News & Observer by Richard Stradling
Three days after the Biden administration announced $8.2 billion in grants for passenger rail projects across the country, U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg came to Raleigh on Monday to highlight one of the biggest.
The N.C. Department of Transportation will get nearly $1.1 billion to build the first leg of a high-speed rail line that will eventually connect Raleigh with Richmond, Virginia. The grant will allow the state to build new tracks, bridges and stations in Wake County and extend Amtrak’s Piedmont service to Wake Forest.
Speaking to a gathering of more than 250 people in Raleigh Union Station, Buttigieg called the rebuilding of a direct passenger rail connection between the Triangle and Richmond a “generational undertaking.” He said people who visit Europe and Asia know that the U.S. has lagged behind other developed countries when it comes to rail.
“You get what you pay for,” he said. “And it has been decades since America properly invested in the standard of service, the speed, the reliability, the experience that we ought to have. That’s changing.”
Buttigieg was jointed by numerous state and local officials, including Gov. Roy Cooper, who stood in the same spot last month to highlight this year’s record ridership on the state-subsidized Amtrak trains in North Carolina, the Piedmont and Carolinian. “This is giving people what they want,” Cooper said. “People are ready for passenger rail to get them from one place to the next.”
NCDOT is working with the state of Virginia to rebuild the so-called S-line between Raleigh and Richmond for trains capable of going more than 110 mph, or more than 30 mph faster than current Amtrak trains in the state. It’s also a more direct route; Amtrak’s Carolinian between Charlotte and New York now goes via Selma, Wilson and Rocky Mount east of the Triangle on what is also a busy corridor for freight trains. Opening a direct connection between the two cities will shave more than an hour off the travel time to Richmond and Washington, D.C., says Joey Hopkins, state secretary of transportation. “We’ve been preparing for this for years,” Hopkins told the gathering. “And we’re ready to move forward on this project.”
FEDERAL MONEY FROM BIPARTISAN INFRASTRUCTURE LAW
The S-line money is the largest single federal grant NCDOT has ever received. NCDOT and Amtrak will provide a combined 20% match, bringing the total to more than $1.3 billion. Freight railroad CSX has long owned the rail corridor between Raleigh and Richmond. Virginia has purchased its portion from the company, and NCDOT is in the final stages of negotiations to buy its part. NCDOT has received $110 million in federal grants for the S-line project for engineering work and to help purchase the corridor. The federal money announced last week is the first the state has received for construction.
The nearly $1.1 billion comes from the massive infrastructure bill passed by Congress in late 2021 and is part of the largest investment in passenger rail since the creation of Amtrak in 1971, according to the Biden administration. Also speaking Monday were two current members of Congress, Deborah Ross of Raleigh and Valerie Foushee of Chapel Hill, and Foushee’s predecessor, David Price, all Democrats. But Ross noted that the infrastructure bill passed with Republican support and noted that Sen. Thom Tillis and former Sen. Richard Burr were among the 19 Senate Republicans who voted for it.
“We need to thank our senators, Sen. Tillis and Sen. Burr, who both voted to make this possible,” she said. “And that bill is not only making this possible, but it is upgrading our roads, our bridges, our water systems and so much more.”
The S-line grant was one of 10 the Biden administration announced Friday. Others included establishing a passenger rail link between Las Vegas and Southern California, improving train service between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh and building a new bridge over the Potomac River, eliminating a bottleneck between Virginia and the Northeast.
Also on Friday, NCDOT won $3.5 million in federal grants to explore the feasibility of establishing five new passenger rail lines and improving existing service between Charlotte and Atlanta and on the Carolinian. The state will use the money for preliminary plans to start rail service between Raleigh and Wilmington; Raleigh and Fayetteville; Raleigh and Winston-Salem; Salisbury and Asheville; and Charlotte and Kings Mountain.