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Hearing news about land to be taken by eminent domain in the area around Durant Road along Capital Blvd. How many other areas are involved? Are they serious about real high-speed or is this just improvements?
Hearing news about land to be taken by eminent domain in the area around Durant Road along Capital Blvd. How many other areas are involved? Are they serious about real high-speed or is this just improvements?
They've been talking about it forever but it seems like there's finally momentum to get something going. It would be a huge help because currently it takes forever taking the train from Raleigh to DC (gotta go down to Selma, then up to Wilson/Rocky Mount before reaching Richmond - it'd be a more direct route)
NCDOT is proposing to replace several existing highway-railroad crossings ("grade crossings") in northeast Raleigh and Wake County with bridges. In general this requires widening the NCDOT right-of-way, and that's what the eminent domain proceedings are about.
NCDOT clearly sees that someday there will be passenger trains on this route. However, don't be misled. Hundreds of millions in additional funding will be needed to shift the Charlotte-Raleigh-DC-NY and Miami-Raleigh-DC-NY trains off their current route (via Selma and Rocky Mount) onto the new route (via Wake Forest and Henderson) and to add new trains. None of this additional money has been identified, and it may take 15 or even 25 years before it happens. I think it will happen eventually, but I question whether I will live to see it... and I don't plan to kick off anytime soon.
In the meantime NCDOT is justifying the bridge projects by saying that freight train usage of the tracks is about to increase. Personally I find that a hard argument to swallow.
Raleigh-Richmond is just the portion of the SEHSR (SouthEast High Speed Rail) route that would get rebuilt. Very few people actually ride between Raleigh and Richmond as endpoints. The push is for travel between Raleigh and DC, Greensboro and NY, etc. There are other projects to reduce train times between Richmond and DC. North of DC, of course, trains already run at 125 mph. The aim here is to get Raleigh-DC down to four hours flat -- faster than an automobile, except possibly between midnight and 5 am.
Last edited by wizard-xyzzy; 04-06-2017 at 02:35 PM..
Location: Chapel Hill, NC, formerly NoVA and Phila
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When I lived in Northern Virginia, I somehow got myself on an email list of "Virginians for High Speed Rail." I still get their emails. They have a website that I imagine would be of interest to North Carolinians since high speed rail from DC to Richmond would be the first step toward high speed rail to Raleigh. On the site, they do updates of their progress and other related news, if anyone wants to take a peek. Here it is: Home | VHSR
I doubt any of this will happen in our lifetime if then. Especially if people have been following
the fiasco at CSX now with Hunter Harrison in charge. If CSX is a player in this there's no
telling what might happen or probably won't happen...
Quote:
Originally Posted by wizard-xyzzy
In the meantime NCDOT is justifying the bridge projects by saying that freight train usage of the tracks is about to increase. Personally I find that a hard argument to swallow.
European or Japanese style high speed rail could do the Raleigh-DC trip in about 2 or 2.5 hours. That's not what's on the table here, but if they could get the existing 6 hour trip down into the ~4 hour range, and increase service so trains are running every two hours or so all day, I think the service would be quite popular.
Personally I'm hoping that when the "Brightline" group from Florida is shopping around for other corridors to upgrade, they'll find this one attractive because it has a completed environmental study meaning it's nearly shovel ready, and financial and ridership analysis projecting profitability.
When I lived in Northern Virginia, I somehow got myself on an email list of "Virginians for High Speed Rail." I still get their emails. They have a website that I imagine would be of interest to North Carolinians since high speed rail from DC to Richmond would be the first step toward high speed rail to Raleigh. On the site, they do updates of their progress and other related news, if anyone wants to take a peek. Here it is: Home | VHSR
If they could ever implement true HSR in this country (120-160MPH), Richmond could seriously be considered a bedroom community of DC and it would be "reasonable" for someone to commute back and forth between Charlotte & Raleigh and Raleigh & Richmond. It would be a game changer in so many ways. Alas, that's now what the US means when it talks high speed rail.
I've actually seen the engineering drawings for this proposal--from Raleigh to Richmond. It involves a lot of grade separation (i.e. overpasses/underpasses), closing some crossings altogether, and making many current curves less-sharp. A lot of work went into it, so someone got some cash for it. Seems interesting.
When I lived in Northern Virginia, I somehow got myself on an email list of "Virginians for High Speed Rail." I still get their emails. They have a website that I imagine would be of interest to North Carolinians since high speed rail from DC to Richmond would be the first step toward high speed rail to Raleigh. On the site, they do updates of their progress and other related news, if anyone wants to take a peek. Here it is: Home | VHSR
That's pretty cool. I think a high speed rail covering that route would actually be useful.
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