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The Norfolk Tide Light Rail: Its Problems, Potential, and the Story of the “Worst LRT in America”

ByDavid William Rosales Updated on

“The Tide,” Norfolk, Virginia’s light rail system, has been called “The Worst Light Rail System in the U.S.”

I rode the Tide myself when I visited friends who live in the Hampton Roads area, so I got to see some of its problems firsthand.

Yet, I also got to benefit from it, taking it to downtown Norfolk with our crew, getting to walk around some neighborhoods and not worry about parking or traffic.

After the trip, my mind lingered on The Tide Light Rail because its problems are a reflection of so many transportation problems in the United States.

So whether you’re reading because you’re interested in the Hampton Roads metro area, or transportation more broadly, know that this is about so much more.

Wait… Hampton Roads Has a Light Rail?

A light rail is a train that usually has a smaller number of cars than a metro and usually operates on a mix of exclusive track and track shared with roads. (But the definitions get muggy.)

Here are some quick facts on The Tide light rail.

Why The Tide Exists in The First Place: Noble Goals, Tough Execution

First we have to understand why any mass transit, whether train or bus, exists in the first place.

  • Mass transit is better at moving more people in densely populated spaces. Instead of sprawl, endless parking lots, horrific traffic, and wide highways, mass transit enables walkability and density. You can’t have walkable cities without mass transit. The geometry just doesn’t shake out.
  • If mass transit is successful, people use it over cars. This reduces traffic, improves air quality, and reduces deforestation by encouraging dense housing development instead of sprawl.
  • It’s also a public good. Mass transit gets us places. These have economic benefits for those who use it (it’s usually cheaper than driving) and for society at large.

The Benefits of Mass Transit Are Clear, But Why a Light Rail?

Hampton Roads Transit’s own statistics show that the area has many more bus riders than light rail users. So why spend on a light rail?

  • Higher capacity: More people can fit in a light rail car than a bus, and it’s easier to add more cars with one driver. The cars used for The Tide can fit 160-180 people per car. This can decrease operating costs.
  • Signal priority? In theory bus rapid transit (BRT) can also have signal priority and the right-of-way over cars, making it more reliable.
  • Better experience? Trains are smoother. People like them more.

Is this worth the higher cost? It’s hard to say. Light rail is more of a gamble in sprawling, car-dependent U.S cities than buses. It’s higher risk, higher reward.

Again, as local reporting made clear, the original idea for The Tide Light Rail was to make it a more expansive network that connected the region’s cities by rail.

The higher-capacity light rail also has more potential to spur more housing development.

But The Tide Light Rail Has Problems and Opposition

  • It’s an incomplete network. It’s stuck in Norfolk. A smaller network that doesn’t serve as many people as it could.
  • Its operating costs are high. I couldn’t find an updated number, but in 2016, a report said it costs around $6 million per year to operate. This isn’t that bad, but naturally, people who don’t understand that all transit is subsidized by taxpayers don’t like this. (They spend a lot more to subsidize highways.)
  • It went over budget in initial construction. The initial proposed cost was $232 million, and the final cost was $314 million. This is a real problem and pattern of transit construction in the United States, and I think Transit Costs Project does the best job of explaining why.

Let’s talk about the root cause of these problems.

Problem #1: The Death of the Virginia Beach Extension and the Power of Network Effects

The Tide light rail as it is was always meant to expand. But in a 2016 referendum, the residents of the city of Virginia Beach voted against the extension of the light rail into Virginia Beach.

The Double Standard: Public Transit is Seen as “Welfare” in The U.S. While Highways Get Blank Checks

Then Virginia Beach Treasurer and the leader of the group “No Light Rail in Virginia Beach” opposed it because of the cost. He said, “Light rail doesn’t offer a valued service to citizens in Virginia Beach…. it will give us a bigger tax bill.” The city and its voters would have been responsible for $88 million, as reported by Virginia Business.

This sounds like a reasonable argument. And it is. Transportation costs money, and that money has to come from somewhere. The fact that the first segment of the light rail went tens of millions over budget doesn’t help.

However, I think the overall context of transportation costs matters too. I can’t find exact numbers on Virginia Beach, but the Virginia Department of Transportation 2026 budget includes $3.8 billion for road maintenance and $2.96 billion for construction.

You can look in Norfolk as well. Rehabilitating a two-mile segment of I-64 in Norfolk will cost $197 million, according to Virginia DOT. Again, TWO MILES. There are some bridges too, but the point stands. This isn’t a vast project for the public good. It’s just some bridge repairs on a short section of highway.

The point I’m making here is that car infrastructure gets hundreds of millions or billions without a second thought, and opponents of transit shoot down projects over tens of millions.

One creates congestion and air pollution, the other reduces congestion and air pollution. There is a double standard in U.S transportation discourse.

Ignores The Benefits of Transit

Aside from the comparison itself, opposing transit expansion over cost ignores the benefits. 30% of Americans don’t drive (children, the elderly, the blind). Transit costs less for users than owning and insuring a car. It serves the public. That’s what public money is for.

Even if you don’t care about public goods serving the public, there are economic benefits too. As the city of Virginia Beach itself reported, tourism generated $3.8 billion for the local economy last year. That’s not possible without transportation: roads, airports, and yes, transit. Improved transit is an opportunity for more of that.

There’s no study right now on the economic benefits of the expansion of light rail into Hampton Roads.

Why Incomplete Transit Lines Don’t Work: Network Effects

“Network effects” are one of the most important parts of public transit. A transit line is only as useful as the places it connects.

When you stop a line before it reaches major destinations, you set it up to fail.

I think of the opposition to bike lanes here in New York. Often, people see a single bike lane on one short stretch of road. People point and say, “See? Nobody uses it.” But of course, nobody uses it yet. It’s part of a longer, 10-20-year plan to build a whole network.

Or take airlines. Big carriers win because of their hub-and-spoke networks. Every new flight they add makes the entire system more valuable, since you can now get to dozens of other destinations with a single connection. Transit works the same way. Nobody wants to take a train to nowhere.

By killing The Tide’s planned extensions, especially the one into Virginia Beach, opponents guaranteed low ridership and less bang for the taxpayer buck. That low ridership then becomes the excuse to block future improvements. This is a vicious cycle that’s very hard to break out of. It’s exactly the type of cycle that we see in the U.S., with our wide, congested highways and crappy public transportation.

Problem #2: Not Many People Live Close to a Station, Which Means Low Ridership

Another reason The Tide has low ridership is that not that many people live near the stations that do exist.

My friends whom I visited in Norfolk lived in a suburban-style home with a backyard and everything. It was only about 10 minutes walking to the light rail station.

It was not the type of home you would expect to be close to effective and frequent public transit.

That’s because public transit works best when lots of people live near it, and suburban-style single-family homes take up a lot more space, which means fewer people can live within walking distance.

Denseville vs Sparseville: “Catchment Area” Explained

From Jarrett Walker’s book Human Transit

In his book Human Transit, Jarrett Walker compares two areas with equally good public transit. One is called “Densevile” and one is called “Sparseville.” In Denseville, more people live in apartment buildings and multi-family housing. In Sparseville, everyone lives in a single-family home.

The transit in Denseville gets more riders and is perceived as “better,” because it has a bigger “catchment area.” That means more people live a short walk from transit stops.

This is one of the most important factors for effective public transit. The whole city doesn’t need to be dense, but areas near public transportation should. That’s where The Tide struggles.

Transit Is Only As Good As The Amount of People It Serves: Build Dense Housing

The station that I went to at least had homes near it. But of the 11 stations on The Tide, 4 of them are park and rides!

This means that land where people could walk just a few minutes to the light rail is instead a swath of concrete, designed for people to drive to and then take the light rail.

Park and rides can have their place for suburban commuter lines, but for urban transit, you want to maximize the housing near the stations. In today’s terminology, we call this “transit-oriented development.”

In Hampton Roads’ defense, Ghent and Downtown are quite dense. But 2 out of 11 stations with dense housing just doesn’t cut it. Parking lots and any public land available within 10 minutes walking of the current stations should have apartment buildings.

Car-centric planning, like big parking lots and spread-out single-family homes, is incompatible with effective public transit.

The area has the potential. Norfolk is connected by Amtrak with several Northeast Regional trains that go to D.C and onward to New York and Boston. There’s hope. Just bring the people to the existing train with more transit-oriented housing construction. Building more homes is also key to addressing the housing crisis.

Hampton Roads Only Built Half a Network, and Didn’t Build Housing Near Its Stations

To connect these two problems, the situation is clear: The Tide doesn’t take enough people to enough useful places.

Problem #3: Like a Lot of U.S. Transit Projects, it Went Way Over Budget

The initial proposed cost for the light rail $232 million, and the final cost was $314 million. These dollars are adjusted for relevant inflation. That’s a huge cost increase.

The Antiplanner, whom I respect and enjoy reading because he challenges my progressive-urbanist lens, took a look at some reasons why and outlined what he called the “Norfolk Light Rail Scandal.”

His conclusion is that they should stop running the trains, and that, it seems, public transit projects are bound to cost too much. That is a fatalistic conclusion to me, but I take his point: It’s time for us pro-transit people to take a deep, hard look at why transit projects cost so much.

That’s why I consistently recommend people to read and follow the research of NYU’s Transit Costs Project. Although they haven’t looked at this light rail specifically, there are patterns that emerge in the problems of projects like California High Speed Rail to New York’s Second Avenue Subway.

We see some of those patterns here:

  • Whether contracts are given out to “favored” groups or not due to personal connections, there’s a lot of money going to consultants.
  • There’s inexperience in building transit and unique projects that lead to inflated costs.
  • No true explanation, a sign that we need to figure this out if we want good transit.

In Virginia Beach’s defense, how could the taxpayers have confidence that the project will be on budget? Frankly, I can’t blame them.

It’s not just taxpayers who are shunned by the cost. In 2018 Hampton Roads Transit announced that they wouldn’t expand light rail in the other direction, on the west side of Norfolk, due to the projected cost.

Until the U.S. can figure out how to build transit for similar costs as France, Turkey, or Spain, we have nobody to blame but ourselves for our lack of good transit.

Where To Go From Here: Two Possible Options

As it exists, The Tide doesn’t go enough places or serve enough people. It’s in a limbo. There are two paths forward.

First, you can finish the line they originally planned. Build it to Virginia Beach so that it actually connects what it was supposed to.

This is likely to be politically unpopular and expensive.

The second option is to encourage development around the existing train stations. This requires less taxpayer money and fewer barriers.

This will have its own political battles, of course. But I think it’s the political route of lesser resistance.

I guess there’s a third option: continue having a mediocre light rail that doesn’t serve many people and doesn’t go to many useful places.

In Hampton Roads? What Do You Think?

I want your thoughts. Comment below your perspective and what you want to see.

David William Rosales writes about car-free travel and sustainable mobility from his home base in New York City. Drawing on his firsthand experience, he examines how transportation, climate, and urban policy intersect. When not volunteering in Bronx community gardens or debating how to improve public transit in the U.S., he likes to read, explore New York, and eat Salvadoran food.

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