SEHSR (Southeast High Speed Rail) and the S-Line Corridor

Transit and Transportation
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With intermediate stops at Apex/540, somewhere along I-74, and Harrisburg/485, a train that averages 110 mph between Apex and Harrisburg could provide 2-hours Charlotte-Raleigh (allowing 20 minutes of relatively slow running Raleigh-Apex and 20 minutes Harrisonburg-Charlotte). Jim Hunt’s original concept for Raleigh-Charlotte was 2 hours flat. The train doesn’t have to have an end-to-end time less than 2 hours to fulfill the need. Averaging 110 between Apex and Harrisburg with only one intermediate stop should be doable with a top speed of 150, if enough money is spent to limit horizontal and vertical curvature. 220 isn’t worth the incremental cost.

Greensboro, Durham, High Point, Salisbury etc would still have the NCRR trains that run 3 hours Raleigh-Charlotte or maybe 2:40 if we spend money there too.

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220 is not necessary in the context of creating an intercity link between Raleigh to Charlotte. But it is critically important once you start talking about interstate travel, like linking Atlanta to Washington DC, or Charlotte to New York. And when you start to think about the implications of linking Raleigh and Charlotte by train in about an hour, you start to realize that it’s no longer actually an intercity link, but rather a regional link, where daily commuting is possible…

The fact that GDOT chose the greenfield 220mph alternative demonstrates that somebody out there is thinking about this.

The incremental cost is not actually all that much when you’re talking about an electrified greenfield route anyway. If you’re carving a new right-of-way across a rural area, it’s not that much harder to make it somewhat straighter to accommodate 220mph. There are planning tools like Trimble Quantm that take GIS data and make generating alternative alignments a (relative) breeze. If NCDOT can carve a right of way for 540, or interstate 74, or the Asheboro Bypass, or whatever, then they can easily manage this.

HSR that averages 120mph, which is definitely still high speed (and significantly faster than Acela), but also definitely a notch below world class, would cover Charlotte to Atlanta in 2 hours, Raleigh to Charlotte (via a direct route) in 1h15m, and Raleigh to Washington DC in 2h15m. Atlanta-DC is 5h30m which is reasonable, but most people would fly.

HSR that averages 150mph, which would be closer to what most European or Asian countries build these days, though certainly not world-leading, would do ATL-CLT in 1h36m, CLT-RGH in 1 hour, and RGH-WAS in 1h48m. ATL-WAS is 4h24m, which starts to eat into the mode share of air travel for that market.

At 180mph average speed, which would be close to a world leader, but would probably require 250mph top speeds instead of 220mph, you’d get ATL-WAS down to 3h40m which takes a big bite out of the airlines’ passenger counts. RGH-WAS would be just 1h30m and RGH-CLT would be just 50 minutes.

I get that it’s very aggressive but can you imagine how it would change the state if you could get on a train in Raleigh at 8am, and get off in Charlotte at around 9? Daily Raleigh<->Charlotte commuting could become a thing. The whole Piedmont becomes a single metro area. :exploding_head:

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Yes, I’ve spent a lot of time in Japan on business. The Nozomi makes a startling difference in how you go about things. But here, the trick would be to keep the speed up once you get inside 540 and 485. In my example, if you blow 20 minutes inside 540 and another 20 minutes inside 485, the cross-country run between Apex and Harrisburg would have to be 20 minutes for a one-hour Charlotte-Raleigh… unthinkable. If the inside-540 and inside-485 times are cut to 10 minutes each, then the cross-country portion would have to average only 150 mph… doable, in the context of 220 mph. But I question the social and political acceptability of Apex-Raleigh or Harrisburg-Charlotte in 10 minutes. With 20 minutes at each end, a even 90-minute schedule for Raleigh-Charlotte is barely attainable at 220 mph.

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Raleigh Union Station to 540 is 16 miles. Covering that in 10 minutes would be an average of 96 mph, which is pushing it, but 12 minutes is 80mph which would be quite possible with electric trains, dedicated tracks, grade separation, and 125mph speeds. That corridor is mostly grade separated today, and full grade separation seems feasible without catastrophic impacts.

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If you want to know what it takes to really make a high-speed passenger system work.

I have had fair amount of experience riding the high-speed trains in China. Based on what I have seen there lot of what it takes makes them work so well is.

  1. Dedicated tracks for HS only and 100% double tracked. Even separate tracks for locals that stop every 20 min or so (~190mph) and express (~240mph) linking major cities that only stop at major cities. Have done express from Suzhou (~60mil west of Shanghai) to Beijing several times and only makes 4 stops along they way (~850 track miles)
  2. Zero grade crossings and fenced in or elevated to keep people, cars and cattle off tracks.
  3. Strict time schedules to keep speed up, stop for only for around 3 min. Platforms have car numbers in pavement showing where to line up and where your car entrance door will be when train stops (enter via front door, exit by rear and DO NOT violate that rule)
    4 often dedicated stations so no waste of time snaking through switch yards.
  4. The will to actually build it. (yes China has advantages in that area)

My last trip between Suzhou and Beijing worked like this.
-Hotel to HS train station 15 min
-Getting through security and finding waiting area for my train (displays over doorway to platform showing train numbers and arrival times.) 10 min
-Doorway to platform opened up 10 min later
-Train arrived 10 min later
-Travel time to Beijing 4.5 hours
-Go down escalators 2 floors from platform, get ticked and catch subway (runs every 4 min) 15 min.
-Ride on line 4 to station in front of Beijing Friendship Hotel in university distract in NW Beijing. 20 min.

Total hotel to hotel less than 6h. Flying would have cost more, taken around 7h, and comfort and scenery would not have been as nice. LOL first time made that trip, in 2004 it was a 12h overnight sleeper trip just for train part.

I have been told that a lot of people that work in Shanghai now live around Suzhou. Lot cheaper living and only 30 min by train to center of Shanghai with trains every 10 min. Good subway connections on each end.

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Those will make high-speed rail work the best on day 1, yeah, and I think we should be aiming for most of those too. But to be clear, I don’t think that means that’s the only way high-speed rail can succeed.

After all... (click me)

France, Spain, or Italy’s HSR services would be a joke if that were the case. HSR systems that almost only use exclusive rights-of-way are more of an exception than the norm. They were made possible by a global war (Japan), currency manipulation (Japan again + China), a world without property rights or public input (China again), and pure masochism (Texas?). They’re more of an exception than the norm. Yeah there are places trying to buck the trend (England and California), but they’re having a very hard time doing that.

I never said exclusive rights-of-way for HSR in North Carolina aren’t worth it. I’m saying that should be an inter-generational endgame, but it would be difficult to expect that to happen in the next decade-ish.

Personally, I think an approach like France’s TGV or Florida’s Brightline is the most realistic -and it’s what NCDOT seems to be going for, anyways. This would:

  1. build some core high-speed connections first (e.g. Raleigh-Richmond and Charlotte-Atlanta);

  2. let the market for inter-regional connections grow first while other connections use conventional rail (e.g. Raleigh-Charlotte), and;

  3. when it makes more sense to do so, build the rest (the Raleigh-Charlotte connection), as other, new regional connections sprout up (e.g. Raleigh-Fayetteville or Wilmington)

So yeah, that would be awesome! But it’s hard because…

Maybe Norfolk Southern and NCRR’s insistence on maintaining room for four tracks in their rights-of-way isn’t so bad after all, then. If HSR-only tracks (or sidings for conventional-speed trains) can be built, maybe we have a fighting chance of trains (theoretically) going from Raleigh through Apex in a li’l above 10min!?

For anyone curious, these are all the grade separations I could find that exist, are planned, or are needed. The remaining major crossings are all on the state’s to-do list (NCDOT’s STIP) too.

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Thanks for the awesome map. The only thing I would add is that the RCRX study calls for:

  • a new grade separation connecting Corporate Center Drive to Bashford, and another one connecting Powell to Youth Center Drive.
  • closing the grade crossings at Nowell and Beryl.
  • at one point, Cary planned to build a grade separation at Walker Street but that plan is on the back burner, if not abandoned, at this point.

I think they should close Royal, too, by extending Beryl to Gorman, but the plan suggested leaving Royal open. Ped bridge or tunnel, absolutely! But def. not needed for car traffic. Seems silly to close almost literally everything else, but leave this one open.

Academy/Harrison in downtown Cary, and Hunter-Center-Chatham in downtown Apex are going to be tricky.

Also, NCRR insists that all plans leave space for six tracks between Raleigh and Cary, and high speed rail is an explicit part of the justification.

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Thanks for the added context! I added Corporate Center/Bashford, but the others are already on the map. (I didn’t make a distinction between plans for closing and grade-separating current railroad crossings because it was late at night lol)

Oh? I had no idea; that’s news to my ears. Seems like overkill since not even New York goes that far (aside for major railyards), but… at least they’re allocating something for future HSR, I guess.

EDIT: y’know what’s not news? Most of this TBJ article, which mainly talks about the price tag and high-speed rail funding mechanisms, including how highway builders have a much sweeter deal from the federal government than rail and why rail has been struggling in comparison. There was one interesting thing, though:

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So here’s something fun… the fairly-new Amtrak Connects US site (you know, the one that was part of the massive expansion announcement) has updated their map to include icons that link to dedicated pages on particular routes, including…

I’m not seeing much new information, but they seem to be pretty serious about these routes. Really hoping the House does well with this Infrastructure package.

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Interesting that the CHL-ATL path is different from the one we read about the other day being chosen.

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That’s because the pages Colby posted are talking about new services for Amtrak (running on conventional rail). It’s also why the “initial trip time” is 5 hours, and Norfolk Southern is the host railroad.

The State of Georgia is only halfway done with their two-step environmental study. That means we don’t know yet about whether this project truly has any fatal flaws. Amtrak or any other rail operator has no reason to claim this corridor for itself until then.

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Gotta love that Amtrak quality website…click a link which opens up an info-less window which you have to click the Amtrak logo to get you to some actual info

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181

Amtrak to Asheville would be amazing.

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…And would take as long between Asheville and Salisbury as it takes to drive between Asheville and Raleigh. (3h 45m) :frowning:

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I’d take a 12 hour train to Asheville if that was a thing. I love that city and can’t stand the drive

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Completely agreed. :+1:
My preference is for the ability to have two options if at all possible. The first would be to have two trains daily that would be High-speed or faster than a normal for Amtrak between DTR and Asheville. And the second would be for at least two daily trains that stop at most small towns between DTR and Asheville.
Yeah, I know, keep dreaming…lol :smiling_face_with_three_hearts: :hugs: :drooling_face: :exploding_head:

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185

I think the idea of the train slowly traversing through the mountains would be part of the appeal tbh.

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I would definitely do it at least once, for the experience. Definitely would have to be staying at least two or three nights to justify it, though.

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Feels like a train to anywhere needs to find the sweet spot of faster than driving but cheaper than flying.

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Flights in Europe are much cheaper than trains unfortunately. 30 euro from Amsterdam to Berlin on a plane vs 120 euro for the train.

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