If Raleigh’s elections are anything to go by, WRAL comments are further from representing the consensus than we are. It’s just a different bubble.
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How dare em, treat CATS it because state legislators wanna keep us quaint and don’t want us to thrive and crown them. And this is why Raleigh population needs to hit 500,000 so we can go around the state for projects like this large scale transit project.
We were just talking about how NCDOT got an FTA grant for S-Line planning:
I’d thought NCDOT was considering S-Line as just a Southeast High-Speed Rail corridor, so everything about that grant was news to me – Wake Forest definitely wouldn’t be a SEHSR stop, and Apex and Sanford are beyond the SEHSR corridor entirely. So obviously, NCDOT is thinking about the S-Line within a regional rail context, not just SEHSR.
NJ Transit, MARC, and CTrail are the obvious counterparts for state level agencies running commuter trains. A lot of Amtrak’s shorter routes blur the distinctions between commuter and intercity – obviously NCDOT’s Piedmont, but perhaps more interestingly the Caltrans corridor services (Capitols, San Joaquin, Surfliner) which are “state supported” but run by regional agencies.
The US is otherwise largely missing the “regional rail” scale that the Triangle corridor is probably best suited for, akin to TER services in France or RegioBahn in Germany. These are usually run by states.
(Speaking of France, their “public” railway companies are, like Amtrak, technically just corporations entirely owned by the government. So, in the US, they’re considered “private operators” who have contracts to operate transit services for public authorities. VRE is a Virginia-funded authority which contracts train operations to Keolis, a “private operator” which is mostly owned by SNCF, a railway corporation owned by the French government. At Union Station in DC, you can then transfer to a DC Streetcar or DC Circulator bus, operated for the DC government by RATP, a different railway corporation also owned by France which mostly runs urban & commuter rail around Paris. MARC’s Penn Line is run by Amtrak, on Amtrak’s tracks, but under MARC’s brand.)
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I was making the private-versus-public distinction not in terms of how VRE etc. are financed but, rather, where their statutory powers derive from and whether their place in our social contract demands better considerations of the public good. I figured that was the context @HardeesBiscuit was asking (complaining?) about, judging from the tone of his questions and replies. Fiscally, yeah, I’m aware of the SNCF’s model and the murky line for government-owned “private” operators.
Anyways… yeah, I was surprised about the S-line thing too. I didn’t think to put it that way until now, but I guess that’s a good sign NCDoT has, at least, some intention to take on the mantle of regional rail, themselves. Maybe that does give some hope to @orulz’s idea?
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NcDOT could help support our commuter rail with some strings attached. They already helping them out with the Commuter Rail to Belmont.
…what?
Most of the rail-specific conversation the past few days has been about the exact opposite of this (i.e. the state taking the lead, being aided by GoTriangle), as Owen first suggested. If you’re going to ignore his idea, I’d suggest you put a bit more effort into your post and give a better reason than that 
Charlotte’s LYNX Silver Line planning project is light rail with dedicated rights-of-way, not commuter rail (which implies heavy rail service that shares tracks with freight services). Plus, the way NCDOT is helping that project is different than what we’re talking about; that light rail project wants to use lots of state-owned road right-of-ways, and the partnership is about planning and engineering information-sharing. That’s different from sharing business risks, which is a whole different ball game.
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Charlotte’s Red Line was gonna be commuter rail. However, Norfolk Southern owns that line and is, as usual, making things difficult. As such, it appears that this project is on the back burner and will, for now, remain an express bus service via I-77.
True. It sounds like Norfolk Southern’s recent leadership change hasn’t made much of a change on those fronts, though, and it’s hard to say local support is overwhelmingly positive. But I figured Gavin’s talking about the Silver Line since he mentioned Belmont, its western terminus.
Yeah the Silver Line, I was talking about but if Norfolk won’t budge maybe Raleigh should consider buying it own tracks. I have a feeling commuter rail might be dead, if it’s hard for us to get state funding cause they hate our city and only want our rival, and Norfolk won’t budge what would the money go to next?
GoTriangle’s leadership is having their monthly meeting next Wednesday, and is getting regular updates on major capital projects according to their agenda. The updates include the study on commuter rail, but… well… it ain’t lookin’ good.
These reports usually have several paragraphs of text, and certain parts are changed and highlighted whenever they change for a particular month. Here’s what got updated in this month’s iteration:
“GoTriangle and NCRR will continue to attempt to work with Norfolk Southern” sticks out like a sore thumb, in my eyes, simply because of how weak and wishy-washy it sounds. Makes you wonder just exactly how uncooperative they’re being, here… 
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Railroads are extremely difficult to work with. They have all of the leverage.
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Seeing as #5 is quite relevant to this topic, I’ll share it here as well.
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Do you know if there’s any talk of an Eastern link anywhere using the Costal Carolina rail-line through Knightdale / Wendell etc?
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Great question! Short answer: no, not currently.
Longer answer… they actually studied this in the mid-2000’s, complete with Word Art! I had to do a little hunting to find a copy, but there’s still traces of the study floating around on the interwebs.
That being said, the advocacy group WakeUP Wake County has a subcommittee called the Capital Area Friends of Transit, and they’ve been hosting monthly webinars. I watched the one they did last week, and one of the speakers was Jason Brown from the Town of Knightdale. He covered some of the transit and development aspects of the current KnightdaleNext 2035 Comprehensive Plan and briefly mentioned that it leaves room for potential commuter rail on that exact corridor. So some folks still have it on their radar, even if it’s not something they have much control over.
Aside from the fact that this region has a really, really bad history with rail transit, I believe the fatal flaw with the Carolina Coastal Railway was the fact that an insane number of updates would have to be implemented in order to make this corridor even remotely competitive with driving. It’s old, slow, windy, and pretty much completely single-tracked. Tough sell on a region that can’t imagine getting around without a car.
Personally, I think the corridor makes sense and would be worth the money, especially if both the Garner-Durham and Apex-Youngsville lines pan out. You’re more or less on your way to a regional rail system at that point, so this is the next logical step (aside from extending those lines to Mebane, Selma, and Sanford). But I wouldn’t expect it any time remotely soon, unfortunately.
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Just one more reason to make sure we get the commuter/regional/intercity rail expansions we do have on the table right the first time, then.
The slide deck you posted here also mentions several closures of at-grade crossings and new grade separations. Did our gal Julie say anything about where they’ll happen?
Maybeeeee the one in Morrisville, at McCrimmon Parkway or the long-planned Airport Rd. connection? 
I have a feeling that’s been a pain for GoTriangle’s commuter rail planners, too, so I’d imagine that would help them a lot with conceptual station planning.
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She did not. I assume McCrimmon is one of them. NCDOT’s had that in the works for awhile now. My other guesses would be Morrisville-Carpenter and either Ellis or Cornwallis. Huge deal though, for sure. Hope this happens quick.
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Haha, some classmates and I have actually been analyzing that exact plan recently, and will be doing a presentation in class tomorrow! It doesn’t really have much in the way of specifics but does call for the rail corridor to be preserved for future commuter service. Basically, it’s something that they think would be nice to have in the future, but they’re not actively planning for it yet, so it’s still a ways off.
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Thanks for clarifying that! Not to go too far off topic, but what would you say is the most interesting aspect of the plan as a whole?
Found it! It’s in page 126 of the STIP dated for March 2021. It says they should’ve already started buying land for the right-of-way, and construction should begin FY2023.
Each fiscal year has three columns:
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what money will be used for (“R” and “RB” are buying right-of-way, “U” for utilities, and “C” and “CB” for construction)
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how much money is expected to be used for that fiscal year, in thousands of dollars
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project part (part B is for grade-separation)
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Hmm, hard to say. Aside from the commuter rail possibility, it does also advocate (a bit more realistically, perhaps) for the extension of the New Bern Ave. BRT line to the Shoppes at Midway, where there is apparently a transit center of some sort proposed. They would like it to ultimately extend a bit farther to a mixed-use activity center that they envision on the Schneider Electric site (details of which I can find no other information). To support this the plan also calls for some mixed-use redevelopment and retrofit of some of the suburban shopping centers, especially along Knightdale Blvd (US 64). It also envisions more attractive gateways to the town, and a “River District” with more activation and access to the Neuse River. It’s an all right plan; sort of misses certain aspects but does well on others.
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