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All that has been done for the SEHSR project is engineering studies. Not one dollar has been appropriated for land acquisition, construction, rolling stock, or the operational subsidies that the trains will require. Full SEHSR is on the order of a billion dollars. I support SEHSR and I believe it's an inevitability, but there is plenty of room for reasoned discussion about when it will happen -- and it's not under local or state control. Politics will decide.
Phase I of the new station is for Amtrak, although there will be stub-in for the platform that would serve SEHSR. The station itself will be more than large enough to accommodate SEHSR passengers; compare the square footage to many rail stations in Europe that are the same size but handle 5X the daily passenger count of even the SEHSR projections. What Phase I will not have enough of, is parking -- but the city is supposed to remedy that with a new deck.
I don't argue that the new station should not be called Union Station; I was simply pointing out that the current one is not Union Station. But I'll bet you that when the new station opens, it is named for somebody... most likely Meeker.
As for relentless promotion of downtown, that's precisely what Meeker did. I don't think anyone would disagree with that description of Meeker's agenda. However, we might disagree over the degree to which he should have pursued the agenda. The hyperbole around the 2010 announcement has died down, thankfully, and been replaced by a much more thoughtful plan that is driven by NCDOT not the City staff. For one thing, NCDOT knows something about railroads. For example, the City's 2010 plan didn't even provide a second station track for Amtrak. Insanity.
I think this is a great project. From the little that I have read, the new station will be used exclusively for Amtrak at first, but will be easily upgraded to accommodate HSR and light rail.
Raleigh is in a nice location as a connector between the southeast and the mid-atlantic/bos-wash corridor. I'd love to see it more connected to DC, Philly, etc.
Has anyone seen any architectural drawings of the proposed station, or know where they can be found?
I'd love for the building to have styling reminiscent of the stations built during th golden-age of train travel. Not grand, necessarily, but dignified and attractive. My fear is that it would be built in the simplest, cheapest manner possible.
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