Deal sets train on fast track
(News and Observer – March 22, 2011)
After months of wrangling with a reluctant freight railroad, the N.C. Department of Transportation says it has won the agreement it needed to secure $461 million in federal grants that will put faster, more frequent and more reliable passenger trains on the tracks between Charlotte and Raleigh.
The Obama administration promised $545 million in January 2010 as North Carolina's share of $8 billion in stimulus funds to start building a national network of high-speed trains. But the Federal Railroad Administration withheld most of the money until it extracted guarantees that taxpayers would get better train service for their investment - and that DOT would not let slow freight trains get in the way.
That meant coming to terms with Norfolk Southern Railway, whose dispatchers control movements of passenger as well as freight trains on the tracks it leases from the state-owned N.C. Railroad. Conti signed the 23-page agreement late Monday with Norfolk Southern, N.C. Railroad and Amtrak.
DOT will spend the money to add 28 miles of double track between Greensboro and Charlotte, plus five miles of passing sidings between Raleigh and Greensboro. Curves will be straightened so trains can run faster. A dozen new highway bridges will replace crossings where trains sometimes crash into cars; 21 private-road crossings will be closed.
“It connects the two largest cities in the state right across the Piedmont crescent, with faster travel times that have become increasingly competitive with the automobile,” said Joe Milazzo II, executive director of the Regional Transportation Alliance, a Triangle business group.