Again: this is exactly what we’re trying to do. Look again at the study I mentioned several posts ago, and you’ll see that most of the rail segments that the state wants to look into are either a part of the S-Line, in the Raleigh-Durham corridor, or both. I feel like the Durham-Cary-Raleigh corridors will end up in the front of the line for future investments, but we need to prove that that makes sense.
Also, note that this is just the first of many steps that will collect data, evidence, and arguments in favor of doing that. It might just sound like a technical thought exercise that’s internal to our region - but state and federal governments require us to have exactly these sorts of plans in place before they can take a grant application seriously. The feds, in particular, won’t give out grant money until state and local governments allocate their share of money first - so there’s also that.
90mph, at least, is still in our crosshairs. North Carolina won federal grants back in 2023 for the first steps of improving or creating seven new corridors for trains running between 79 and 125 mph. Two of these corridors overlap with big chunks of the Charlotte-Raleigh route - so at the very least, I think that gives us two distinct ways to push for getting grade separations beyond what we got ten years ago.
Friendly reminder that we have a separate thread specifically for high(er)-speed rail in the Triangle and beyond!