sax184

I think the Carolina Association for Passenger Trains (joint NC/SC group) had raised the issue as a thoughtful way to get better equipment utilization of the Piedmont while NC did not have the track capacity for midday trains. My sense is that if SCDOT was interested and could have funded some track improvements south of CLT, NCDOT would have given this very serious consideration. Unfortunately for SC, that window has now closed. NCDOT has improved the NCRR to the point where another Piedmont service will start running in the middle of the day sometime in summer/fall 2009. You can be sure that this midday train will be a big boost to the productivity of the equipment, and may even become a profitable run. If the latter happens, this will accelerate the business case for the addition of another roundtrip by the Piedmont, maybe in 2-3 years' time. With four trains between Raleigh and Charlotte daily (3 Piedmont roundtrips, 1 Carolinian roundtrip) service in this corridor would be starting to mimic the Downeaster in New England!

I'm sorry, we'll have to agree to disagree. Maybe my word choice was overly harsh, and if so, I apologize for being so-- but the line above is not only true, but is also primary evidence of the backwardness of those legislatures. In most parts of life, you get what you pay for. NC pays for better than average rail service, and gets it. SC doesn't, and has nothing to show for it. It's not a matter of spending hundreds of millions of dollars per year, either. SC could make modest investments, of probably $10 million a year for 10 years, and greatly improve the reliability and or speed of passenger service to Columbia or Savannah (but not both) while enhancing capacity for freight rail as well. Both represent infrastructure investments that spur economic activity and set the table for future growth while supporting cleaner air. Is it about being a small state? No. Vermont spends plenty of money on intercity rail, though that funding is in question right now. So does Maine. Both of these states lack a major metro area. In GA, a state with an economic powerhouse metro area like Atlanta, the excuses are even flimsier because they have much more money than SC. It is a matter of priorities, and when it comes to transportation priorities, with the exception of Atlanta, GA and SC are 20 to 30 years behind NC. This is not an attempt to be disparaging as much as it is diagnostic. Also, monsoon is absolutely right on the point about debt. The states have to balance their budgets; only the federal government has the luxury to do otherwise. Spartan, I hear your point about people wanting to ride, and I believe you. But those interests are not well represented in governance. The fact remains that the elected bodies of SC and GA broadly have little to no interest in intercity passenger rail, and they express that preference annually through their budgets.

What people are willing to pay to get something is an excellent indicator of their level of interest. SC has had the opportunity for several years to work with NS to improve the rail line between Columbia and Charlotte. Doing so would have surely been an easy way to entice the Piedmont to come further south instead of sitting idle for 8 hours each day before returning to Raleigh. They did not. NC has funded a lot of stuff out if its own pocket, and thus has better service and is far better positioned to go to the next level of rail service. Okay, that's fair. I think rail service between ATL and CLT could have 60-80% of the success the Piedmont has in the CLT-RGH corridor, even if it was only upgraded to mostly 79 mph running. The challenge for higher levels of success is that the metropolitan population in the cities and towns distributed between ATL and CLT is much smaller than the population distributed between CLT and RGH. Another factor is that I believe the public transportation grid in the in-between towns is weaker. Now let's say you go to 110 mph between CLT and ATL. Now you'll do a little better still because you'll pick up business travelers who may drive to the stations and journey to the endpoints. What about 200 mph electric trains? Not going to happen without prerequisites. You would never electrify (incredible capital costs) the CLT to ATL segment in isolation from the CLT-RGH-WAS piece because you could not route a through service to Washington, Richmond, or Raleigh. All in all, better train service between Atlanta and Charlotte faces zero insurmountable technical hurdles. I believe that from a market-based view, judging by the size of the cities in between the endpoints, 79 mph service with high on-time performance is probably the most cost-effective goal to pursue. NC mostly has this now on the Piedmont and the service attracts plenty of people and is close to making money above the rails. 90 mph service may also be possible with positive train control coming online in 2015. That said, the primary obstacle to better rail service between these two cities is undoubtedly the political unwillingness to fund these rail improvements. Advocates of ATL-CLT service improvements should focus their energy on encouraging pro-rail state legislators to speak up, and those who are ambivalent to changing their position to be pro-rail.

Because you would need the citizens of GA and SC to stop sending neanderthals to their state legislatures who wouldn't invest in rail if their lives depended on it. Unfortunately, these types of politicians are pretty popular south of the NC border. The future of NC rail, high-speed, medium-speed, or any other lies within NC borders and to the north. Any energy spent on rail going in any other direction (SC,TN,GA) is a complete waste of time.

I predict that this is the farthest the HSR efforts south of Charlotte will reach for the next 5-10 years, or until the CLT-WAS link opens. SC is simply not that interested in passenger rail, GA only mildly more so, and an electric-powered 150-mph running system between ATL and CLT with a fossil-fuel powered 100/125 max speed system north of it also makes little sense. Hopefully NC will focus its efforts now to the north, where the will to act and best results likely lie.

No, higher-order transit is dead in the Triad. There is nobody in business or political leadership speaking about it, there are no organized citizen groups clamoring for it, and a visit to the PART website today shows that the fall 2008 newsletter does not use the word "rail" or "train" anywhere in it. The website used to feature studies for rail and planning documents, now there is one page that mentions rail with a newsletter from 2005.

CATS is not in a position markedly different from other transit agencies these days. Many of the larger agencies (WMATA, NYC MTA) are having serious problems with the lend-leaseback financing of railcars they did because of the near-collapse of AIG. Diesel fuel has just retreated from an unprecedented run and operating budgets have come in far over expectations for most of 2008. Concrete and steel have seen tremendous increases over the last several years due to the building boom in China, India, Dubai, etc. At the same time, the sales tax is quite vulnerable to swings in economic activity. The Dow was at 13,625 on Dec 7, 2007, and it is now stumbling around between 8000 and 9000. Of course the sales tax looks much weaker going forward today than it did one year ago. From a financial perspective, the world is shifting under everyone's feet, not just CATS. Conditions have changed, and so should assumptions about the future. To say that we should evaluate the prognosis of CATS' financial outlook from the point of view of last fall's fiscal conditions today is simply not a functional way to make decisions. We may be about to experience some deflation in costs of construction since the industry has ground to a halt and many contractors are desperate for work, not wanting to lay off their staffs. To the extent that the slowdown eventually catches up with China, the cost of projects here may also improve for concrete and steel. At the same time, we can expect borrowing to be more difficult broadly, but potentially encouraged for transit infrastructure at the federal level. If banks are looking for somebody reliable to lend to, they may provide compelling rates to transit agencies backed by federal spending programs. The line is open. Many critics said CATS was building a failed system that may not even reach 9100 riders a day. The line is considered a rousing success by virtually everyone at the local, state, and federal level who does not work for the JLF. Examining bus service levels should be fair game at this point- CATS has some extremely high levels of service, and is bound to have some areas of lower productivity that could stand a rightsizing of headways. The question of the contribution of collar counties to CATS operations should also be considered. Are Union, Gaston, etc., contributing enough for the express services they receive?

Probably because the merger will phase out the Northwest flights. Just a hunch.

I hear you on the desire to address the long term, but I think we're going to find that Terminal 2, either at its present capacity or its full build-out, will be enough terminal space to accommodate passenger air traffic at RDU within 15 years, 10 years, or even 5 years. Post a full Terminal 2 build-out, Terminal A may shut for good, never to be re-opened. Despite the roller coaster of oil price changes this year, nothing has fundamentally changed on the rate at which world oil supplies are depleting. As quickly as $3.50-$4.00/gallon gas has changed habits and put airlines deep in the red, the inability of new oil exploration to replace the declining production of fields discovered in the 1960s is going to bring us back to $3.50/$4 and then up and beyond, most likely by the end of next year or summer 2010 at the latest. We've had several price retreats in the last 6 years, but the long-term trend is unmistakable. (choose the "6 Years" chart) For the latest picture of world oil supply issues from the viewpoint of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO), visit this link.

The ability of low-frequency, rush-hour only rail service to shape growth in the US is questionable, even in cities where connections to an excellent urban rail system exist. There will be lots of pressure for the commuter rail stations to be surrounded by huge parking fields. Growth from Commuter Rail Limited NIMBYism also plays a role. Maybe in downtown Burlington or Selma, which are comparatively moribund compared to other downtowns in NC, this development would be welcome and more likely. Simply put, commuter rail doesn't allow anyone living on this line to give up a car, unless perhaps they live in Downtown Raleigh and commute to work somewhere else along the line. I'm not saying that commuter rail doesn't have a role in this region or that some of these services may not be well-patronized. I am saying that if transit is not an end in itself, but a means to more compact, mixed-use communities that cost less to serve with public infrastructure than conventional suburbs, and are also less dependent on fossil fuels for economic activity, then commuter rail is not very likely to help with those goals in the way that light rail would.

Orulz earlier point about speed is right on. It is unlikely that there will be any train moving through the downtown streets above 15-25 mph because the train will either be on the final approach or departure from the Multimodal Station. The bigger challenge is figuring out whether or not any passenger trains' heads or tails would wind up parked across at-grade street crossings to board/release passengers. If this is not the case, then the city and rail providers need to figure out an acceptable number of minutes that the tracks are closed to vehicle traffic per day. This would guide how many true closings make sense.

There's nothing preventing a Raleigh-terminating train from pulling into the MMTC site's main platform area. In fact, if the DMU line was built, extending to the originally planned Govt Ctr station, you might terminate the train there for supercommuters from Rocky Mount, etc to State Govt jobs. A backing move is certainly possible, but I'm not sure it wouldn't be a lot of trouble with the limited number of platforms the MMTC site can accommodate. In 15-20 years, a backing move might be very disruptive to through services.

There is one additional scenario that keeps the current platform area in play. I have heard NCDOT staff state that the interest in keeping the Carolinian running on its current route, even post the opening of SEHSR, is very strong. You can imagine that the local politicians in Wilson, Rocky Mount, and Selma are certainly going to be vocal on this point. Here is what I think will happen, assuming a commitment to the current Carolinian routing is made. With 4 or 5 SEHSR trains in each direction, though, that move much faster than the Carolinian, very few people from the Raleigh-Charlotte portions of the Carolinian route will choose that train to DC and NYC anymore. Once the demand for travel north of the NC state line (Richmond,DC, points north) shifts to the SEHSR trains, I think it is likely that the Carolinian becomes a Wilson-Raleigh train. Or- if the infrastructure improvements are being worked on by then, a Wilson-Raleigh-Greensboro-Salisbury-Asheville train.

Chapel Hill Transit ridership is nearly double that of the Wolfline. Something like 29,000 riders a day to 15-16,000 riders a day at State. Charlotte is way ahead of both of them.

The energy fundamentals are just too difficult for air travel to sustain a broad market in the long run. The 787 dreamliner, considered a quantum leap in airplanes, improves fuel efficiency by 25%. That's a tremendous industrial achievement, but it's still not going to turn back the tide. Fuel prices are up 200% in the last few years, and are likely to stay at current levels or continue to rise. Fearless prediction: in about 15 years time, mainstream passenger travel at RDU will be confined to the new Terminal 2, and the current Terminal A, never improved, will be sitting in mothballs. PTI may be closed by then. Air travel is steadily returning to the position it held in the 1950s- a luxury and business travel enterprise.

N&O reports Wake Forest buses are off to a quick start. Definitely good news.

All the other towns along the Asheville route put up 10% matching funds to renovate their stations. Hickory was not willing to do so. If they did the same, the other 90% of the funds would come from the State and Federal sources. Seems like an exercise in extreme short-sightedness to me, but if there's not the political will for these things locally, there won't be a station. If the Asheville line's development gets closer to reality, I think Hickory may revisit and rethink this decision.

Your expectations for people living car-free lives 8 months after opening are unrealistic. It will take years for the full land-use response to the corridor to shake out. As that happens, and station areas densify, the ability to hop from one stop to the next for non-work trips will increase, and so will the ridership at intermediate stations. As to defining success, ask 50 people in Charlotte if the line is a success, and I think you'll find 40-45 of them will say yes.

Look, I don't deny there were some clear oversight failures (the boiler at the maintenance facility, great example) and cost overruns, but the irony is that this project was built in a "keep the cost down regardless of the impact on future benefits" climate that stretched from Washington down to Charlotte. Now, when the product has supremely over-delivered (16,000 daily riders in less than 1 year) and people are upset that the line is not longer, or that park-and-ride decks aren't big enough, the irony is that some of the same people who were saying "the ridership is going to be garbage, this thing is a waste, we shouldn't invest in LRT" are now saying CATS should've done more. I just don't think people can have it both ways. The LRT is a wild success. It had some project and cost management problems that MUST be avoided in the future. Both statements are true and are not mutually exclusive. But it was also value-engineered in areas of performance (platform length a key example) to address the cost concern. For LYNX to grow in success and for other investments to be better executed but just as successful, there needs to be a dose of realism that is informed by real-world performance of the line, and that in the future, it may be better to spend a little more money upfront than have to go back and add on pieces. And in the meantime, the public will need to be patient, and drive to different park and ride lots, or show up earlier, or request parking pricing to manage demand.

There's tremendous irony in the complaints about not enough parking at 485 and the next station in. A year ago, everyone was complaining about how CATS was over budget and that the project was too much of a cadillac and not enough of a Ford Pinto, and that the costs needed to be contained above all things. Now, the city has a project on its hand with capacity problems at one end of the line, and its CATS' fault? If they want to solve the parking issue short-term, it's easy- PRICE the 485 deck $1/car per day if you enter between 6 AM and 9 AM. If that doesn't drive some people to the next lot, move to $2/day.

I'm in full agreement with ChiefJoJo here. NCDOT has done a good job of making the Piedmont a quality service with generally good reliability within the state. Continued track improvements to the NCRR which are slowly but surely being completed will only enhance the Piedmont in the future. This makes the midday trains possible and likely to be successful. The Carolinian is not a failure but is a crapshoot in terms of travel time because of CSX. The antidote to the CSX problems is one of two things: 1. Make minor improvements sponsored by the states and maybe now the Feds (HR 6003 passed last week) to make the A-line up through Rocky Mount, etc. more reliable. This could at least make the Carolinian predictable. In short, the state pays to make CSX's line more usable. Not my preferred approach. 2. Build the first modern-engineered semi-high-speed-rail line in the USA from Raleigh to Richmond, with the opportunity that the French TGV has- eliminating a lot of curves through mostly rural land. While the line would accommodate diesel trains at 110 mph, there will be surely stretches that will accommodate 125-150 mph if electrification could ever be achieved in some distant future. Even at 110 mph max speed, this line would have an average speed similar to the Acela Express because of the reduced curves. A line like this with stops in CLT, GRO, DNC, RGH would be transformative in travel from Charlotte to the northeast, and would generate a broad acceptance of rail that would accelerate the push for extensions to Asheville, Wilmington, etc. But we've got to build the best, most-likely-to-succeed stuff first.

Terrific news. Here's the NCDOT Press Release. It is likely the new Piedmont schedules will look like this: Train 73(CURRENT): RGH 7:00 AM GRO 8:30 AM CLT 10:09 AM ...which turns into... Train 76(NEW): CLT 12:30 PM GRO 2:05 PM RGH 3:40 PM -AND- Train 75(NEW): RGH 12:00 PM GRO 1:30 PM CLT 3:09 PM ...which turns into... Train 74(CURRENT): CLT 5:30 PM GRO 7:05 PM RGH 8:40 PM Implementation seems to be 6 months to a year away.

Your idea is a terrific one, and I would love to see this happen. I'd particularly like to see trains to Asheville and the beach. To clarify, I think what you're talking about is really an intercity rail network, not a commuter one. Commuter rail generally covers distances in the 20-40 mile range, with a few trips each morning and afternoon to major job centers. (Think downtown Raleigh, downtown Charlotte) Occasionally, in places like Chicago and NYC, some of the commuter lines go out 60-80 miles. Intercity rail links cities further apart for mostly non-daily trips (business travel, tourism, special events, holidays) Only when trains reach very, very high speeds with high frequency do you get lots of people commuting by train over the distances you are talking about for work. (100+ miles) This happens on the TGV with commuters to Paris, but also within the Northeast corridor. Some of the Delaware congressional reps commute via the Acela to Washington rather than take up residence in the district because they can cover the 110 miles in an hour and 20 minutes, versus a 2:10 drive each way. NCDOT Rail has some plans that reflect some of what you're talking about; unfortunately, there's no funding for most of the ideas yet beyond the Raleigh-Charlotte corridor. Check it out here.

One thing worth noting about SEHSR in Raleigh, Cary, and beyond is that west of the downtown Raleigh Amtrak station or future multimodal center, the grade crossings for the line are already active with the Piedmont, Carolinian, and 8+ freight trains per day. From Raleigh going north is where new impacts will occur due to this project.

Well said. The LRT line is not having a problem boarding passengers. It is having a demand/supply crunch on parking. Why should lower-impact riders (bike, bus, walk to rail) subsudize auto users? Price the parking accordingly, and some people will even (gasp!) switch to taking the bus or bike to the station.