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On October 1, 2007, the FTA signed the agreement to appropriate $128 million for the construction of the network. On September 22, 2006, the Federal Transit Administration announced that the proposal met federal criteria for design, and would receive funding for a final design.
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īeginning in 2000, HRT and federal transit officials worked to create a plan that would attract federal funding. Īfter Virginia Beach pulled out of a proposal that would have seen the construction of a light rail line connecting downtown Norfolk with the Virginia Beach oceanfront in 1999, Norfolk began developing a network that would be constructed entirely within its city limits. On November 2, Virginia Beach residents voted against the referendum, 56 percent to 44 percent. : S-6–S-7 In 1999, the Virginia Beach City Council asked its residents in a referendum whether it should adopt a local ordinance to help develop and finance the light rail project. : 10 The alignment would have run along an exclusive double-track right-of-way that followed the Norfolk Southern Railway and contained 13 stations. : S-1 Four years later, TTDC pursued a Major Investment Study and in 1997, identified a locally preferred alternative for an 18-mile (29 km) east–west light rail line between downtown Norfolk and the Virginia Beach oceanfront. In the late 1980s, the Tidewater Transportation District Commission (TTDC) began producing studies that would examine the feasibility of expanding transit corridors between Norfolk and its neighboring cities of Chesapeake, Portsmouth, Suffolk, and Virginia Beach these included a study for the cost effectiveness of restoring passenger rail service in 1986 and a rail systems analysis in 1991.