Assessment. Asked which option is "the best investment for the Commonwealth of Virginia" given estimated costs and benefits, 53% of the 7,771 respondents who answered chose rail-to-trail, removing the tracks from the dormant 49-mile corridor between Broadway and Front Royal and building a recreational trail in their place.

Rail-with-trail, which would restore rail service and build a trail alongside it, drew 35.9%. Another 8.3% had no preference, and 2.8% wanted neither.

The margins widen closer to the corridor. Among respondents with Virginia ZIP codes, 57.8% chose rail-to-trail. Among the 2,552 respondents from Warren, Shenandoah and Rockingham counties, the three counties the line runs through, 69.9% chose rail-to-trail and 18.4% chose rail-with-trail.

In Shenandoah County, home to most of the corridor, the split was 64.6% to 21.6%. The county also produced the region's largest share of respondents who rejected both options, at 9%. Rockingham County was the strongest trail-only ground at 77.9%

The question told respondents to weigh the estimated costs. VDOT puts a trail-only conversion at $187 million. The rail-with-trail alternative is $697 million, $382 million for the trail and $315 million to restore the rail line.

This spring's meetings were the public process VDOT promised and the state initially skipped.

In January, the Commonwealth Transportation Board, in a split vote, opted to transfer the project and its $35 million state allocation to the Virginia Passenger Rail Authority, which would partner with the New Market-based Shenandoah Valley Battlefields Foundation to buy the line and build a trail while preserving the rails. Gov. Abigail Spanberger took office days later. In February, her transportation secretary, Nick Donohue, brought the transfer back to the board, which rescinded it 10-2 and sent the project back to VDOT to finish gathering public input.

The meetings followed in Woodstock on April 16, Front Royal on April 23 and Timberville on April 28, drawing 425 attendees. That was down from 526 at VDOT's first round of meetings in 2025. Survey participation went the other direction: 8,150 this round, up from 5,039.

The results moved less than the process did. In the 2025 round, 54% of respondents favored removing the rails and 31% favored keeping them.

Brad Reed, VDOT's Staunton District planner, said in an email that the summary is the agency's final work product for the assessment and has been shared with the Secretary of Transportation's office.

"The February 2026 CTB action items are complete with respect to the assessment effort," Reed wrote.

The rail case

The report also gives rail-with-trail supporters several points to emphasize.

Their 35.9% is a larger share than the 31% who backed the option in 2025. The comparison is not clean, the earlier survey asked for a preference, this one asked for the best investment "given the estimated costs", but more than a third of respondents chose the more expensive option on a question that told them to weigh those costs.

Rail-with-trail advocates have long disputed VDOT’s price tag. The Shenandoah Rail Corridor Coalition has said a public-private partnership could deliver rail-with-trail for no more than $142 million, far below VDOT’s $697 million estimate. In an oral comment included in the new VDOT report, Rowan Miller, a co-founder and media manager for the coalition, said the group’s findings put rail restoration alone at no more than $70 million.

The open-ended responses also show where some respondents believed VDOT’s work left questions unanswered. In all, 2,863 survey respondents submitted 4,113 open-ended comments, and the report says every comment was reviewed by the project team. In the field asking what subjects were missing from the assessment, the largest category overall was trail amenities and accessibility, with 315 comments. The largest rail-focused category was freight and passenger rail operations, with 249 comments, followed closely by cost and feasibility, with 241.

The rail-operations comments included requests for an economic impact analysis of freight rail, a rail-only alternative, a no-build option that preserves the tracks until they are needed, and a list of operators who have expressed interest in the line.

In the second open-comment field, VDOT categorized 53% of the 1,911 responses as supportive of rail-to-trail and 36% as supportive of rail-with-trail, with rail preservation, economic benefits and tourism the main themes on the rail side. The report cautions that comments touching multiple themes were counted more than once.

Elsewhere in the survey, 86% of respondents said they were familiar with the project before taking it. Asked to rank eight potential trail amenities, respondents put restrooms first and equestrian accommodation last.

What's next 

The decision now sits above VDOT. The agency has said throughout that the assessment is not a feasibility study and that it will not recommend either option. Donohue told the CTB in February that about $11 million would remain from the original $35 million allocation after the corridor purchase and the studies.

The assessment is finished. The corridor purchase is not. VDOT still leads the effort to buy the line from Norfolk Southern, Reed said.

"There will be continued work on the corridor acquisition process," Reed wrote.