Proposed bus transfer station in Shockoe Bottom meets opposition

The Richmond Slave Trail Commission has lined up against a proposed bus transfer center for Main Street Station in Shockoe Bottom.

A majority of commission members agreed last week to oppose the $70 million project on the grounds that the related traffic would undermine efforts to commemorate the area's role in the slave trade, said chairwoman Delores L. McQuinn, a state delegate from Richmond.

"They just felt it would be too congested, too much going on with what we're trying to do," she said.

John M. Lewis Jr., GRTC Transit System chief executive officer, said he was surprised by the opposition and described the transfer center as part of a broader plan to make mass transit more efficient and more regional, and to improve a largely fallow area of Shockoe Bottom.

In its draft environmental-assessment report, GRTC says its preliminary design work shows the transfer center would not negatively impact historic resources, including the nearby site of Lumpkin's Slave Jail.

"We don't go through it. We don't go over it. We don't go anywhere close to it," Lewis said.

The Slave Trail Commission, established by the City Council, is working to erect signs and markers to highlight the path that slaves took as they were loaded off ships at Ancarrow's Landing and walked to Shockoe Bottom, where they were held, sold and traded.

McQuinn also expressed interested in establishing a museum on the city-owned train shed's second level, which GRTC wants to use.

The Shockoe Bottom Neighborhood Association and Historic Shockoe Partnership also are opposing the transfer center as needlessly expensive and incompatible with the historic neighborhood and its tight street grid.

Lewis said GRTC has worked with city officials for more than a year on the Main Street Station project and that about a dozen more-centralized sites across downtown had been considered.

Mayor Dwight C. Jones supports the project in concept but is now focusing on details, including its impacts on GRTC's city-supported operational costs, press secretary Tammy Hawley said.

GRTC is positioning the transfer center project to tap federal stimulus funds. As part of the project, ramps would be built on the north side of the train shed to allow buses to reach the second-level platforms.

While McQuinn cited potentially 1,600 bus trips per day, Lewis said the transfer center would likely serve only about 800 per day, giving passengers a covered place to get off one route and onto another. Most of the 11,000 weekday transfers currently occur between Broad and Main streets, and Second and Ninth streets, Lewis said.

The transfer center, east of downtown, is envisioned as working with other transfer points planned along Broad Street west of Belvidere Street.

The City Council hasn't taken a position on the transfer center but will need to see more details, President Kathy C. Graziano said.

"We definitely need a transfer center," she said. "The question is where should it be? I really don't have a sense of [whether Main Street Station is appropriate] because I don't know what [Lewis'] other options are."

Contact Will Jones at (804) 649-6911 or .