Maybe a trolleybus?
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Yeah, it would be cool to have here in Raleigh
Personally, I’d rather see a streetcar system than another bus system when we already have 3 in the area.
Update: GoTriangle Board Meeting is currently in session. GoTriangle staff has confirmed that Norfolk Southern officially started capacity modeling. This is quite possibly the biggest hurdle we have in the initial planning/modeling process, and I was seriously wondering if NS was going to end up killing this thing before it even got off the ground. We might actually get to a design phase, y’all.
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Capacity modeling is a touchy subject.
Railroads have a reputation for demanding preservation of “hypothetical” capacity which can be expensive or problematic.
Take a freight RR with infrastructure that could support 40 freight trains per day, but who only actually runs 10 at the moment, and only really sees the business potential for 5 more. Then a transit agency comes in wanting to run passenger rail. Freight railroads will sometimes demand the transit agency build enough infrastructure to preserve their ability to run the full hypothetical 40 freight trains per day, rather then the current 10, or potential 15.
There is a proposal for passenger rail on the gulf coast that is currently hung up for reasons like this.
I hope we don’t become embroiled in nonsense like this.
I really would prefer dedicated, or mostly-dedicated, tracks for this system, at least between Raleigh and Durham. This is what Utah has done for FrontRunner, what we had planned back in 2005 before it got axed, and would prepare us best for a future of expanded rail service.
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By agreeing to do capacity modeling, they haven’t yet put much skin in the game. It’s only after Norfolk Southern has done this capacity modeling, and made their demands for how much additional infrastructure they want us to build, that we will know how antagonistic or cooperative they are going to be.
There may be some negotiation as well, where what they initially demand is revised in exchange for concessions of some sort.
This is just the first small step down a fairly long road.
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Railroads are … but anyways. Maybe one day they’ll wake up and realize there not really growing. Can’t see any of their corridors going from 10 freight per day to 40+ when most lines are reducing in what they carry basically yearly.
Just charge some track usage fee and accept reality.
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My understanding was that freight moved was way up. It seems the railroads was a record set for freight moved 4 or 5 years ago. All those good arriving at the west coast ports and training out, and oil have them booming. But that is just my memory. 40+ a day is crazy talk, lol.
The Gulf Coast line is in more trouble now that the port authority of New Orleans has joined the port of Mobile in opposing the passenger service. This could be mired for awhile.
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…but this gets weird because the track isn’t actually owned by Norfolk Southern; it’s owned by NCRR, and NS just has long-term rights to operate on it.
(This also makes it super strange that NS has this much leverage in GTCR’s survival, too, since they don’t actually own the tracks…)
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Interesting! I wonder if Atlanta just has their heads in the clouds trying to plan commuter rail? There’s tracks that literally average 80 trains per day and they’re wholly owned by NS and CSX.
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Honestly, I’m not sure. I always got the vibe that Atlanta’s dreams about commuter rail have always been that: dreams.
It’s my impression that no one seriously thinks GDOT or MARTA would move in that direction in the first place in the near future. They finally established the ATL (I guess it’s like a more centralized version of GoTriangle?) and have a solid wish list, yeah, but it seems like they’re nowhere near the point where it can start talking about commuter rail. Plus, they don’t really even have a major site for a commuter rail station, and the only remotely practical candidate for redevelopment recently broke ground without ever mentioning transit integration.
Bringing this back up north to our stretch of 85: I think Owen is right, and Norfolk Southern needs to get back to the realms of reality. GoTriangle could guarantee timeslots for freight rail like San Diego’s North County Transit District will do with BNSF for a rail expansion there, for example, and I’m sure that’s not the only sensible avenue for compromise if NS can act reasonably for once.
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Question for people who are bigger train nerds than me: does the US have any programs or rules on running electric trains on non-electrified rail? Stadler, one of the big international train makers, came up with this -and I’m wondering if this could help make a future commuter rail service efficient.
I know that the US, generally, can now use the same vehicle safety standards as the rest of the world. Many of those trains are lighter, cheaper, faster, and safer than the “bank vaults on wheels” that the FRA used to tightly regulate -not to mention how their accelerations could help them run more efficient services. But does that rule also apply here?
The FTA is also holding a sustainability challenge for transit agencies that will coincide with next year’s Earth Day. I wonder if that could also be useful for the Triangle, somehow.
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Battery electric multiple unit trains are definitely becoming a thing; their niche seems to be running on electrified mainlines and branching onto unelectrified branches. But for them to make sense, some portion of the line does have to be electrified.
And while there is a niche where they make sense, they do add to the cost and complexity of railcars, so if a branch is expected to see enough frequency, or is short enough, it can often be a better decision to just electrify the whole thing.
I have the impression, though no facts to back it up, that they are more common in intercity service than in regional service. As in, electrify Charlotte to Selma, and then run off-wire on battery power to Goldsboro, Rocky Mount, or Fayetteville. I think international best practice is pretty much to electrify all of your regional lines.
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I thought it seems that way simply because battery-based trains are so new that no one’s thought of them as a serious alternative to diesel trains? (…yet, anyways) Assuming that’s true, I wonder if the Triangle could be a good market to experiment and figure out a new best practice, then.
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I’d prefer it if we became a market to experiment at integrating construction techniques from overseas, and thereby figure out how to hang electric wires and build grade separations for costs that don’t make my eyeballs bleed.
The only kind of experimentation and innovation that rail and transit should be doing in the US is the kind that actually copies best practices from Europe and Asia, but calls it innovation, so administrators and politicians can pat themselves on the back for being “innovative,” and save face by not having to publicly admit that they’re well behind the international state-of-the-art.
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Why do you say that? I see what you mean about lower risks since things that have been tried abroad have some sort of track record (no pun intended lol), but new technologies and methods aren’t always more expensive. I think it’s possible to try to be innovative* without recklessly adopting every shiny, new thing.
To be clear, I’d absolutely agree with you if the broad strokes of the GTCR were already made, and the budget and scope of the project are already set. I was thinking about battery-hybrid trains and other new inventions because we’re not that developed yet. New tech takes years to put in place, especially for a slow-moving industry like transit. Since rolling stock procurement for GTCR won’t happen until the latter half of this decade, I thought it would help to discuss it now so that, in the future, we could be ready to ignore it/take it seriously in an informed way.
*=to your point, though, being innovative (perfecting a thing that exists) instead of inventive (making a new blockbuster thing, even if it’s rough around the edges) is absolutely on brand for the Triangle… 
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Would it be wise to invest in second hand cars to start service until a time as to which newer technology trains such as battery electric are more proven? It seems like an easier way to get things off of the ground for the time being and has been a strategy used by several recent commuter starts (Shore Line East, Hartford Line, VRE, TRE, Music City/WeGo Star) so it might be worth a shot to try.
One potential downside of old stock: The bathrooms may have ADA issues, as seen with the ex-MBTA single level coaches ConnDot bought for the Hartford Line.. Not it might matter in this case, I’d think Garner-West Durham would be below the FRA limit that requires bathrooms though I’d think we’d aim for something different rolling stock wise.
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I believe using the current Piedmont/Carolinian fleet has be discussed on here before, as NCDOT (and most of Amtrak) is slated to get new cars in the coming years, but I don’t know how feasible or realistic that would be.
I think the new Siemens order does have provisions for regional corridors and that NC is on the list for new Piedmont trainsets. Given the age of the ancient Pullman cars that run on the Piedmont now, it probably would be easier to get some hands on some second-hand Bombardier Bi-Levels or lift equipped Gallery Cars or Comets/Shoreliners if they wanted to mail it in for commuter services. Of course, the cost of the second low-level platform at Union Station would be less than a porta-lift at every other station along the line so…
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Guys I just really want to see something modern. Something that is not representative of business-as-usual, suburb-to-CBD, low-frequency, poor performing, peak only, US-standard, commuter rail, which has service patterns literally rooted in racism, white flight, and classism. We are considering spending one-point-eight billion dollars with a “b”. We should at least try to get it right.
If it has a locomotive - no thanks, I’d say.
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