or demand to not have to leave home in the morning by whatever mode. you are probably right.
Im reading Raleigh commuter rail plan in today city council meeting and you know with Fayetteville planning it’s commuter rail I wonder if they could let them handle Auburn, Gardner, and Clayton. Cut our part and maybe I’ll be cheaper im reading next the S-Line information. Just a thought!
Not to beat a dead horse, but London is having a similar debate for its Crossrail megaproject, and I couldn’t help but see some parallels to the point you made about GoTriangle potentially not being the best operator for commuter rail in the Triangle.
London recently finished building this partly-underground commuter rail project that connects the east and west sides of London more quickly than existing subways and suburban trains -but after nearly 50 years of work, its opening date was delayed by nearly four years, and the project budget ran over by nearly £5B. And the big thing that was blamed for that project management failure? Say it with me: project government and sponsorship.
Because Transport for London (TfL; Greater London’s equivalent to a Department of Transportation) co-managed this project with London Underground (LU; London’s subway operator), the chains of command and responsibility became incredibly unclear. This was combined with how neither organization has managed a project this big in decades, causing them to fail at reining in poorly-performing subcontractors and not responding proactively to long-term strategy failures.
This means it’s not impossible to imagine a similar article about our future commuter rail project if you replace “TfL/LU” with “GoTriangle”, and “Network Rail” with “NCDOT/Amtrak” as the ones who the interviewee thinks should’ve been calling all the shots.
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Not directly related, but same knowledge base.
Does anyone know when Charlotte Union station is going to be accepting the Piedmont train? The only news article I can find says we hope to begin welcoming passengers in the coming years…
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Most presentations I’ve seen lately estimate 2026. I can try to find a source if you like.
And, amazingly, we’re not waiting on NCDOT for this — their portion is officially done as of a couple weeks ago. The station itself is being built by the City of Charlotte, and that process seems to be going… well, really slow.
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Weirdly, it’s because the rest of the station (the canopy over platforms, a station building, mixed-use buildings to activate the station area, a bus terminal for Greyhound etc.) is set to be built over multiple future phases. So the state completed its part of this project, but Charlotte won’t have a functional new station until the end of phase 2. This seems weird until you realize that rail is actually not Charlotte’s biggest priority for transit: it’s their controversial light rail project where their route decisions might be sabotaging their own chances at winning a federal grant.
The N&O’s sister newspaper in Charlotte published this article last month to describe Gateway Station’s status in more detail, and their local NBC station put out this piece earlier this month on how the state ran a test train to make sure the dimensions of the new platform works out.
Notice the barren land on the right side of the image, as well as the fences plot of asphalt. That’s where the future station building and Greyhound terminals will be, respectively.
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Doesn’t this format leave room for future platforms? How many?
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The 2017 plan says they’re only planning on one more platform, to the right of where we see the train in the photo in my last post. The three tracks you see to the left are for freight.
You shouldn’t expect that to happen anytime soon, though. It’s intended for CATS’ Red Line. But if you know anything about this commuter rail line, it’s that our favorite greedy rail company Norfolk Southern has been cockblocking it since the early 2000s with no signs of change…
Bringing it back to this thread’s topic: if you ever felt like our commuter rail endeavors have been slow and languishing, here’s Exhibit A for how this is a grass-is-greener-on-the-other-side situation.
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I’ll drop this here as well. Haven’t had a chance to look at it yet, but it’s live:
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Keep in mind: if you think an all-day RTP-DTR rail service is too expensive or it’ll take too long to build, the survey notes this:
This means the Triangle will get some sort of enhanced transit throughout the core axis of our region. There’s a very strong argument to show that trains are the best way to make that happen. If you don’t like this project because it’s too expensive or it’s expected to take too long, all you’re doing is making it take even longer for us to have nice things, as the same amount of money will be expected to get spent, in other ways.
If anyone cares, here’s the full report:
…and a VERY long list of appendices with more data and analyses, including answers to (and sometimes-concerning updates for) some things we’ve talked about in this community, in the past:
Unfortunately, I’m feeling under the weather and haven’t had the chance to really examine everything. But there were some things about awkward track/platform layouts in RUS, Durham, and Cary (e.g. one potential idea for how trains could stop in Raleigh is to use platforms for SEHSR), as well as the types of trains and platforms that could be used (e.g. even if we use modern trains like we talked about, we wouldn’t achieve level boarding without blowing up our budget even further). Nearly all of them were due to a combination of reasonable constraints from NCDOT and stubborn, unjustified design standards from Norfolk Southern.
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The most frustrating part to me is that Norfolk Southern gets to dictate any part of this project whatsoever. The State owns the tracks and that is a blessing most others cities do not have.
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It’s going to take a while to digest all of this but a few takeaways:
- Scheduling
GoTriangle’s regional bus ridership is higher than midday and lower at rush hour than pre-pandemic
Therefore they are considering “30/60” service, meaning a train every 30m at rush hour and every 60m off peak. This is not a huge increase over the old proposoed 8-2-8-2 schedule which was a train every 30 minutes at peak and every 2 hours off-peak so they think it may be possible without additional infrastructure.
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Equipment.
They appear to be genuinely considering DMUs, as well as both high- and low-platform trains. Doesn’t look like a decision has been made yet. -
Level boarding is certain to be implemented at Raleigh, plus the terminal stations (West Durham and Clayton). Other than that, the are looking at alternantives calling for level boarding at all other stations, no other stations, or some other stations (Cary and Durham are mentioned; others are TBD). Level boarding is assumed to involve dedicated station tracks with big 26’ separation from freight tracks, and so will be expensive.
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No new grade separations are planned as a part of this project, but many modifications to existing separations are planned (double tracking, raising, bridge replalcement, realignment, etc)
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Looks like ridership was much higher pre pandemic. The higher mid day is barely higher.
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You are correct. Traditional 9-5 office work is still down, and therefore so is peak transit ridership
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Good summary. I just read the Rolling Stock & Accessibility memo word-for-word. A few additional thoughts I have:
- I’m also very excited that they are weighing DMUs as a legitimate option; interestingly, they chose to include a blurb about how the FRA automatically will pre-approve DMU use on other corridors once one has already been approved – maybe hinting at the fact that a benefit of DMUs here would be that we could also use them in the future on lines to Fuquay, Fayetteville, etc., which would be super cool.
- Although universal high-level platforms with level boarding would be a bit more expensive (~$500m vs. $300m for all stations), they did enumerate the slight benefits to on-time performance and dwell times this would have, and also indicated that the freight companies might prefer this, as HLPs will have dedicated passenger tracks at station areas vs. shared tracks for LLPs.
- Specific coaches/trainsets mentioned were Bombardier Bi-Levels, Siemens Ventures, and Stadler FLIRTs
My enthusiasm for this project has been officially renewed. The “30/60” service is also great news, IMO. As much as I’d love 30m all-day trains under overhead wires, the legitimate possibility of universal level boarding and/or DMUs has me pretty excited.
Let’s make sure we keep showing support to local stakeholders.
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I think it’s a mistake to hang our hat on commuting to traditional 9-5 jobs as a justification for regional rail.
I mean, we still drive our cars even though folks are not going to offices like they used to. We still drive our cars to go big box shopping, to come to entertainment districts, visit our friends, etc. A strong regional rail system will allow us to develop experience rich nodes at each stop and provides it all car-free to riders. When each node is filled with people who live in them, then you have your built-in ridership that will sustain it financially. We just have to be purposeful in how we develop these nodes/stations so that we can continue to grow our community, improve experiences, raise tax revenues to maintain our sprawling infrastructure, and slow the growing burden on our existing car infrastructure. We can do this with regional rail service and proper development models at each node/station.
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I assume there’s some flexibility to manipulate the schedule once it’s in place, right? Maybe not significantly, but enough where if ridership/demand is at a different time of day, couldn’t that be accommodated?
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Sooo if it even gets built 2033 for first segment but 30 years to finish. Same people on the board as Durham light rail fiasco. Think I’m checked out on this subject .
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Shock and horror. Man who is against basically every transit project being talked about is opposed to this one as well.
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I mean… you’re right to be skeptical about whether this project can be complete. But even still:
That’s not true. Aside for the board’s chair, the most gung-ho, toxic positions that kept the light rail project going even when it shouldn’t have were the CEO, and the representatives from Orange and Durham counties as well as the City of Durham -and all of those positions have been replaced after DOLRT’s failure.
The counties’ commissioners swapped out their representatives back in 2021, and Durham’s rep has been changed twice (by a city councilmember when Durham’s old mayor bowed out of public life in 2021, then by Durham’s new mayor when she was sworn in a few months later.
And more importantly, GoTriangle’s old CEO was pressured into quitting after that project. We’ve had a new, more careful head of the agency since 2020.
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