Future Intercity High Speed Rail Station thoughts

I sort of thought the same thing until I saw Brightline and Texas Central. Brightline is already at work in Florida, getting work in the Vegas-LA corridor queued up, and have explicitly mentioned Charlotte-Atlanta as being on the short list of other corridors they are interested in. Texas Central’s endpoints of Houston and Dallas are comparable to Atlanta and Washington. ATL and WAS are farther apart, but there are five intermediate metros in the 1-2.5 million range along the way instead of absolutely nothing, and having the Northeast Corridor to connect to in Washington is a huge multiplier as well.

I think there will be an economic downturn and then SEHSR’s turn will come up in the following upturn. 5 years from now, my prediction.

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For perhaps a third of the money, SEHSR could reinstall 79 mph track on the roadbed Norlina-Collier and bring the existing Norlina-Raleigh segment back to 79 mph. It’s not “HS” but it would be a helpful interim measure. Or, if they don’t have the appetite to put down new rails Norlina-Collier, they could restore Norlina-Weldon and tie into the ex-ACL at Weldon (made easier by the forthcoming renovation of the ex-SAL bridge at Weldon). That would be another interim step. But nothing is happening at all.

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I’ve heard about that plan to restore the old SAL as-is and my impression is, after thinking admittedly not so hard about it is that I am not much of a fan. It would still only produce travel times barely competitive with driving, a bit faster than the Carolinian from Raleigh but only comparable with the Crescent from Greensboro. The Tier 1 study recommended 110mph for a reason: the ridership would be high enough to move the needle for intercity travel and to turn a profit operationally. The way they spec’d the alignment with zero grade crossings and the way the curves are laid out would allow an easy upgrade to even higher speeds on much of the alignment with future electification.

I would rather wait a few years and get something ready for the future, than get started sooner on a highly compromised plan. I suppose that may be because I am more optimistic than you about the chances for this becoming reality in a decade or less.

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A lot of these projects might just have to wait until we have a generous patron of Raleigh like J. Goodnight. Public funding just isn’t there at the moment and the federal government is at its worst shape in decades.

Reasonable people can take different positions on wait-for-the-big-bang versus one-step-at-a-time. I will say, however, that I doubt the service will ever “turn a profit operationally”. If RIchmond-DC remains at the current 70 mph max, the best you could do for Raleigh-DC is 4 hours 30 minutes. With an equally massive amount of money spent on Richmond-DC for 90 mph, you’re still looking at 3 hours 50 minutes best case. In my opinion, that will never capture business travelers – although if oil gets back to $150 and stays there, a train ticket could become competitive with airline tickets and driving expenses.

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From my understanding, Virginia’s top passenger rail priority is improving the connection between the Tidewater, Richmond and DC regions (VA’s three big population centers). And NC’s main priority is on the Piedmont line. It’s hard to imagine the Raleigh-Richmond line getting much attention until we’ve seen full build out on these two intrastate routes. Honestly, I think Charlotte’s Gateway Station is probably the biggest opportunity to drive ridership in Raleigh, since Charlotte is the #1 destination out of RUS.

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Have you flown through 35x at DCA? That is the cesspool of misery through which a substantial chunk of the RDU-DC seats are routed. As a frequent tree business traveler to DC, I don’t think a 5 hour trip would entice me, but a 3h30m train trip to Alexandria or 3h50m to Union Station sounds like an awesome deal for being able to avoid that awful hellhole.

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The gap between Richmond and Raleigh will eventually be filled with suburban development. Instead of hitting traffic when you reach Richmond just imagine traffic all the way. Train system might be a really popular mode of transportation in a 100 years. Much like what is happening between the Atlanta-Greenville-Charlotte corridor.

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Sure, I’ve been through DCA 35X but the good news is, it has only three more years to live. http://www.flyreagan.com/dca/new-commuter-concourse-inside-design-0

The root problem at DCA? The architect’s original plan pitched in 1992 was downsized, and the 1997 terminal was too small when it opened. Everyone saw it coming.

But SEHSR ridership won’t depend solely on Raleigh-DC passengers. The presumption is that some passengers will go north to Baltimore, Philly, and NY. Of course, train times north of DC aren’t changing. Just how many additional riders between Raleigh and points north of DC will be attracted by SEHSR simply because Raleigh-Richmond is faster remains TBD.

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The California high speed rail project has been severely curtailed. I wonder if NC can get its hands on some of the 3.5 billion that was given to California.

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