Good question. Obviously, in the hypothetical situation where direct rail access to RDU becomes a thing, it’d probably make airport commutes easier. It probably won’t mean too much for many locals (come on, this is America. We know like half the people will drive anyways), but visitors TO the Triangle will probably have an easier time accessing events and enjoying more of what our area has to offer. To be fair though, I’m not sure how you can quantify that or demonstrate causality; transit/urban developments tend to bring in more people, but unless you can pinpoint why that’s happening and which variables are responsible, it’s not gonna be a very productive conversation.
I say “hypothetical” because…
You’re not wrong, in that it’s not like it’s physically impossible to do that.
...but...
You just need to think about how tunneling is wayyyyyyyyyyy more expensive than ground/aerial-level paths. As well as what you’d get in the way of as you’re building a thing, and if it’s really even worth it at the end of the day once you jump through all the red tape you have to clear to legally build it. (please read me. My posts are full of hyperlinks for a reason.)
You CAN bore a 100-foot tunnel with a boring machine across airport property, and you can go wherever you’d like as long as groundwater doesn’t drown your expensive drill. You CAN build a network of bridges and AirTrains to connect both terminals and other amenities within a 20-mile radius. You CAN build a commuter/intercity rail branch line that bypasses RTP. It’s possible in an ideal world.
But blatant practical reasons and the fact that I never brought up what you’d do outside of airport grounds aside, it’s just gonna cost a hell of a lot of money. Do you really want to spend $300 million on a vanity project like that, or get away with it a decent $50 million solution, and spend the other $250 million to make our entire region’s transit system better?
I did think about what rail transit at RDU could look like, though, just to be thorough. But the slope looks too sleep for heavy rail, and light rail construction is not gonna be pretty.
I looked at RDU’s Vision 2040 plan sheet as approved by the FAA, and tried to see if I can make something work. I figured it would be cheaper to nudge a transit station between the main parking deck/future CONRAC and Terminal 1, since there’s an 80ish-feet-wide strip of empty grassland that may be useful for a transit stop.
Crap Option A: Terminal 1 approach
Crap Option B: Terminal 2 approach
Again. This is just for airport grounds, which you’d also need to get signed off by the Federal Aviation Administration for plan changes. RDU had to go through a multi-year planning project, the last time they got a major plan change cleared. My earlier suggestion for BRT ONLY works for bus rapid transit because of terrain/right-of-way limits, unless you can prove me wrong.
It sounds like you’re talking about some big conspiracy theory full of naysayers, but I really don’t think that’s what’s going on… reality is a lot more nuanced (and boring!?) than that.
The times when the US was first getting developed also had lots of problems on its own. Like when the transcontinental railroads were being built, rail companies basically had free rein to buy land for cheap, and build and define their own profit margins. That sounds pretty awesome and helpful for building transit, until you realize that:
- rail operators cut costs by exploiting (mainly Chinese) immigrants with an inhumane excuse of an hourly wage (only to screw them over further by federal law)
- bison were made nearly extinct
- American citizens were also often taken advantage of by un-reined corporations, leading to the rise of robber barons in the Gilded Age (and, eventually, a backlash filled with the birth of early-stage consumer protection agencies)
The steaming pile of laws and checklists you have to complete to build public infrastructure today’s not around because people want to be obstructionist jerks. They’re there because they’re the best compromises we’ve come up with so far, given the 200+ years of mistakes we’ve made. The “experts” are saying things for a reason; if you don’t like it, address those.