In three years, trains will roll

The state's $93 million decision to bring passenger trains to South Hampton Roads is the kind of thing that doesn't entirely please anyone.

Advocates for trains wanted the state to hold out for a higher-speed connection. Opponents have complained that trains are a waste of precious transportation dollars. Both are examples of the kind of rigid thinking that has mired Hampton Roads in the transportation mess it finds itself in today.

Waiting for the perfect solution often means years of doing nothing, even when significant improvements are within reach. Opposing new spending on roads or transit (the tiresome stance of the anti-everything brigade) simply means that one day soon we'll find ourselves at a standstill, literally and figuratively.

Rather than cede the conversation to either extreme, the Commonwealth Transportation Board made a bold decision Wednesday: It voted to do what it could with the money it has.

The result, in three years, will be trains that run from a station outside Richmond to Harbor Park in Norfolk, where passengers can connect with the city's light rail system. The train will also stop at Bowers Hill in Suffolk.

It will be the first passenger rail service to South Hampton Roads since 1977, and it will come with a hefty price tag, much of it to improve tracks owned by Norfolk Southern and CSX.

Rail advocates had hoped for trains running at speeds of up to 110 mph, but that would've required separate tracks for freight and passengers and hundreds of millions of dollars more to build them. The system will instead run at speeds of up to 79 mph, which means that the trip to Richmond will take a few more minutes.

The tracks will be upgraded to accommodate only one passenger train a day, which is not nearly often enough.

Advocates for rail had also hoped that the train would run to downtown Richmond, where that city is assembling a transportation hub. Instead, trains from Norfolk will make connections in Staples Mill, a Henrico County suburb. Getting Norfolk's trains to downtown Richmond would've cost six times as much.

So, in three years, South Hampton Roads will have relatively slow passenger service that runs only once a day to the wrong station and connects to the starter line of a light rail system that needs to expand to the Oceanfront.

It won't be perfect. But that's OK.

A comprehensive, speedy and frequent system should remain the goal for Virginia and Hampton Roads, but it shouldn't obscure Wednesday's substantial success. Passenger rail to the south side is one more critical step toward a transportation system that moves us past our inadequate roads.

For that, we should be grateful.