Intercity Passenger Rail in North Carolina

[keita]

Cross-posting from the RTP thread:

@keita

This Thursday, the City of Durham will have a city council work session where they’ll ask its mayor to sign a formal request to NCDOT to make a timeline and cost estimates for an Amtrak (and in the distant-ish future, regional rail) station in RTP. We’ve known informally that this would be a thing since the commuter rail study (and it’s in our soon-to-be-adopted Destination 2055 regional wish list), but this would make NCDOT put money where its mouth is.

The Triangle West TPO’s slide deck talks about how funding for rail projects is made artificially difficult because of the process imposed by state law, but how we could still get the ball rolling.

[…]

[T]hese are things to consider as for how to build and run the station:

…also, the slide deck linked to something we haven’t really seen since the commuter/regional rail study shut down: concrete steps for how to make regional heavy rail happen using existing tracks in the Triangle.

The idea, now, is to build “an incremental rail expansion strategy” so that rail infrastructure gets added over time as our region keeps growing and getting denser - so that, when we’re ready for Attempt 4™, it would actually cost a future train operator less money to make it happen. This strategy seems to consist of four steps (there’s five of them in the slides, but the fifth is more of a project management thing):

1. Evaluate concepts for intercity rail service

…and by “intercity”, I think they mean “regional”. The slide listed these six segments as ones that they could consider:

The colors are different service patterns:

• Mebane - Clayton: 3 round trips per day
• Apex - Wake Forest: 3 round trips per day on its own
• Durham - Raleigh: 3 round trips per day on its own
• Lillington - Raleigh: 3 round trips per day
• Durham - Carrboro: 3 round trips per day
• Sanford - Franklinton: this is on the map but I don’t think this is included in the math for number of round trips

…and the way that these routes overlap mean that certain segments get more round trips; I think that’s what the number of round trips in the black-and-white boxes mean. Specifically:

• Durham - Cary: 6 total round trips per day (3 from Raleigh-Durham + 3 from Mebane-Clayton)
• Cary - Raleigh: 9 total round trips per day (6 from above + 3 from Apex-WF)

2. Figure out what capital projects each service concept would need

These are things like…

3. For each capital project, predict how attractive they are for state and federal investments

The slide suggests prioritizing in this order:

@TWTPO slide

1. Grade Crossing Eliminations

2. Advancing Station Work, including NEPA and Engineering studies

3. Protective Land Purchases for a Regional Maintenance Facility and layover yards

4. Interlockings and Sidings

5. Ridership studies to prioritize which parts of long corridors to invest in first

6. Investments in the NC- Line from Burlington to Selma

Why aren’t stations listed in any of those six steps? That’s because we need to…

4. Produce a decision tree for making investments - strategically

There’s different, easier ways to pay for the above - and TWTPO seems to think it’s easier to use those “lamer” projects as a lay up so that the flashy, politically riskier station projects can become a slam dunk.

@TWTPO slide

1. NCDOT’s SPOT process and criteria offer little funding support for passenger rail investments.

2. Using local dollars to fund station buildings and platforms, and new station tracks are strategies that
   may advance portions of the system that most galvanize public support for continued expansion. Example
   investments could include early engineering and NEPA studies or final design and construction.

3. NC strategic precedent for station investments independent of service introduction are the station
   improvements from Salisbury to Asheville and the current Charlotte Gateway Station platform.

4. The RTP InterCity Rail Station is included in the soon to be adopted 2055 Joint Metropolitan Transportation Plan.