CORRESPONDENT OF THE DAY

Here's How to Route A Monorail Train
Editor, Times-Dispatch: Because of pickup trucks, deer, and boxcars, high-speed rail should not use the present train tracks between Washington and Richmond, but a new elevated maglev track, or monorail. Its route should be primarily on real estate already publicly owned by either federal or state governments.

Departing Union Station in Washington, where passengers will have to transfer from the old-style rail cars, the monorail would likely pass east of the capitol and follow the subway route to Fort McNair before crossing the Anacostia River. It would then run along or west of I-295 into Maryland. Much of Indian Head is rural land that can be acquired relatively inexpensively down to the Potomac River. The train might cross the river near Riverside in Maryland to Caledon Park in Virginia before crossing more rural area into Fort A. P. Hill in Caroline. An elevated-train route can be above and share existing roadways in many cases, though due to G-forces, the route must be more straight line than many roads or current train tracks.

Just as the present Amtrak station is outside the City of Richmond, the high-speed rail station need not be in town but can meet the Richmond-Norfolk train to the east or south of the capital city. The fact that passengers might change trains from old-line steel rails to overhead monorail should not be much of a concern since the number of stations must be very limited. A monorail route east of I-95 will continue to need existing feeder trains from Quantico-Washington, Ashland-Richmond, Petersburg-Richmond, Virginia Beach-Norfolk.

St. George B. Pinckney.
Richmond.