On August 19, 2011, Norfolk, Virginia (VA), will become the newest U.S. city to offer commuters the option of light rail. The Tide is being welcomed by many elected officials who consider the 8 miles of tracks through downtown to the border of northwest Virginia Beach a path to increased commercial and residential development that also promises to take cars off congested surface roads and highways.
Many members of the public treat The Tide much more skeptically, pointing to construction cost overruns, an initial lack of attention to safety features and a route that does not provide access to Norfolk International Airport, Norfolk Naval Base, most neighborhoods outside the very center of the city or neighboring localities whose residents might be drawn to downtown Norfolk more frequently if they did not have to worry about traffic jams and parking.
A light rail concern that appears equally shared among Hampton Roads Transit, which will operate The Tide, Norfolk officials, drivers, pedestrians and potential riders, though, is how many accidents introducing 50-ton traveling an average of 30 mph and crossing numerous streets will cause. Since spring 2010, HRT has been running public service announcements like this one to remind people to watch for and heed warning lights, gates and train horns at rail crossings:
Time will tell how effective such safety messaging is. In the same way, several years or decades of data will be needed to show whether the combined federal-Norfolk-Virginia investment of $338 million in building The Tide has paid off economically. Already being somewhat in the forecasting business, however, the Virginian-Pilot drew a comparison between Norfolk’s new light rail system and the Lynx in Charlotte, North Carolina (NC), which launched in 2007. The newspaper noted that ridership quickly spiked to 18,000 commuters per day before leveling off at a current 15,000 daily riders. Building along the Lynx right-of-way has also boomed, with Charlotte’s business community projecting around $3 billion in new development directly tied to light rail by 2017.
Projections for the impact of The Tide are much more modest: 2,900 riders a day during the first year and $220 million in right-of-way development. One area where Norfolk’s light rail would do well to match Charlotte’s commuter trains, though, is the low number of accidents. Statics compiled by the Federal Transit Authority show that all across the country, light rail has the lowest rates of accidents and passenger fatalities per million miles traveled of any form of public transportation. As near as I can tell after searching online, Charlotte Lynx trains have been involved in no crashes in which someone died.
The story of light rail safety does vary from city to city. Houston and San Diego, in particular, have had numerous serious and fatal collisions since introducing commuter trains in their downtowns. Having represented victims of train crashes for more than two decades, I know how devastating those accidents can be. I hope that The Tide will not raise my caseload.
EJL
About the Editors: The Shapiro, Cooper, Lewis & Appleton personal injury law firm, which has offices in Virginia (VA) and North Carolina (NC), edits the injury law blogs Virginia Beach Injuryboard, Norfolk Injuryboard and Northeast North Carolina Injuryboard as pro bono services.
Rick Shapiro has practiced personal injury law for over 30 years in Virginia, North Carolina, and throughout the Southeastern United States. He is a Board-Certified Civil Trial Advocate by the National Board of Trial Advocacy (ABA Accredited) and has litigated injury cases throughout the eastern United States, including wrongful death, trucking, faulty products, railroad, and medical negligence claims. During his three-decade career, Shapiro has won client appeals before the VA Supreme Court, VA Court of Appeals, NC Supreme Court, SC Supreme Court, WV Supreme Court, TN Supreme Court, and three times before the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, underscoring Shapiro’s trial achievements. In addition, he and his law firm have won settlements/verdicts in excess of $100 million. His success in and out of the courtroom is a big reason why he was named 2019 “Lawyer of the Year” in railroad law in U.S. News & World Report's Best Lawyers publication (Norfolk, VA area), and he has been named a “Best Lawyer” and “Super Lawyer” by those peer-reviewed organizations for multiple years. Rick was also named a “Leader in the Law, Class of 2022” by Virginia Lawyers Weekly (total of 33 statewide honorees consisting of lawyers and judges across Virginia). And in September 2023, Rick was selected as a recipient of the National Board of Trial Advocacy (NBTA) 2023 President’s Award. Although many nominations were submitted from across the country, Rick was just one of eight attorneys chosen by the prestigious National Board which certifies civil trial attorneys across the U.S. Rick was also recently named to Virginia Lawyers Weekly 2024 Virginia’s Go To Lawyers Medical Malpractice. The attorneys awarded this honor are nominated by their colleagues and chosen by a panel from the publication.
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