Thanks for posting! Would love all this to happen. Rail can be so nice, but it has to compete with other forms of transportation.
Crazy that Phoenix, Nashville, and Vegas don’t have service at all! I would think an LA-Vegas line would kill it.
For Raleigh the leisure lines to Wilmington and Asheville look fun, but what I really want is fast, comfortable, and reliable service South to Charlotte and Atlanta, and north to DC and the Northeast corridor.
Edit: I wonder if the new more direct route to Raleigh from Richmond/Petersburg will be “enhanced services.” And what does that entail?
That’s why prioritizing the “yellow lines” is probably for the best - focus on routes that are too short for flying but can be just as convenient if not more than driving. I hate that Amtrak has to keep running those long distance routes.
There is a fair amount of talk & support here in Alabama for running a train between B’ham, Huntsville and Nashville to the north, and then south to Montgomery and Mobile. There is a crazy amount of traffic between B’ham and N’ville these days, and Huntsville is poised to become the second largest city in the state.
The line between Mobile and New Orleans has funding and support from LA and MS, AL finally signed on. The problem there is opposition from the port of Mobile and the freight lines that serve it. But it looks like that is going to move forward anyway.
I agree with @pierretong that we need to prioritize the shorter hauls. Long distance trains, even high speed, are great for leisure travel, but are never going to compete with flights. It would be fun to go from Atlanta to Chicago on the train, fun but not practical.
Finally, anyone know off hand where the train station is in Wilmington?
Agreed. There is definitely a “sweet spot” where rail makes the most sense. Depending on speed maybe like 150 to 300 miles? I know there are studies on it. Once you get over 300 or 400 miles, air travel just presents such a time savings. So yeah, those long-distance routes are just so inefficient.
I’m the weirdo that loves driving no matter the distance - but if we can get a good system that’s reliable, faster than driving, and has a good robust schedule I’m definitely on board! How amazing would it be to be less than a 6 hr train ride from New York / Atlanta etc.
The key to this is really filling those gaps, even if the frequency is only one per day.
I haven’t read the full infrastructure plan yet but I hope this is where a lot of focus goes!
I am with you @atl_transplant, I come from a family of long-distant road trippers. Not to derail the thread, but my most epic trip had to be leaving home at 5 am, flying to Tucson, getting picked up at the airport and driving back east and arriving home at midnight the next day, so about 37 hours round-trip.
(@pBeez) There have been various studies done some (many) years back by/for WMPO (Wilmington Urban Area Metropolitan Planning Organization) that determined the site. It’s the block bounded by 3rd, 4th, Hanover, and Campbell, with the tracks bisecting it.
In the meantime the bus depot, Padgett Station, was built across Campbell St. to the south, so this is pretty logical site to enhance connections. NCDOT owns the rail right-of-way and plans to rebuild the tracks at some point. There is also a community group that has successfully lobbied the city to adopt the Wilmington Rail Trail as a greenway project, and there was a plan released in October to study how the two could coexist.
Thanks @Christopher I did duckduckgo it, and got a bus station out by I-40/140, so figured it was that thruway service that @pierretong mentioned. That would be a pretty handy location to visit the city, for sure.
My dad and his two dogs were coming back to Raleigh for the summer, and my step-mother couldn’t get away from her work to fly out and drive with him. He’d had some heart issues, so no one wanted him to drive on his own. Since we are both academics, we’ve got the same work schedule so I got volunteered to do it. He spent the night here in 'bama, got up at 6 am and drove the final 8 hours to Raleigh, lol. I wouldn’t call it fun so much as an experience, lol.
When I was younger I drove Ft Worth to Raleigh straight through with a buddy or a brother, swapping off every couple hours. That usually took us about 22 hours, lol. Also with dogs!
it’s definitely more geared towards kids but there are some cool train models in there. Don’t plan on spending more than an hour in there. (I wish the Serpentarium was still around downtown haha)
Looking at the proposed map again, does anyone else dislike how there is a little extension from Raleigh to meet the “95” portion that goes down to Charleston and goes parallel up to Petersburg? Wouldn’t it be more efficient for it to go right through Raleigh and for all resources to be focused on the new route?
Well that’s the current route for all the Raleigh-DC trains and the state owns the corridor through the North Carolina Railroad Company so that would be the easiest short term investment to extend any state run services to Selma. Hard to enhance services on a route that doesn’t exist yet.
The western route from Raleigh to Richmond (roughly parallel to US 1 / I-85) is the S-Line, and will be higher-speed service. The east route (more parallel to I-40/I-95) is the A-Line. It’s certainly less direct, but maintaining service to Wilson, Rocky Mount, and Selma is important to the state.
