Qualla: Transportation in Richmond, Virginia

Transportation in Richmond, Virginia: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit DanTD, CC BY-SA 3.0. Frank Sprague picked Richmond because the city's hills were terrible. If his electric streetcar could climb the grades of Church Hill and Shockoe, it could climb anything. On February 2, 1888, he ran his cars up Main Street under their own power. Crowds stood in the cold to watch the first successful electric street railway in the United States grind up grades that had been beating horsecars for decades. Within years, every American city of any size was tearing out horse rails and stringing trolley wire. Richmond's transportation history runs in long arcs like this one — a fall-line port that became a railroad city that became a streetcar city that became, like everywhere else, a freeway city. The James River bends through it all.

Image: DanTD | CC BY-SA 3.0

Transportation in Richmond, Virginia: Fall Line

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chesterfield Railroad Company, Public domain. Richmond exists because the James River stops being navigable here. The fall line — that geological seam where the Piedmont drops to the Coastal Plain — created rapids the ocean-going ships of the seventeenth century could not pass. The first cargoes had to be transferred at this...

Image: Chesterfield Railroad Company | Public domain

Transportation in Richmond, Virginia: Capital of the Confederacy

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit DanTD, CC BY-SA 3.0. For four years, Richmond was the capital of the Confederate States of America, and its rail connections south through Petersburg were the spine of the war effort. The Union Navy could not reach Richmond by water — Confederate batteries at Drewry's Bluff blocked the river. So Ulys...

Image: DanTD | CC BY-SA 3.0

Transportation in Richmond, Virginia: Sprague's Streetcars

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit DanTD, CC BY-SA 3.0. Frank J. Sprague was a former U.S. Navy lieutenant who had worked briefly for Thomas Edison before striking out on his own. He had patents for electric motors and traction control. What he needed was a city willing to bet on him. Richmond was. The Union Passenger Railway hired hi...

Image: DanTD | CC BY-SA 3.0

Transportation in Richmond, Virginia: The Automobile City

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Quidster4040, CC BY-SA 4.0. After World War II, Richmond paved over its trolley world the way every American city did. The Richmond-Petersburg Turnpike — the toll road that became I-95 — opened in 1958. Drivers bought booklets of toll tickets at about eight cents apiece. The Powhite Parkway opened in 1973, ...

Image: Quidster4040 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Transportation in Richmond, Virginia: Airfields and Rivers

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Morgan Riley, CC BY 3.0. In 1927, with Charles Lindbergh in attendance fresh from his Atlantic crossing, Richmond dedicated Richard Evelyn Byrd Flying Field. The airport was named for Virginia native Admiral Richard Byrd, the polar explorer, whose brother Harry was then Governor of Virginia. The field gr...

Image: Morgan Riley | CC BY 3.0