High-speed rail on faster track

N.C. can upgrade tracks, cut travel time, officials say, with federal stimulus money. As President Barack Obama prepares to spend billions on new high-speed train service across the country, North Carolina is positioning itself to be among the first states to get rolling. If it wins a healthy share of new federal money, the state will open the throttle on a program of rail upgrades that have already paid dividends in faster travel times and some of the nation's most impressive growth in train ridership. North Carolina is seen as a good candidate for federal high-speed rail money. But some rail advocates worry that Washington will spread the money among too many rail corridors, diluting its impact. With Virginia as its partner, the state has laid groundwork since the early 1990s for trains that could speed Raleigh travelers to Charlotte in a little over two hours and to Washington in less than four. State transportation officials say those speeds are attainable as soon as 2018. Much of the engineering and preliminary government review have been done. Money has been the missing ingredient, until this year. Last month, at Obama's urging, Congress added $8 billion for high-speed and other intercity rail service to its $787 billion economic recovery package. Last week Obama said this money was a down payment on a federal commitment to make trains a fast, "practical and environmentally sustainable alternative to flying or driving." In his 2009-10 budget, Obama proposed an additional five-year, $5 billion program to start building several high-speed train corridors across the United States. The Southeast High-Speed Rail Corridor, roughly 450 miles from Charlotte to Washington, is one of 10 speedy train projects formally designated by the U.S. Department of Transportation since 1991. Others serve bigger urban centers, but transportation experts say few have advanced as far along the path from concept to construction as the North Carolina-Virginia plan. Chunks of money for North Carolina The federal stimulus program gives priority to projects that can start construction quickly. "I think ours has more planning and environmental and design work done than most, and that's the point," said David King, a former state deputy transportation secretary who now runs Triangle Transit. "If and when the money shows up, we want to be at the front of the line to get it." North Carolina has been spending $4 million to $5 million a year and working with railroads to upgrade tracks and stations and increase train speeds. It now faces the possibility of hundreds of millions of dollars to kick-start a fast-train program the Obama administration plans to continue. "I don't think we will be able to say, 'Give us $2 billion now,'–Gene Conti, the state transportation secretary, told a House committee last week. "We will have to go after specific chunks of the money. I think we are in a very good position to compete strongly for that." The state is ready to spend money in several places along the line. They include a project to double-track 27 miles of rail between Charlotte and Greensboro and proposals to buy right-of-way for new tracks north of Raleigh. A 1997 federal report said the Southeast corridor would generate more ticket revenue than any of the other high-speed proposals the department had reviewed at the time. The study predicted that the Charlotte-to-Washington train would cover its operating costs from farebox collections. The target top speed is 110 mph, nothing like the speediest trains of Europe and Asia. But the project would include more trains every day and more tracks to accommodate freight expansion. "You're not building a high-end, sexy bullet train," said Pat Simmons, the state Rail Division chief, who has spearheaded the southeast corridor project since 1994. "But you're building network capacity and reliability." Competing projects Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood is to outline his plans for distributing the rail stimulus money by mid-April. There will be fierce competition for the $8 billion. Obama and LaHood are both from Chicago, and experts have assumed that some of the rail money will go there. California could be in line for at least $2 billion. Voters there approved $9 billion in bond financing to start a network of trains that would run faster than 200 mph, rivaling rail speeds in Europe and Asia. Joseph Vranich of Irvine, Calif., who served as president of the High-Speed Rail Association in the early 1990s, said Obama should pour the $8 billion into the Washington-New York corridor, where Amtrak operates its lone high-speed train, the Acela. The Acela is fast enough to compete with air travel, but it has room for improvement. The train tops out at 150 mph, but averages only 82 mph from Washington to New York. "Let's focus the money in one place, make it a super-duper line," Vranich said. "Let's prove it as a concept. Then let's move forward [on other lines] in a judicious way." David Carol, a project manager at the Charlotte Area Transit System, used to work at Amtrak. He's excited about the prospect of improving the Southeast High-Speed Corridor, but he says the trains won't attract riders unless they're faster than cars and planes. "For these corridors to work, you need to tap into the business travel," he said. "If you can't get the business travel, you can't get those premium tickets." Emy Louie, a Raleigh architect, agrees. Louie is an advocate for high-speed service, but she has not boarded a train in the United States since a 1995 Florida trip -- "a nightmare because it took way too long," she said. Louie figures a trip of more than three hours or 500 miles is likely to be quicker by air than by the fast trains envisioned now. But the trains should be very popular for shorter trips, she said. "If it's faster and it's easy to ride it, then I will," Louie said. "I'd rather take a train than drive, any day, because I like to just walk around and read the paper. And you can do two trips in one day because of the speed." Amtrak's Piedmont takes 3 hours and 12 minutes to get from Raleigh to the Charlotte station, several blocks north of the city center. When you consider the door-to-door time between downtowns, the travel time is more than three and a half hours. Traveling by car downtown-to-downtown can take as little as 2 hours and 45 minutes -- and sometimes much longer, when interstate traffic is backed up. By plane, the door-to-door trip is about 2 hours and 15 minutes. (All these estimates assume no accidents and no backups.) The DOT has trimmed nearly an hour from the Raleigh-to-Charlotte train time since 1990. The high-speed plan could cut the time another hour -- to 2 hours and 15 minutes, about the same as going by air. Airlines set the pace "I think it must be airline-competitive to be effective," said Scott Saylor, president of the N.C. Railroad. "My personal view is that if we're going to do it, let's do it right. There has to be significant capital investment to run at true high speed." Vranich is skeptical about spending money on rail improvements in North Carolina and Virginia. He said a good way to measure demand for high-speed rail is to examine the number of nonstop flights between two cities that are candidates for high-speed rail. "The puny improvements we're going to make in rail aren't going to eliminate one flight anywhere," Vranich said. The Air Transport Association, which lobbies for airlines, said the high-speed money would be better spent making air traffic more efficient, by upgrading the air traffic control system. "We have a 1950s system that needs to be replaced," said David Castelveter, a spokesman for the association. "We should focus on a next-generation air traffic control system." North Carolina's years of work will finally pay off if the Southeast High-Speed Rail Corridor gets an injection of federal stimulus funds. "I'm confident North Carolina will fare well in this," Simmons said last week before boarding the Amtrak Carolinian for a 5-hour, 50-minute trip to Washington. His high-speed plan would cut nearly two hours off the trip. "We have labored long and hard in the trenches to understand whether this is a worthwhile investment," Simmons said. "And it is."