I've done some detective work and managed to piece together a few details. For a start, here's a map showing the area we're talking about.
The section proposed for abandonment by Bay Coast Railroad (BCR) is the red bit from Hallwood to Cape Charles, which has no customers after the cement plant closed.
The purple bit at the north has been leased to Delmarva Central Railroad, and continues to operate.
The car barge has not run for some time, and all traffic to/from Cape Charles was going to/from the north.
The blue bit at the south is basically an industrial spur line which handles some switching traffic from the Norfolk Southern to a number of local sidings, and is now leased by the Buckingham Branch Railroad (a railroad with a number of shortlines inland from Norfolk). This part appears to be on borrowed time too, as much of the surrounding area is undergoing post-industrial urban regeneration and the main remaining traffic is serving a construction depot for the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel expansion project.
The Little Creek part is where the former butane traffic was, it served a distribution depot. So far as I can tell, this traffic finished when the distribution depot there was consolidated with another facility not far away which has more direct rail and road links.
Considering that road traffic on the adjacent highway is likely to increase as a result of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel expansion, using the former railroad corridor to give people an opportunity to make local journeys by bicycle (including e-bikes as used by
The Vinelander, or e-trikes like the one our late friend
woodford used) safely without going on the highway would be a win-win scenario for the local area. Using the corridor to give people non-car options for local transport would be a great way to extend the route's long history as a functional transport corridor into the 21st century and provide opportunities for interpretive displays at various locations along the route to pay tribute to the past rail usage.