Tide celebrates its first birthday

NORFOLK, Va. (WAVY) - Hampton Roads Transit celebrated The Tide's one-year anniversary Friday with birthday cake and free rides, but talk quickly turned to the future of light rail in Virginia Beach.

"The first step along the way is to get into Virginia Beach," Norfolk Mayor Paul Fraim said. "Once we get there, we get all the political strength and muscle that we can take the system anywhere."

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Norfolk's light rail system opened in 2011 despite cost overruns and controversy.

“The argument for years has been that people won’t ride it,” Virginia Beach Mayor Will Sessoms said.

Earlier this week, HRT released a statement that The Tide had provided more than 1.74 million rides in its first year. Sessoms says light rail is reaching ridership goals HRT was expected to reach five or six years into the project.

“I’ve been waiting for a long time to say, ‘I told you so,’” ex-councilman Randy Wright said. “I feel redemption. It took a lot of effort to get it where it is today. It was projected to be 2,900 [rides] per day. It’s well over 5,000 now.”

Attention has turned to Virginia Beach, where voters will decide in November whether or not they would like to extend light rail to the Oceanfront, which is estimated to cost more than $800 million.

“The referendum does not guarantee success of the light rail coming to Virginia Beach,” Sessoms said. “It allows us to move forward, do a good, thorough evaluation, get public input and see if the federal money is available to fund it. Today, it is available. Will it be there two years from now? I can’t guarantee it. If not, it’ll be very difficult to get it done.”

HRT president and CEO William Harrell says the cost of transportation has stayed consistent since 1999, and could not confirm or deny whether large expansion plans for light rail could result in raised fare.

“Of course gas is up, all sorts of fees have gone up,” Harrell said. “We will evaluate [raising fare] as part of 2013. We have a new board in place, and we’ll be bringing some recommendations to them.”

There are possibilities of bringing light rail to Old Dominion University and Naval Station Norfolk.

"Mayor Fraim has been clear. It's not the Norfolk Tide, it's the Hampton Roads Tide, so at this point we're about to begin the study for Virginia Beach," Harrell said. "I would anticipate over the next 30 days that that study will be reinitiated in terms of reevaluating service to the Beach, and a second element of that will be going to the naval base."

As for Virginia Beach, Sessoms said he believes an initial light rail stop in Virginia Beach should be at Town Center.

“It looks very favorable now, but it’s too close to call,” Sessoms said. “I think that anyone that wants to see this be successful needs to go out there and vote in favor of the referendum.”

Riders told WAVY.com the only thing that seemed to go wrong Friday was that some did not know rides were free until they had already purchased tickets to ride.

At the end of the day, HRT reports 13,780 people rode The Tide.