sax184

They'll be scheduled. None of the other services in NC operate any type of flag stopping. Occasionally, there are special event "stations" that exist for 1 day or 1 week. The only examples I can think of are the Lexington Barbecue Festival and the NC State Fair.

On rail, it's money. There are no active direct tracks between Charlotte and Asheville. Everything goes through Salisbury. Building a new line is incredibly expensive compared to upgrading existing track. Between Charlotte and Wilmington, there are tracks, but there's nobody (comparatively) to pick up! Studies by NCDOT show that compared to traversing the urban crescent along 85/40, the Charlotte-Wilmington direct path is much more expensive to operate, and carries far fewer people. It is questionable as to whether or not such a route would be faster, either- the tracks between Charlotte and Wilmington on the southern route are pretty poor.

The Western line is more likely to be completed first because it has already had most of the stations improved other than platforms, with local communities stepping up to provide at least 10% of the station costs.

NCDOT is doing about as well as it can without a Federal partner. Obviously, allocating more money would speed up a variety of projects, but the fact remains that you can get federal matching funds to build a road, pave a bikepath, buy a bus, or build a transit line, but not for intercity rail. There is a current bill (S. 294) in the Senate that would remedy this situation. Richard Burr is a co-sponsor.

Alstom, manufacturer of the TGV, has put together a terrific site on TGV technology.

This is a very exciting piece of work going on- VRE, CSX and VDOT are getting close to completing the work on the new Quantico Bridge. (click link above for project updates) The Quantico Bridge is one of several major choke points for freight and passenger traffic in Virginia that effects trains traveling between NC and the Northeast Corridor. Once this bridge is completed, there will be two tracks across Quantico Creek and the ENTIRE railroad between Washington DC and Richmond will be double-tracked. This webpage outlines other improvements that VDOT is working on to improve reliability between DC and Richmond, which will help trains bound for NC.

Listen to the roar as the TGV approaches, and then the silence moments later. Within 3 seconds, it's more than 1/4 mile away from the camera.

Yes- most recent updates can be found at the SEHSR website, which was last updated in early January 2007.

Across the pond, the TGV breaks its own speed record of 515 km/h. The new record speed, 553 km/h, is is the equivalent of 343 MILES PER HOUR on the ground. Wow. This is closing in on speeds achieved by the German maglev trains. It also demonstrates that super high speeds using conventional high-speed rail, when built with well-engineered lines, is not a technical problem to bring about, only a political one. The record was broken on the new HSR line between Paris and Strasbourg. Check out the photo here to see how different the trackbed looks from our under-engineered rails in the USA. Realize that testing speeds are never achieved in regular service. Once open, top speeds will be a mere 198 - 217 mph!

Yes- most recent updates can be found at the SEHSR website, which was last updated in early January 2007.

I don't know of any tilting double-deck trains, either. As far as I know, the TGV Duplex does not tilt.

Where to start? I drove through Dix yesterday. It was a ghost town. As far as I can tell, there was nothing stopping anyone who wanted to from wandering through the grounds and enjoying them. That said, there was nobody there. It was brisk, but not super-cold outside. I saw 2 other moving cars, and zero pedestrians. I have concerns about the ULI plan, but the FDDP/306 plan poses more danger to the future of the city right now. If the FDDP plan is pretty much "leave it as it is," and gives no details of the interior, I see two futures for the park: 1. Exact same vibrancy as today- none. A mostly ignored property. 2. A space that in the public mind, is like Moore Square, and perceived as "not for everyone" and is predominantly considered a homeless hangout. Note carefully: I am not advocating shuffling the homeless off our streets and out of sight. What I am saying is that the most successful public spaces have room for everyone, where people from all walks of life feel comfortable and safe. Primarily I see these outcomes because the FDDP/Dix 306 plan seems to do little to draw more positive activity into the park. I also do not see anything that makes the Dix park in the FDDP plan a "Destination Park" other than assertions that its location will become increasingly important over the next 50 years, so more people will come and hang out. I think some other people have touched on why a comparison to Central Park makes no sense, and the biggest key point to summarize is that Central Park's vitality is heavily dependent on the nearby population density. Manhattan's density at the time Central Park was planned was in the vicinity of 35,000 people per sq mile. That population density has risen to above 50,000 people per square mile for the whole of Manhattan. Raleigh's density today is something like 3050 people per sq mile, and assuming Raleigh annexes ZERO land (unlikely) and moves in 10000 people a year, the density of Raleigh will be a "whopping" 3900 people per sq mile in 2017. Throw in the fact that NYC is also a worldwide commerce and tourist mecca, with MILLIONS of visitors to the city who also take time to enjoy the park, and the argument that "location" near DT Raleigh and 50 years of growth alone will fuel Dix into a Destination Park-- fizzles out completely. So please, let's stop talking about Central Park. There's no valid comparison. So what would make Dix a destination park? 1. Increased variety and intensity of uses in and around Dix. Yes, this means some development of housing, office, and retail. Unlike the ULI plan, there should be no single family housing. This is an URBAN park. There should not be any suburban building forms. A base of local users who live and work there will provide the "eyes on the street" that help secure the space for the broader public. 2. Programming. Programming. Programming. A tremendous example of transforming an underused asset into an urban destination that people do FLOCK from near and far to enjoy is Providence's Waterfire. HOw do you let people enjoy hundreds of acres at Dix, and still enjoy something like this-- is a question we should be working on. 3. Connectivity. Greenways are nice, but they're a suburban form. Dix should be linked to its surrounding environs by SIDEWALKS and urban boulevards. The Boylan Heights bridge and street under Western Blvd need to be spruced up as linear gateways that draw people from downtown towards the park. Wayfinding signs like Philadelphia's might help. 4. Management. Urban parks have different need than suburban parks which function more as nature preserves or athletic fields set amid cookie-cutter subdivisions and strip malls. Management needs to be much more active in an urban park. These are just a few issues that need work at Dix to get a terrific park.

Just for comparison: Hundreds of Flights canceled as winter weather hits NC Same day: Southbound Piedmont Train 73 reaches destination in Charlotte 6 minutes early. Northbound Carolinian train 80 reaches Raleigh 3 minutes early.

Bravo. Bravo! BRAVO!! I think that you should get 5 people to go to a City Council meeting, and ask if you can pool your three minutes each for public comment into a 15-minute block, and then act this out, wearing big signs on front and back of each character, explaining who is who. Alternatively, you could get a permit to act it out on Fayetteville St., as long as it's not too political...

Isley: Taliaferro: The mindset of Taliaferro and Isley is ironclad. If you don't move around in a car, you don't exist.

Looking at the RFP, I think what they mean is that assuming commuter rail trains made it into Downtown Raleigh, however they got there, say, within 1/2-mile of the wye and the potential Multimodal Station areas, how would you integrate those services, arriving on whichever tracks they use, into a big facility? Essentially, the consultants are not being asked to solve the deployment of a full line or lines, just how to tie them together. Eastrans, TTA Regional Rail, and High-Speed rail are the most likely implementations, and they all come from different directions.

That makes sense. Long-term, I think the more interesting question will be whether or not SEHSR is given direct access to Winston-Salem via the K line and the WSSB to Lexington, or whether transfers to Winston will occur at Greensboro. The Washington to Charlotte travel time with Winston added in increases by 40 minutes. There was talk in the initial meetings of having some of the trains, maybe 1 per day per direction, eventually stopping in Winston on the way to Charlotte. In the meantime, connecting service probably makes more sense. The Record of Decision states that the highest amount of revenue is achieved by going through Winston, but the highest operating profit occurs by going through Greensboro and High Point, though not by much. ($1 million per year) The prudent approach is probably to get the primary alignment up and running and assuming there is a good capital program and strong operating revenue, begin sprucing up connections to the NCRR mainline. I'd got to Winston, then Asheville, then Wilmington, but I'm sure others would prefer a different order.

The SEHSR corridor was finalized in the October 2002 Record of Decision, which can be found on their publications page. Page 11 shows the corridor routing and explains the somewhat unorthodox treatment of Winston-Salem. If you're interested in what service would look like if the SEHSR is constructed, check out the Appendix of the FRA monograph, which has the proposed schedules. One the southbound run, the real top-notch portions of the trip are the running between Greensboro and I-485, with a 81.4 mph avg running speed, and the Petersburg to Henderson segment, running at an avg of 81.3. I wouldn't put a stop in Henderson, but maybe the stopping penalty isn't that big, who knows. What this does tell you is that in terms of "bang for the buck" - the biggest value in terms of benefits accruing to both ends of the corridor is the Raleigh to Richmond Segment. The Carolinian covers that segment in about 3.5 hours today, an average speed of 45 mph. The SEHSR nearly doubles that speed. I would love to see this thing get built.

Actually, this is not true if the streetcar tracks are put in when the streets are built. It's retro-fitting existing infrastructure that's costly. The 200-block grid with streetcars overlaid on the roads from the beginning would be something. Especially if you did traffic signal priority for the streetcars.

There are a handful of people in the Triad who know how to do anything other than sprawl, and they're all working in the downtowns, not on greenfield development. Instead, the Triad has the moron who wants to build a skyscraper near the PTI flightpath. There's little mention of transit in this, and most of the area near PTI is already a suburban nightmare. These bubble diagrams don't impress me.

PTI is dying, and Smith Reynolds has no passenger service. The rail system would be much more productive serving downtowns, universities, hospitals, and malls.

An excerpt of a webpage on streetcar development in Raleigh: