Category: Amtrak

NCDOT moves ahead with new uptown train station. But …

After years of planning, the N.C. Department of Transportation and the City of Charlotte are officially seeking developers for the proposed new passenger rail station in uptown Charlotte. They’re issuing a Request for Qualifications (RFQ), with proposals due Sept. 21.

If you’re an interested developer, click here for more information.

“This RFQ is the next step in selecting a master developer for the project,” says the NCDOT press release issued Thursday morning. What’s being called the Charlotte Gateway Station is envisioned as a central hub for Amtrak, Charlotte Area Transit System bus and streetcar service, the long-proposed-but-still-unfunded Red Line commuter rail project to north Mecklenburg County, Greyhound Bus service and the county greenway system.

Unfortunately for the Red Line and possibly for the streetcar, Mayor Anthony Foxx said in an interview Wednesday that, when it comes to any transit services beyond the Blue Line, “We’re stuck.” (More from that Q-and-A format interview will be posted at PlanCharlotte.org as soon as I can type up the transcript.)
The streetcar has funding only for about a mile and a half between Presbyterian Hospital and The Square at Trade and Tryon. An expansion proposal using city funds only, that would take it to the Gateway Station site on West Trade Street near Johnson & Wales University, was killed by the City Council in June.

The N.C. General Assembly has, for two years in a row, tried to kill funding for the planned-but-not-yet-built Blue Line Extension. Both times the BLE was saved in closed-door bargaining.

But this year the legislators decided to make any rail transit projects compete head-to-head with funding for highway projects, a prospect that most transit supporters believe will all but doom any further rail transit in the state.

But to end on a more cheerful note, replacing the dreary Amtrak station a couple of miles north of uptown on North Tryon Street will be a relief to many rail passengers who use the state’s three daily trains to Raleigh and back.

Why DO conservatives hate trains?

Found while looking up something else: An interesting piece in Slate.com, “Why do conservatives hate trains so much?”

Writer David Weigel dissects the opposition and notes it’s more libertarian than conservative (other than a delusional George Will line about trains – “…the real reason for progressives’ passion for trains is their goal of diminishing Americans’ individualism in order to make them more amenable to collectivism.” Whoa, George, you might wanna dial back the paranoia a tad.)

Libertarians, Weigel notes, don’t have a problem with transportation. What they and some Republicans have a problem with is federal spending on transportation. But then, the article goes on to note, “Amtrak passengers pay more of the cost of their transportation than do drivers on the interstate. About 62 percent of Amtrak’s operating expenses, according to the Department of Transportation, comes from fares. According to the Federal Highway Administration, the percentage of highway spending paid for by users—in the form of gas taxes and tolls—is headed below 50 percent.”

Weigel goes on to quote other reasons some conservatives don’t like rail transit, although little of what he reports as their reasons square with the reality that highways are just as expensive, just as prone to go over budget, just as heavily subsidized.

Ultimately, in my opinion (and Weigel gets at some of this) conservatives don’t like rail because liberals do. Some people will do anything in order not to be in the same camp with people whose beliefs they disdain. This is not limited to politics, of course, and seems to be a general part of human nature. Have you ever been around UNC and Duke basketball fans? They make liberal-conservative spats look tame.

N.C. adds Charlotte-Raleigh trains

Starting June 5 two more passenger trains will run between Charlotte and Raleigh, the N.C. Department of Transportation announced today. One will leave Charlotte at 12:30 p.m., arriving in Raleigh at 3:43 p.m. The other will leave Raleigh at 11:50 a.m., arriving in Charlotte at 3:02 p.m.

That will make a total of six trains between the two cities. The Carolinian, which leaves Charlotte at 7:30 a.m., continues past Raleigh to Selma, Wilson, Rocky Mount, Richmond, Washington and New York. The Piedmont, which leaves Raleigh at 6:50 a.m., arrives in Charlotte at 10:02 a.m., then heads back to Raleigh, leaving Charlotte at 5:15 p.m., arriving 8:28 p.m.

I spoke today with Patrick Simmons, director of the N.C. DOT’s Rail Division, who mentioned that, among other things, they’ve been interested to see that students living in Raleigh are now commuting to college in the Triad on the daily trains. (The Greensboro stop is very near N.C. A&T State.) I also asked when we’d see a passenger train from Charlotte to the beach and the answer, in a nutshell and delivered much more diplomatically, was not in my lifetime.

No, it isn’t high-speed. But I figure anything that can get some traffic off of I-85 and N.C. 49 is a good thing. See bytrain.org for schedules and train information and information on buying tickets.

Update on majestic (or not) train station

In last night’s post I noted a friend’s complaint about upkeep at Charlotte’s Amtrak station on North Tryon Street, but I wasn’t sure who was responsible for maintenance. Got this response at 5:19 a.m. from Patrick Simmons, head of the N.C. Department of Transportation’s Rail division:

Norfolk Southern owns the station and Amtrak is the responsible tenant. … Thank you for sharing the rider/reader report. By copy of this e-mail I will pass it along to our Amtrak contacts and ask that they address the issues promptly. … Thanks for bringing this to my attention.

And here’s a note of clarification: The photo I used was of the historic old Seaboard Coast Line station. It’s on North Tryon Street but closer to uptown than the not-so-majestic Amtrak building we now must use. I couldn’t find an Observer file photo showing the current Amtrak station, which is not what you’d call photogenic. The historic old station is now used by the Urban Ministry Center.

I intended for the photo of the historic station to refer to the link I posted to an article about majestic train stations all over the country, many of them demolished years ago, like Charlotte’s Southern Railway station on West Trade Street. I have a drawing over my desk from the late Jack Boyte depicting the old Southern terminal. I couldn’t find a usable photo of it, either.