Triangle officials are down in South Florida to learn about their Brightline
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Nah there more a regional line that connect I think Orlando to Tampa. That’s like the Carolinian.
Brightline goes 125mph.
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So should (and could!) the Piedmont.
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Plus they’re checking out Tri-Rail, BRT, and a few other mobility options. You can check out a more detailed description of the trip here, including a link to the full agenda. Also, Brightline is a bit of a hybrid intercity/regional/commuter… their existing service between Miami and West Palm Beach clocks in at just over an hour, so, even after it’s extended to Orlando, it will still serve well for commuters in South Florida.
I mentioned this trip on a different thread back in December (they ended up postponing the trip a couple months due to Omicron), but I’m still crossing my fingers that this is their primary takeaway: both Brightline and Tri-Rail run regular all-day service, even on weekends. I’m hoping that the transit leaders in Miami drive this point home heavily. The days of peak commuter service are dead, maybe forever. It’s time to think regionally.
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So a Durham-based urbanist I follow on Twitter, Erik Landfried, just got back from a trip to Boston and wrote up a thread on how far we have to go as a region. I’d recommend reading the thread in its entirety for a little more context, but this one tweet in particular jumped out at me. I’ve seen a few Durhamites post similar things. Curious to know what your thoughts are.
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I would argue the northeast cities had rail before complete sidewalk networks, great bus service, and definitely before protected bike lanes. Just look at the historic photos.
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That’s fair, though, to play devil’s advocate, cars were much less prevalent (and hazardous), back then, so sidewalks were less of a necessity.
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So I wrote out a lengthy response to Erik, and here was what I got:
I get where he’s coming from, though I don’t know if I agree with him on it or not. Are we so eager to get something in the ground that we’re accepting a crappy project? Do we really need to go back to the drawing board (again)? Or is this project scalable enough that we should still pursue it?
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I think the costs of doing something decent now gives us more options (and potentially, leverage against naysayers) in the future to the point that it’s worth it.
Sure, the 8-4-8-4 service we’re looking at today (or even the 8-2-8-2 that was originally proposed) won’t be the perfect way to replace and enhance today’s regional bus lines. But every year we don’t have any rail at all is a year where it becomes even more expensive to even build subpar rail service. So I don’t think trains with 30min frequencies are “crappy”; instead, I see them as a solid prototype for how much better things could be if we did more.
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In light of the fact that they’re already looking at extending two of our BRT routes before the first even breaks ground, I feel incremental improvements are a very real possibility for commuter rail as well.
Also, I’m curious to see how the legal battle between Amtrak and freight on the Gulf Coast shakes out. Depending on the results, we may find ourselves in a position to strongarm Norfolk Southern in a way that we couldn’t previously. Today’s USDOT/FRA seems to favor passenger rail pretty heavily.
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I’m curious to see where the next new BRT legs may end up going. Gotta start spinning the spiderweb to get good coverage and make this a success. 
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As much as I wish this were true, I don’t think that debate will be meaningful for us. It seems like the legal power for rail operators to have priority over freight rail to run trains is only recognized for intercity rail (Amtrak). (I’m not a lawyer, though, so take that with a grain of salt) There’s a note in the Federal Register about how someone asked the FRA about extending that power to local rail agencies, but that hasn’t led to any changes. I found this white paper about this exact issue Congressional Research Service, too, if you’d like to read more.
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That’s… pretty stupid. You’d think the FRA would want all passenger rail to get priority over freight, not just Amtrak.
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The new FRA rules seem to establish a “first come, first serve” rule on slack capacity along freight lines.
Previously If a line has capacity to run 50 trains per day, and there were no passenger trains and 20 freights a day… the freight railroad could demand that passenger trains could not run unless the passenger operator preserves their ability to run 50 freight trains a day before the first passenger train can roll.
The new rule seems to say that freights can only use their actual traffic (plus a small buffer for near term growth, I presume) as a baseline, so if there is excess capacity in the line, passenger operators are entitled to its use without having to submit to excessive demands for capital improvements.
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Maybe -or at least I’d hope so- but that doesn’t matter because the FRA doesn’t get to decide. Amtrak’s right to priority is baked into the part of federal law that sets the stage for the entire modern American rail industry.
I don't think that ignorance of commuter rail is intentional malice or sheer ignorance; it looks more to me like an unintended consequence of history. (click to see why)
I found that in a 1994 amendment to the Rail Passenger Services Act of 1970. That’s the deal our federal government made with rail companies to bail them out. Congress wanted to save intercity rail even though rail companies no longer wanted to operate them (despite having a legal duty to do so). This law let relieved companies of that requirement as long as they still prioritized passenger traffic for the routes they gave up. Those train services got mushed together into Amtrak, which is why they get to have that special power.
Back in the 70s, people thought of cars and new “rapid transit” rail lines (think BART or DC’s Metro) as go-to ways of mass transit for commuters. So naturally, most metro areas didn’t have a reason to think about commuter rail on shared tracks, let alone lobby for their legal peerage to Amtrak. Add to this new arrangement the stagflation of the 70s and the resulting deregulation of the rail industry, and you have surviving rail companies that are very profitable but have learned to be very protective of their scheduling freedoms.
The new FRA rules that Owen mentioned is definitely helpful for telling freight rail operators that, yes, they can allow trains to run without getting in the way of their track capacity (by making the definition of “their track capacity” less ridiculous). But I think we’ll probably need more changes for local rail services to have a fighting chance against corporate stubbornness and lobbying -and we’ll have to be creative to do that without action from Congress.
I think one better solution is Amtrak changing their business model so that they can integrate with local rail services (so that, for example, we would take local “Amtrak” trains that are actually run by GoTriangle). But that would take quite a bit of board room chaos, and possibly also some congressional magic. So as a shorter-term, more realistic solution, changing how words and regulatory tests are defined are a great way to chip away at the foundation of entrenched interests. I haven’t had the chance to read the rules you mentioned, @orulz -but if they’re right, it sounds like they’re great steps in the right direction!
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Here is an example of why electrification is so important, far beyond just the “green” aspect of it:
An electric local can cover the same distance in less time than a diesel express! Solingen - Dusseldorf in 22 minutes on an electric local making 7 intermediate stops, and 24 minutes on a diesel express making just 2 intermediate stops.
Furthermore, the diesel trains on the S7 line are DMUs; the conventional US style locomotives pulling coaches that GoTriangle has been planning around are even slower!
So when GoTriangle says “We can only stop once every three to five miles, or else the trip will be too slow” - this is why. They are modeling based on the performance of crap trains. If we were willing to hang wires on the line and buy electric trains, we could perhaps double or triple the number of stops and still wind up with a shorter trip time.
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I’m surprised they haven’t found a way to just run wires along the bottom to get the same effect - or maybe that’s just heavy rail?
Realistically wise - is this something we could upgrade later?
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There are other benefits too. Electric trains are much cheaper to operate, more reliable, last longer, and are generally cheaper to buy than diesel trains.
The initial cost of installing the wires isn’t all that high either. It’s mostly institutional inertia and freight railroad intransigence that makes electric trains so uncommon in this country.
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I think it’s important to realize the different dynamics at play among the Triangle communities. In Durham County, it’s pretty much the Durham city show as the majority of the county’s population is also in the city. It’s also a county of about 3/4 the population of only Raleigh city. The good news for them is that there shouldn’t be competing narratives between what’s important to the county and what’s important to the city. Erik Landfried also has a point about money in his Tweets. There’s but so much money to go around.
On the other hand, Wake is way more politically complicated because while Raleigh alone has more people than Durham County, there are way more people in Wake County that aren’t in Raleigh. At the local level, Wake County is the cash cow when it comes to revenues, and a ton of that revenue is not controlled by either Raleigh or Durham. Having the cooperation of Wake County and places like Cary is paramount to the success of any heavy regional rail service.
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