RICHMOND — At 6 each morning, Tom Herbert, a software engineer from Richmond, boards the No. 86 train at the Staples Mill station and begins his 2-hour-35-minute commute to Northern Virginia.
It would be an understatement to say that he’s tantalized by the promise of high-speed rail. Just 20 or 30 mph faster, he figures, could save him an hour or more a day.
He could be in for a long wait.
Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell wasn’t one of the Republican governors who returned federal money earmarked for high-speed rail in their states. He opted not to even apply.
With McDonnell’s high approval ratings and growing role in a party intent on slowing down federal spending, Herbert and other critics wonder whether the governor is playing politics with high-speed rail funding — a prime target of some Republican governors determined to demonstrate their budget-cutting bona fides.
“Is he backing away because of his national ambitions?” Herbert asked of McDonnell, who has been mentioned as a potential vice presidential candidate. “Is ideology getting in the way?”
Virginia Transportation Secretary Sean T. Connaughton dismissed talk of politics, saying the state didn’t apply for the pair of federal grants because accepting the funds required it to either finish construction before it was ready to build or to contribute a state match it could not afford.
Twenty-four states, including Maryland and North Carolina, were awarded $2 billion in federal money this month. Nearly $800 million will be spent on high-speed rail along the East Coast between Boston and Charlotte, though not through Virginia.
“Virginia just doesn’t seem to get it,’’ said James Ukrop, a prominent Richmond businessman and co-chairman of Virginians for High Speed Rail, a nonprofit group. “I’m very disappointed in our short-term thinking.”
Herbert and dozens of people commute each morning on Amtrak between Virginia’s capital and the national’s capital — a groggy, coffee-clutching collection of lawyers, federal employees, Capitol Hill staffers and financial managers.
They slide into the blue seats, generally in the last car of the eight-car train, with their commuter kits: bags filled with pillows, jackets, magazines, snacks and laptops.
If the train is on time, Herbert will arrive in Alexandria 1 hour 47 minutes later. There, he rides the Metro 10 stops to his Arlington County office, and he usually walks in the door about 8:35 a.m.
Bill Talty, who processes claims at the Labor Department for people who have worked in the atomic weapons program, used to drive from his suburban Richmond home to Fredericksburg, where he would catch the Virginia Railway Express to get to his Capitol Hill office. But, he said, the VRE train was as cramped and uncomfortable as a school bus, so after six months he switched to Amtrak.
He buys a monthly pass for $756 and, like other federal employees, receives a $230 stipend for his commute. But he doesn’t regret the cost, because of the ease of travel.
Still, he would prefer his 15-hour workday to be shorter. “Obviously, people would love that,’’ Talty said as he settled into his seat, sipped coffee out of a thermos and fired up his laptop on a recent morning. “I would love that.”
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