A Raleigh friend called me the other day to tell about his experience driving to Charlotte recently to pick up a friend arriving on Amtrak from the south. The train, if it’s on time, arrives here at 1:38 a.m. He was dismayed at the poor upkeep at the Amtrak station on North Tryon street.
(Above: Historic Seaboard station on North College, now owned by the Urban Ministry Center.)
He reports: Both the TVs on the wall in the waiting room were broken. (How hard is it, he asks, to get on a ladder and remove a broken TV?) There’s a big sign, he said, but it wasn’t lit. And there was no lighting in the parking lot. “I was just amazed,” he reports. After all, it’s a place hundreds of people go through every week. And given the schedule for the Crescent train (southbound arrives at 2:20 a.m. daily, northbound at 1:38 a.m.) that people will be arriving in the middle of the night.
Since it’s after 5, I’ve not been able to ascertain who owns and operates the station, whether the N.C. DOT’s rail division, or Amtrak, although I suspect it’s NCDOT. I’ve e-mailed Patrick Simmons of the N.C. DOT rail division and will update this tomorrow when I hear back from him.
This observation about the bleak conditions at Charlotte’s train station coincides with a recent piece in the Economist about the great passenger rail stations of the past – many of them, like Charlotte’s, demolished in the last half of the 20th century. Follow the link to read it.
It’s in the works for the state to build a new train station on West Trade Street uptown, near Johnson & Wales University, to be used by Amtrak and the proposed commuter rail to north Mecklenburg. Maybe the new station will be more like the grand terminals of old, and less like the squat, dilapidated Amtrak station we’ve had to use for almost 50 years now.
Interesting candidate forum last night in East Charlotte. I’ll offer more thoughts tomorrow, when there’s more time to write.