Charlotte Gateway Station and Railroad Improvements

[southslider]

^Gateway Station is of course a joint development.  Other sections are fairly narrow for infill. And there already is a CATS-owned corridor through Uptown for Silver Line.

[tozmervo]

11 hours ago, KJHburg said:

question:  all this land the state DOT owns along N Smith St between 6th St and 9th St being used for the track expansion and will any of it be sold off after the project is completed?  Or is this where the Silver Line might run through? 

My distant memory is that early Gateway masterplans showed those lots being developed with buildings, but the Silver Line will likely eat up enough space as to make those lots unfeasible for most projects. The light rail ROW itself isn't especially wide, but it has to be set pretty far off the main RR line tracks to clear the RR ROW

[KJHburg]

In NC DOT news the state is selling 4 circus train cars at auction.   Why the state even owns them is controversial and you can read it about it here.  Authentic circus rail cars! 

https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/article259972705.html

[kermit]

21 hours ago, KJHburg said:

In NC DOT news the state is selling 4 circus train cars at auction.   Why the state even owns them is controversial and you can read it about it here.  Authentic circus rail cars! 

https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/article259972705.html

The N+O keeps getting this wrong, there is no controversy. NCDOT bought the coaches at a good price and planned to refurbish them and use them to expand service on the Piedmont trains. NCDOT has already demonstrated that this is an economical way to equip these trains.  After NCDOT completed the purchase of the circus train there was a wreck elsewhere (maybe South Carolina?) which called into question metal fatigue issues on cars like these so the  federal government a) created a new equipment grant program and b) strongly encouraged NCDOT to apply for the grant to replace all of their old equipment.  NCDOT was successful with the grant application (I believe they got the biggest chunk of funds in the program) which made the circus train equipment surplus.

There was no bad judgement here (the grant program did not exist when the purchase of the circus cars was completed). The only thing NCDOT is guilty of (in this context) is bad timing. Its also important to keep in mind that the right wing press is always hunting for ways to make the NCDOT rail program look bad.

[edit: yea, IMO the News and Observer and the Observer have very retro-right wing views about transportation]

Edited April 6, 2022 by kermit

[KJHburg]

5 minutes ago, kermit said:

Its not controversial. They bought them at a good price to refurbish and then expand service on the Piedmont trains. This process is exactly how they built the service up. After the purchase the federal government strongly encouraged them to apply for a new equipment grant which was rolled out quickly after a wreck which caused some to question the safety of old equipment.  NCDOT got a sizable grant for new coaches making the circus train surplus.

There was no bad judgement here, only bad timing (and the right wing press hunting for ways to make the NCDOT rail program look bad).

don't know if I would call the Raleigh News and Observer the right wing press.  It does say in the last line of the article they routinely buy used rail cars. 

[jthomas]

@kermit's summary is correct. Unfortunately, a story like this is red meat to a certain segment of the media, and to those who want to see government waste and incompetence around every corner. Why those same folks don't get worked up over egregious waste in highway construction (like how I-40 in Durham County was widened 15 years ago, immediately fell apart, and now the repair is falling apart; or how I-40 in Davie County has been under perpetual construction for 10 years rebuilding a rebuild) - that's up to the reader's interpretation.

[CltFlyer]

58 minutes ago, jthomas said:

or how I-40 in Davie County has been under perpetual construction for 10 years rebuilding a rebuild) - that's up to the reader's interpretation.

As someone raised in Davie County and still goes back several times a year.  It's insane how long they have been doing work on I-40 in the general area.  Especially the portion near the Yadkin River.  First they widened the portion of I-40 from the Yadkin River to the Clemmons Exit (184) in Forsyth.  Then they completely re-did the bridge over the Yadkin River.  Now they are widening and adding lanes from the Bermuda Run Exit (180) to the Yadkin River in Davie County.  These projects have been going on for 15+ years.

Now you have the construction mess that has been progressing from literally the Iredell/Davie border through the Mocksville exit's (168 and 170) all the way to exit 174.  To the point where they have you detouring through country back roads to reach Winston-Salem.  

 

[atlrvr]

I feel like this must have been posted, but I didn't see if flipping back a few pages and this rendering is new to me (i think).

 

[JRCLT]

I feel like this must have been posted, but I didn't see if flipping back a few pages and this rendering is new to me (i think).
 
http://content.invisioncic.com/x329420/monthly_2022_04/Main-Rendering-Gateway-Station-1024x663.thumb.jpg.a47fb4de5e1d7945f3aa59c19d1b2e20.jpg

It’s not new but it’s nice to see an actual image. It’s on their website. I hope this is what it comes out looking like with much vibrancy.

[Reverie39]

Is this somewhat official, or at least a true rendering of what it might look like? I was always under the impression that the development surrounding the station was a public-private partnership that was still just sort of murky, far-future stuff. Like is this just concept art or a serious design they are working on?

[videtur quam contuor]

This is from pages 65 and 66 of this thread and Skidmore Owings Merrill is mentioned though the rendering is not identified as from them.

[j-man]

16 hours ago, Reverie39 said:

Is this somewhat official, or at least a true rendering of what it might look like? I was always under the impression that the development surrounding the station was a public-private partnership that was still just sort of murky, far-future stuff. Like is this just concept art or a serious design they are working on?

It's old but last I heard it was a preliminary rendering, but this is the latest on the idea for the space. 

[NYtoCLT]

I just looked into taking an amtrak to and from Atlanta and there is basically one train a day at a weird time making to totally impractical.  Does anyone know when the Amtrak station is officially moving here and if there are any plans to increase service between here and Atlanta?

[kermit]

8 hours ago, NYtoCLT said:

I just looked into taking an amtrak to and from Atlanta and there is basically one train a day at a weird time making to totally impractical.  Does anyone know when the Amtrak station is officially moving here and if there are any plans to increase service between here and Atlanta?

More Atlanta-Charlotte service is on Amtrak’s to do list (it appears on their ConnectUS map), but its not going to happen anytime soon (i.e. this decade). NS owns those tracks and they are beyond capacity for freight so they would want crazy money for more passenger rail. GADOT has identified a preferred route for greenfield HSR (true 240 mph service) and Joel Ossof tried to get $10 billion to start construction on the route written into the build back better bill. Needless to say, I would not put any wagers on CLT-ATL HSR opening up soon.

tldr: unless you want to depart Charlotte at 2am don’t plan on riding the train to Atlanta anytime in the next 20 years.

Edited April 12, 2022 by kermit

[videtur quam contuor]

I went to the Amtrak station one afternoon to check for information and schedules. This was pre internet. The doors were locked. "Station open 9:30-4" was the sign. No answer at the door. No lights. No people. I looked closer at the sign. "Open 9:30 pm-4 am".

Before the North Carolina rail expansion serving Charlotte to Raleigh and on to Selma and mainline North and South therefrom there were the two late night trains which connected by the (essentially) US 29 route through Charlottesville and to DC/New Orleans on the Crescent line. I rode the Crescent from New Orleans to Charlotte in 1973 or 74. Black porters and waiters, linen tablecloths and bud vases. I read "The Gulag Archipelago" on the trip. Whole book, whole trip. The book was newly released in English at that time. (Wiki says Southern abandoned passenger service to Amtrak in 1979.)

[NYtoCLT]

4 hours ago, kermit said:

More Atlanta-Charlotte service is on Amtrak’s to do list, but its not going to happen anytime soon (i.e. this decade). NS owns those tracks and they are beyond capacity for freight so they would want crazy money for more passenger rail. GADOT has identified a preferred route for greenfield HSR (true 240 mph service) and Joel Ossof tried to get $10 billion to start construction on the route written into the build back better bill. Needless to say, I would not put any wagers on CLT-ATL HSR opening up soon.

tldr: unless you want to depart Charlotte at 2am don’t plan on riding the train to Atlanta anytime in the next 20 years.

I had a feeling this was the case.  Very disappointing.  Flying it is.  It's a shame too -- if it was fast and even remotely cost competitive with flying it would be popular.  It's legitmately the perfect train distance (too far to drive, too close to fly).  

[Nindec]

15 hours ago, NYtoCLT said:

I had a feeling this was the case.  Very disappointing.  Flying it is.  It's a shame too -- if it was fast and even remotely cost competitive with flying it would be popular.  It's legitmately the perfect train distance (too far to drive, too close to fly).  

I haven't ridden it in a few years, but I'd check out Megabus. It looks like they have one trip a day, leaving at 4:15pm.  There may be other services now.  At least when heading north, their double-decker busses were reliable, clean, and comfortable, and had decent enough wifi access.  They also didn't have many stops, so travel time was comparable to driving.  

[Reverie39]

Just watched this great video on NC intercity rail service. The guy takes the Carolinian and Piedmont between Greensboro and Raleigh (no Charlotte but it’s mentioned often). Thought it might interest some of you. We honestly might take our rail system for granted sometimes, outside of the Northeast I don’t know if many states have lines as useful and frequent as ours. 

[kermit]

3 hours ago, Reverie39 said:

Just watched this great video on NC intercity rail service. The guy takes the Carolinian and Piedmont between Greensboro and Raleigh (no Charlotte but it’s mentioned often). Thought it might interest some of you. We honestly might take our rail system for granted sometimes, outside of the Northeast I don’t know if many states have lines as useful and frequent as ours. 

Yea, the trains are pretty great, although they could certainly benefit from higher frequency and improved transit connections. I tend to ride from Charlotte roughly once a month, frequently to Durham to see my parents, Raleigh for work (usually somewhere in the state govt complex), and fairly frequently to Greensboro for baseball and a few other work things at UNC G. I have also used the Piedmont to High Point (once) and from Kannapolis one time when my car was being flakey when I thought I would drive to Durham. I have taken my bike with me (for free, reservation required) on many of these trips.

There are others on UP who’s kids frequently took the train to get to college, and I just discovered my dental hygienist rides to Salisbury monthly to visit her sister. 

I have met folks who use the trains to commute on a near daily basis as well. I think the great potential here is from speeding up trips a bit (along with better frequency) which would allow Greensboro (and other in between points) to become part of the Charlotte and Raleigh labor markets. Not only would this improve the desirability of all the cities to firms, but it would also help address housing cost/supply issues. NCDOT is also beginning to recognize that its ability to widen I-85 are coming to an end and the rail corridor is the only remaining option for connecting this network of cities.

The Achilles heel of this otherwise very good system is sprawl and lack of transit around stations. You don’t have very many destination options once you get off the train, and destinations are often so spread out that uber/taxi isn’t viable for anything other than novelty trips. BRT in Raleigh will help a bit, as will the pending move to Gateway station, but most of NC’s cities will remain beyond the reach of the trains unless you have someone to pick you up. If this were in Germany, every station would have a streetcar route connecting it to most of the remainder of town.

tldr: train nerd

Edited April 16, 2022 by kermit

[CLT2014]

2 hours ago, Reverie39 said:

Just watched this great video on NC intercity rail service. The guy takes the Carolinian and Piedmont between Greensboro and Raleigh (no Charlotte but it’s mentioned often). Thought it might interest some of you. We honestly might take our rail system for granted sometimes, outside of the Northeast I don’t know if many states have lines as useful and frequent as ours. 

California's Amtrak service is superior to ours with routes like the Pacific Surfliner connecting the downtowns of Southern California from San Luis Obispo to downtown LA to downtown San Diego, et. with 26 trains a day. It is the busiest Amtrak route outside the Northeast. 

The lack of onward transit connections to explore the city you arrive in is the toughest thing for NC inner city rail if your destination isn't walking distance of the station.

 

Edited April 16, 2022 by CLT2014

[southslider]

On 4/16/2022 at 11:59 AM, CLT2014 said:

The lack of onward transit connections to explore the city you arrive in is the toughest thing for NC inner city rail if your destination isn't walking distance of the station.

The City's most frequent bus route used to be the one connecting Charlotte's existing Amtrak station, but ironically, the opening of the Blue Line Extension reduced the frequency of that bus connection.

[kermit]

Here is a crappy, moving train photo of what the skyline will look like from Gateway Station (taken through a window on the moving Crescent at 5am). Despite the photo, I think train riders will say 'wow' when they arrive in Charlotte (very much unlike the reaction that arrivals get from the current station).

 

Edited May 6, 2022 by kermit

[Reverie39]

I have never actually been to the current station but Google Earth tells me enough and my reaction can best be described as "disgusted".  I imagine New Yorkers or Philadelphians taking the Carolinian down to Charlotte for business and pulling in to that sad little building next to a gray old rail yard and thinking "this is the so-called booming city of Charlotte?"

From an image perspective, Gateway Station is one of the most urgent and necessary projects for Charlotte. A true big East Coast city needs an accessible and pleasant train station that shows off the city to visitors. First impressions matter.

Side note, the current station appears to just be surrounded by acres of... dusty fields. Will this area ever be targeted for development? Or is it rail yard property or something which would make it difficult?

 

[CLT2014]

2 hours ago, Reverie39 said:

I have never actually been to the current station but Google Earth tells me enough and my reaction can best be described as "disgusted".  I imagine New Yorkers or Philadelphians taking the Carolinian down to Charlotte for business and pulling in to that sad little building next to a gray old rail yard and thinking "this is the so-called booming city of Charlotte?"

From an image perspective, Gateway Station is one of the most urgent and necessary projects for Charlotte. A true big East Coast city needs an accessible and pleasant train station that shows off the city to visitors. First impressions matter.

Side note, the current station appears to just be surrounded by acres of... dusty fields. Will this area ever be targeted for development? Or is it rail yard property or something which would make it difficult?

The current station isn't a great image for Charlotte and the replacement will be very beneficial, but the reality is the Carolinian isn't really impacting opinions of Charlotte by people from the Northeast as they don't ride the train here much. The single Carolinian train per day has been gradually losing ridership every year since 2013 and none of the Top 10 city pairs on the Carolinian route involve Charlotte and a Northeastern city as it is a 10 hour+ journey (Raleigh <-> DC is the busiest pairing). Business travelers make up an even smaller chunk of Carolinian ridership at just 13% per Amtrak's ridership survey (the vast majority of riders, 68%, indicate they are seeing friends/family). Business travelers just aren't sitting for 10+ hours on a single train with spotty wifi service from NY to Charlotte when there are 2 hour flights departing every hour. Doing the math.... at 45,587 Carolinian boardings/exits per year at Charlotte, or roughly 125 per day, with about 13% being business travelers.... that's just 16 people either getting on or off the Carolinian per day in Charlotte for business (most of which are from within NC). 

So... building the project for impressing 16 business travelers a day doesn't really make sense...  Our city has had a lot of infrastructure issues and now that Gateway Station fits into a broader transportation plan for the city beyond just Amtrak service, it makes sense to invest in a station with a better location at this time. It just took a while for that to be justifiable against other priorities. Hopefully with the new station, the poor ridership on the Carolinian will reverse as well and we can even get more frequency than once per day. The biggest thing to start competing with planes for Charlotte -> Northeast ridership is SPEED. The total journey ends up being too slow if riding much beyond Raleigh. 

Edited May 1, 2022 by CLT2014

[kermit]

On 5/1/2022 at 1:44 PM, CLT2014 said:

The single Carolinian train per day has been gradually losing ridership every year since 2013

This is a statement that requires a big asterix. The Carolinian was near capacity until roughly 2013. The siding where the train is stored overnight at the current station limited (and still does) the consist to 6 coaches, which frequently causes the Carolinian to sell out, it has been physically impossible for ridership to increase. Ridership did decline from 2013-2018 due to reduced speeds, increased delays and  frequent annulments due to the construction related to ARRA stimulus funded double tracking and curve realignment projects between Charlotte and Raleigh.  There was not much time for ridership to recover from construction disruptions before Covid hit. So while ridership might technically have been 'gradually" declining every year since 2013,  I would say that a) this is ridership was bouncing off of upper capacity limits in the early part of this time period; and ridership experienced b) an extended  construction / pandemic related downturn corresponding to that upper limit. Perhaps more importantly, the Carolinian was nearly profitable (on an operational subsidy basis) pre ARRA disruptions, it was generally agreed that the train could become one of Amtrak's most profitable routes if additional capacity could be added. This capacity increase will be possible when Gateway station opens which will open access to the completed ARRA funded passenger equipment storage facility at Summit ave.

On 5/1/2022 at 1:44 PM, CLT2014 said:

 Hopefully with the new station, the poor ridership on the Carolinian will reverse as well and we can even get more frequency than once per day. The biggest thing to start competing with planes for Charlotte -> Northeast ridership is SPEED. The total journey ends up being too slow if riding much beyond Raleigh. 

And substantial improvements in speed and capacity to DC are in the works. The S-Line shortcut from Raleigh to Richmond is now completely state  owned and money to upgrade those tracks to 110mph service is very likely to be funded as part of the infrastructure bill (the EIS for the S-Line rebuild is complete). The opening of this shortcut will cut (possibly) 2 hours of travel time from Raleigh to DC. While this improvement wont, by itself, make rail a viable alternative for business travelers, it will create a 100% state owned right of way between Charlotte and DC that can easily accommodate incremental speed increases. The S-Line (along with a replacement Potomac river bridge, currently in the works) should also enable around 8 round trips per day to DC from Charlotte, something that will also stimulate ridership. Other speed improvements are possible, the ARRA project built the CLT-Greensboro section to accommodate top speeds of 90mph (up from the previous 79mph), but NCDOT has not been willing to pay the maintenance / inspection costs of realizing that, converting all the station platforms to high-level (expensive project will require station sidings) could cut another couple minutes off every stop. Triangle area commuter rail (something else likely to be funded by the infrastructure bill) will likely shave some minutes from the Hillsborough-Raleigh segment as well thanks to curve realignment improved signaling.

With the state owned corridor, true HSR from Charlotte to the NEC becomes possible should the money for that ever fall from the sky. Its 400 miles along this route from Charlotte to DC, I'll let you do the math on trip times if those trains can reach 200mph (at some point in the Jetson's-scale future). I am not here to say that this sort of HSR service is likely to happen in my lifetime (its not), but its certainly not going to happen in a world where riders' impressions of Charlotte rail service are determined by our current station.

Edited May 5, 2022 by kermit