RDU Expansion/2040 Master Plan

Yeah trains won’t ever make sense for going to Seattle from Raleigh. Even Boston would be a stretch. But flying from Raleigh to DC is stupid, and yet perhaps 1000 or more people did it each day (pre covid anyway - including myself on a regular basis). World class high speed rail would cover that distance in close to 2 hours, but we wouldn’t need anything remotely world class rail transportation to achieve time/convenience parity with flying on a route like that. A train trip that takes 4 hours from Raleigh to DC would probably significantly eat into the market share of air travel in that corridor.

A similar case is the ubiquitous short haul flight to Charlotte, transferring to a flight to Duluth or Des Moines or Frankfurt or some such place. That first leg being on a plane is inefficient and probably unnecessary with modern (though, again, not world-class) rail service that stops at the Charlotte airport.

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I saw that France is considering a regulation where if you fly into Paris to go to another city in France and there is train service to that city, then air service will not be provided. You will have to take the train. They just cancelled a major expansion of De Gaulle (sp?) airport and told the authority to re-think it.

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If the train service is good/excellent, then I really like this proposal.
This is smart. They invest in their train infrastructure and drive its use.

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It’s a quick trip. Like an hour, on a train it could be 4 hours.

It wouldn’t be 4 hours if we got some real high speed rail service.

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I think this applies to all rail services -so yes to both, as well as more local things like light rail and heavy-rail rapid transit (subways). I assume BRT counts, too, since a well-planned system should get passengers in and out of airports just as effectively? …though an official clarification by the FAA would be nice.

For those who haven’t kept count, we’ve talked a painful number of times on this site about why it’s just geometrically impossible to make anything other than BRT or people movers realistically work for RDU.

And it’s not like we haven’t tried.

If it’s just RDU, then yeah, I don’t think there’s much merit. But Morrisville’s starting their own on-demand shuttle service later this year, and GoTriangle’s new Regional Transit Center could be a thing in the near future. If those things go well, maybe there’s an opportunity in a few years?

Interesting! Looks like France has been considering something like that as a part of their COVID relief bill since last year (it’s a rule against carriers, though, not passengers). This rule’s since been bombarded by lots of outside lobbying efforts, though.

[see next post for an idea that popped into my mind from this response]

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[separated post from above, since it’s kind of its own idea]

Speaking of France, Air France has a “rail-and-air trip” program where you can buy discounted TGV tickets to/from Paris with your flight ticket. Lufthansa in Germany has a similar deal with their national rail operator, and United used to have a similar partnership with Amtrak until late last year. To @pBeez’s point, this sounds like what you and John are talking about, right?

If so, could we have a rail-air alliance in North Carolina and use that to expand rail access to RDU?

I think NCDoT could pitch this to other carriers like Delta or American and make it work! This would let them “fly” to smaller cities (which they often only do for a certain subsidy program, anyways) without investing in more employees and equipment.

For example, let’s say you live in Lexington and want to go to Paris. You could buy a Delta flight ticket from RDU to Paris, but this sorta-codesharing agreement would also let you buy a train ticket from the Lexington Amtrak station to RDU! Plus, if either leg of your journey gets canceled for reasons outside of your control, you’d be entitled to a seat on the next trip there.

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I don’t think it’s out of the question to connect RDU to commuter rail running along existing tracks with a station in Morrisville around Hwy54 & Airport Blvd.

Just in 2012, Miami connected their Metrorail to MIA, along with creating a hub for their bus service, so it’s possible even in a hostile political atmosphere.

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I work for a company headquartered in the DC area so I go up there a lot. It’s only an hour in the air but that’s only a fraction of the story. Believe me when I say, four hours on a train would be an improvement.

Getting to the airport on either end is a hassle. Your travel plans are shot whenever there is a thunderstorm (which is EVERY BLOODY DAY during the summer), sometimes you get routed through shudder 35x at DCA, not to mention that even if the air time is only 60 minutes there is the time spent checking in, waiting, boarding, sitting, taxiing…

Six hours on a train with schedules that eat an entire workday is a tough sell for me, but if I could get on a train at 6am here and step off at 10am in DC then I would totally sign up and I think plenty of the other regular RDU-DCA travelers would do so too.

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Just to make sure I’m understanding you, you mean connecting RDU by commuter rail, not connecting to it, right?

I agree with the former. Maybe we’re one of the few unusual places where an AirTrain-y service could actually makes sense? …though I still think a BRT extension can get the same job done, too, and be useful for non-flyers in in Perimeter Park and northeastern Morrisville.

But the threads I linked to in the paragraph after the one you quoted talks about all the engineering and geometry (not politics!) reasons why I think the latter is out of the question.

I think arrangements/agreements like this are designed to keep passengers loyal to the respective airline rather than making improvements to the overall traveling experience. You’ll notice that the agreements are between individual airlines and the rail companies, as opposed to airports and the rail companies. If Charlotte ever constructed a train station adjacent to the airport, I wouldn’t be surprised if American Airlines jumped on board with something like this.

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Oh yeah, air-rail agreements are obviously, absolutely made to make flying passengers more loyal to their airlines. But what difference does that make? If airlines take these sorts of partnerships seriously only out of their own interests, doesn’t that benefit North Carolinian train users, anyways?

For example... (click me)

Let’s say American Airlines lobbies Charlotte-Douglas to build a heavy rail station. They already want to build an airport people mover to hop across existing railroad tracks and connect to a possible light rail extension, anyways, so this isn’t too big of a stretch.

Once this station is built, it could become a part of the planned high-speed rail service between Atlanta and Charlotte. American Airlines could siphon off customers from Hartsfield-Jackson, Delta’s home turf, if they codeshare with Amtrak, Brightline, or whoever else decides to run that rail service.

If we’re lucky, Delta could respond by partnering with Amtrak, themselves (or NCDoT?) via RDU, effectively creating an airline turf war between eastern and western NC. etc. etc…

Even if you get just one of these "what-if"s to come true, a strategic investment by airlines for themselves still gets tangible infrastructure improvements that can be good for train operators and passengers, too.

Besides, low-cost carriers are giving Big Airline a run for its money, airline mileage programs’ futures are even being scrutinized by influential travel-hacking sites, and McKinsey is advocating for more multimodal ways to redeem miles. Even innovation-hating US-based airline companies have to see some value in innovating on their marketing and customer retention strategies. If there’s a way to do that and combat the growing stigma of flight-shaming, I highly doubt they’d just ignore it.

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I mean an AirTran might work it has to be underground connects the two terminals the car lot, then the commuter rail Morris like station. And yes it can go above highways.

But I think we still need a hub to accomplish that, Maybe this new carrier will make us a hub Sun Country Airlines will.

France is the size of TX correct? Big difference.

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I don’t think AA/CLT would siphon off too much traffic from DL at Atlanta with a streamlined air/rail connection. Passengers choosing to connect through either one would likely base it on city pair, schedule availability and timing/flexibility, pricing, and overall perceived ease of the connecting experience.

I believe a streamlined as possible rail connection would appeal to those who drive to the airport, but this would primarily be along the rail corridor for obvious reasons. One consideration is the timing of the trains. Pre-Covid, I believe CLT had eight or nine connecting banks. There aren’t that many trains running in either direction, so the timing of making a connection becomes a factor. People aren’t going to want to sit around for a few hours when they feel they could have hopped in a car and already be well on their way to their destination.

Another consideration, using RDU/Amtrak to Lexington as an example, is that you would essentially have the state marketing and advocating bleed-over from other airports, in this case GSO. That would be a conflict which would have to be resolved.

Don’t get me wrong, I would love to see highly streamlined rail service incorporated into our airport system in NC. There are just a lot of moving parts to synchronize.

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Good Delta news for RDU…in the COVID era there are no guarantees about future service, but this is a sure bet: Delta recommits to RDU as a focus city (while dropping 3 others).
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good news for keeping the Paris flight once int’l travel returns…probably late 2021, but better outcome than CVG, BNA, and SJC. That’s Cincinnati, Nashville, and San Jose, where Delta said they’d establish as focus cities just as they did with RDU and were STARTING to do at Austin…But those other 3 are now plug pulled, and It’ll just be us and Austin, along with their hubs like ATL, BOS, SLC, MSP, DTW, LAX, and JFK/LGA

Helpful DL flights once biz travel returns eventually.

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I think travel will rebound quicker than most anticipate. The last 6 flights I took this past month were full every single seat.

They warn you ahead of time and ask if you would like to change flights and no one does.

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As bad and as frustrating as it sounds, there is little incentive for RDU to help facilitate rail connection. A lot of their revenue comes from parking and the taxi service. It’s a struggle in every city to add airport stops on rail based public transit. Part of the problem is logistics and cost, but another huge problem has been that the airport authorities don’t want it.

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I understand your point, but I think it’s shortsighted. Having a rail connection would make it easier for people to get to the airport, especially from further away, and therefore would drive more passengers to the airport. But that is a long term benefit, that loses out to short term revenue from parking fees.

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This old canard has been repeated ad-nauseam, ever since the 90s, to the point where it’s just accepted as fact. Maybe some time in the past some RDUAA board members have said something like “We’re concerned about loss of parking revenue” (frankly, it is a legitimate concern) but that doesn’t mean RDUAA has ever said flatly that they don’t want it. In fact, if I recall, they’ve even gone on record saying that they would support it at various times.

The main reason rail transit to RDU doesn’t get pursued isn’t some anti-transit conspiracy on the board. It’s that a rail link to the airport doesn’t make sense at this point.

There is a chance that this new FAA rule could change things a bit, but it still doesn’t make it any more practical to serve the airport with trains.

The terminal is 3.5 miles at its closest from the railroad. Much (most?) of that 3.5 mile radius around the terminal is either part of the airport itself, or untouchable state parkland (Umstead), freeways or interchange right-of-way, wetlands, or otherwise highly restricted in terms of development due to airport noise. That’s a lot of money to build at least 7 miles of new right-of-way to serve only the airport. Not saying it won’t be worth it some day, but we’re definitely not there yet.

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