A starter line fueled by optimism

The Tide pulls out of the York Street station with an electric lurch, headed toward Eastern Virginia Medical School. A few minutes later, as it nears the western terminus, the conductor pauses to cross Colley Avenue. She waits. And waits.

Cars and trucks are navigating the traffic light, and a guy - as guys do - tries to sneak through the red light by nosing across Brambleton Avenue. That maneuver, of course, puts him right in the path of the train. Such standoffs are a feature of everyday commuting in Norfolk, in any city: Inconsiderate drivers knot traffic rather than wait for the next green light.

But with the arrival of The Tide, which will run across and along city streets from Newtown Road to EVMS, such thoughtlessness now carries the prospect of messing up an entirely new mode of travel.

The train, in other words, is going to take some getting used to. The places where people and light rail intersect are going to be dangerous both literally and figuratively.

Take this from a guy who once used the slightly elevated tracks on Monticello Avenue like a Jersey wall, just because he could.

Intersections are going to be different, including some of downtown Norfolk's busiest. In places, traffic will stop for the train. In others, the train will be treated like another car. A very, very big car.

To the west of Harbor Park, the train seems almost impossible to navigate through narrow streets, down one-way roads, around tight corners. East of Harbor Park, the size of The Tide makes more sense. There are fewer turns and crossings; the train moves faster; stations are farther apart. You stop staring out the window, worrying about what the train will run into, or what will run into the train.

But even navigating downtown Norfolk, it's impossible to forget that the whole thing - from the stainless steel seats to the LED signs to the strange female voice that mispronounces Monticello - was created by a basic optimism that the future will be better than now and that we can plan for it.

It requires imagination beyond my abilities to see past the busted buildings and parking lots of Fort Norfolk to offices or apartments, or to transform the parking lot at Harbor Park into a transportation and commercial hub. It takes vision to see the area around Norfolk State University turned into something new, or to see development come to a Newtown Road that could use some.

It will also take time.

Norfolk's optimism wasn't confined to what would happen along the line in the city. It extends to what it didn't - and in most cases couldn't - build.

This is a starter line. The train doesn't go to the naval base. It doesn't go to the airport. It doesn't go to Town Center in Virginia Beach. Or to the Oceanfront. A transit system should, of course, do all of those things. If success accompanies the limited Tide set to open Aug. 19, it ultimately will. That was always the plan.

The same people who deride The Tide as a boondoggle have brothers and sisters who did the same when Metro was first proposed around D.C. They crowded hearings, wrote letters declaiming the project as socialism and urban planning run amok.

Washington today - and especially the suburbs - is a very different place than when Metro was being built. It's enormously crowded and expensive; traffic is punishing.

It's also now entirely unimaginable without Metro. Washington's boom was inevitable. And building a subway was an optimistic way of dealing with what was coming, a way of helping to guide growth rather than to try to cope with it.

Perhaps, if Hampton Roads grows in the ways we all hope instead of the ways we fear, one day we'll be able to say the same about The Tide.

Donald Luzzatto is The Virginian-Pilot's editorial page editor. Email: donald.luzzatto@pilotonline.com.