Car Free Day Rally Saturday

I ride Amtrak. One of the things I really miss since moving from Raleigh to Carrboro is convenient Amtrak service. Those trains currently stop in Durham--about the same distance from CH/Carrboro as is Hillsborough.

Raleigh has Amtrak servicen up and down the east coast including Florida, DC, NYC. Greensboro has service to Atlanta and New Orleans. The trains that run through Hillsborough go between Charlotte, Raleigh, DC and NYC, so that would be the likely connectivity, if a stop is added.

NCDOT's rail site is at
http://www.bytrain.org/passenger/

There was a study in 2005 on future service in SE NC
http://www.bytrain.org/future/pdf/July05SENCRPT.pdf
-- the idea would be to add a train Wilmington-Raleigh.

adding service from Salisbury to Asheville is another possibility.

Back in 1983 I did some servey work for the state on old station sites. I recall finding that the Hillsborough station was actually in West Hillsborough, next to an old mill. The railroad may still own the old site.There was also a stop at University Station (between Hillsborough and Durham). There was really no local traffic originating at University Station, it was the transfer point between the NCRR and Carrboro/Chapel Hill along the State University Railroad (which still carries coal to the UNC powerplant). Passenger service to Chapel Hill was discontinued in 1939. There was a train that ran several times daily from Carrboro to University Station and back, I recall reading stories about it. There were also special football trains that ran from the UNC campus -- the end of the rail line was behind Memorial Hall in the 1920s, I've seen pictures of students boarding the train there for a Saturday football game run.

Based on only one, sadly typical, event, Amtrak keeps shooting
itself in the foot. I like to go to Washington to see the
museums, and last summer got a free ride there, and took
the train home, scheduled to leave Union Station at 11 am
and arrive in Durham about 5:30, then I could hop a TTA
bus to the Ambulatory Care Center, from which I could
easily walk home. EZ, right? Wrong! As I checked in, the
ticket agent chuckled and said to expect to arrive in Durham
about 8 pm since the train would have a number of long pauses,
mostly in southside Virginia to let freight trains pass. Yes
frieght trains got priority over passenger trains because
the tracks are owned by Norfolk and Western, not Amtrak.
Bottom line is that while the train and its passengers were pleasant, I got home about 10pm, and decided I won't do that
again.

Will there be parking?

I think a rail stop in hillsborough would be great. However, I would love to see a passenger train service that went from this area (orange, durham, raleigh) to asheville. That would fantastic. Train up the mountains to asheville then a weekend in/around downtown. If there is a petition for that to be added please tell me where to add my name!

Thank you,
-sv

Car free day? If we want to reduce car use we should raise the price, not give them away for free. Sorry, I couldn't resist.

But seriously, talking about how much CO2 cars put into the air while trying to reduce in the local community doesn't quite mesh right, or maybe it does if you define "local community" a certain way. A good argument could be made that people are a part of the community in the place where they work, which means all those people commuting to and from work each weekday is a lot of local pollution.

Developing so that people don't have to drive as much is better than forcing people to drive and then having a day now and then that discourages them from driving.

This event was more about trains than about cars, although the two are of course ultimately related.

http://www.heraldsun.com/orange/10-883356.cfm

Ok, I'm not wearing my glasses, so I thought Jennifer's post about about CAT free day, and I wondered what on earth could be wrong with cats?

I'm relieved to find that we are talking CAR free, and that I actually was car free yesterday! Very nice to live in a town where I can do my shopping, go to a bar and see a show, all by foot. It's a luxury I'm very grateful for.

But Amtrak...yes, that's tricky. I've had a colleague who tried to take Amtrak back to Washington to avoid flying in an ice storm and it took her an extra 24 hours to get home. I love taking the train in the Northeast, but in the South it's a frustrating exercise, and I'll happily pay (not all that much) more for more reliable service by air.

I'm crazy about trains and will put up with a lot, but Amtrak from here is only for the truly bored and flight-phobic.

Think we desperately need to restore reliable subsidy to our passenger rail system -- including giving passenger trains priority over freight when needed, but that hinges on having enough rails in good working order, not just one rail for trains in both directions in rural areas.

Trains are perfect for trips between congested cities, especially those where door-to-door trips by plane take as long as the downtown-to-downtown rail trip does (and less than the car trip would). They are also great for linking cities and towns too "unimportant" to be well served by airlines.

It's odd to think how functional our passenger rail system became by the 1940s and 1950s -- how much of the country was covered, on-time, in comparative comfort with good food -- only to crumble to its current, almost abandoned condition. I'd happily leave my car behind if I could get to DC or Florida in the same or less time than driving.

Gerry, there is a large photo in Wilson Library that shows
the campus power plant approximately where
the Carolina Inn is now. The RR delivered the coal
on the current tracks that serve the Cameron cogen plant,
however the rails continued eastward to the old power plant.
Neighborhood issues notwithstanding, it always
seemed to me that a good way to get from Carolina
North to the main campus would be to re-extend those
tracks, and run passenger car shuttles from CN to the
Carolina Inn. Today there is a steam line in that right-of-way,
but it doesn't seem like a major engineering issue
to deal with it, perhaps building the
tracks over it. I would love to see a stoplight-free, light-duty
rail line and adjacent bike path from CN, with one stop in
downtown Carrboro, then onto the campus.
A photo finish; this line or a quick rail line from UNC to RDU.

Anybody remember the PJ and B? Princeton Junction and Back.
I'm not a Princeton grad or expert, but I remember it as a
light rail shuttle from campus to the main rail line
that joined Philly and New York.

Joe and Priscilla,

You should both check out the SouthEast High Speed Rail (SEHSR)Corridor website.

If you visit their front page and look at the map, the section between Raleigh and Richmond provides 80% of the problems between Washington and Charlotte. From Raleigh to Charlotte, the trains are pretty swift and reliable. The same goes DC to Richmond, though there are improvement projects in both sub-corridors underway.

Assuming the SEHSR corridor gets built, trains would top out at 110 mph between Richmond and Raleigh, and average around 80 mph, including stops. Reliability would greatly improve as well.

A current bill in the Senate (S. 294) would help move this project closer to fruition. Richard Burr is one of the many co-sponsors.

Patrick,

As a planner who studies these issues every day, can you tell us what you think of the Personal Rapid Transit (P.R.T.) system in Morganton, W. Va.? It was designed to carry people between two campuses over a fairly short (approx. 2 miles) distance, thus there might be some similarities to the UNC-CH situation.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/11/us/11tram.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=s...

Re: the SEHSR corridor -- is the route currently set to go through Rocky Mount, as it now does, which adds at least an hour to the "as the crow flies" route under the best conditions?

Would say more about the routing, but this blog needs to stay focused on local rather than regional or national things. I would love to see a station in Hillsborough and love the pix of the old stations in Carrboro and CH. Remain cynically mystified by what's happened to light-rail planning for the Triangle. I admit I'm not at all informed on most aspects, but it often seems to me that routing is based on "avenues of least resistance" rather than logically networked connections that make the most sense.

PS: Traveled the Princeton Jct. to Princeton shuttle several times the sixties -- it was the same sort of little toot-toot electric rail car that Philadelphia used for its suburban rail system.

Priscilla,

I'm co-chair of a commission (Special Transit Advisory Commission; STAC) appointed by the two MPOs (Capitol Area Metropolitan Planning Organization [CAMPO] and Durham-Chapel Hill-Carrboro [DCHC] MPO) to develop a Regional Transit Vision Plan for the entire Triangle region. In addition to presenting this plan to the MPOs we are charged with recommending major transit investments for the Triangle region. Right now, everything is on the table: rail, light rail, bus rapid transit (BRT), buses, streetcars. We are beginning the process of prioritizing the routes that we will recommend as well as the type of service that will be recommended for each route. Our final report should be delivered to the MPOs in December. It will then be up to them to decide how to use our recommendations. Perhaps the most important part of this process is that we are a group of 29 citizens who will be making recommendations to develop a REGIONAL transit system, rather than several smaller, non-connected systems such as we have now.

You can get additional information, including summaries of our previous meetings and upcoming agendas at this website:
http://www.transitblueprint.org/

George Cianciolo

"They are also great for linking cities and towns too “unimportant” to be well served by airlines."

No cities are too unimportant to be well-served by airlines if they're able to get paying passengers on the planes (airlines want to make money, so they go where the passengers are). If people won't take planes out of a town or city, they probably won't be paying passengers on trains, either. Thus, that proposition would be a monumental waste of Amtrak's and our taxpayer dollars.

It's not a matter of whether people "will" or "won't" (take planes out of a town or city). It's a matter of "can or can't," based on how many people there are to begin with -- and, quite obviously, willingness to subsidy a land-based transit system that has to be national, if not continental, in nature to make any sense.

If you are a municipality that doesn't have a huge population, you are too "unimportant" for an airline; and the fact that the areas served by major carriers shrank with the arrival of the hub system has made things worse. The fare to fly from Dubuque to Milwaukee is higher, sometimes double or triple, than the fare from New York to L.A., but does that therefore mean no one from Dubuque should even try to get to Milwaukee? Should residents around a moderate to small municipality automatically pay a penalty for living there, or that travelers should pay a premium there? How does that help the economic health of those areas?

Also, it's not entirely a logical comparison, to compare an integrated rail network with the current, near free-for-all in air-travel "planning." Different dimensions, different logistics, different purposes.

A train line can be picking up and dropping off passengers along the way, stopping and linking the smaller, non-hub cities and towns, something planes can't (or surely shouldn't) do. You'd never take a flight from DCA to Richmond to Burlington to Durham to Greensboro to Charlotte, picking up and dropping off people as you go. And you can't add or subtract a "car" to the back of plane, depending on the number of reservations.

To assume that it doesn't make sense to develop, rather than dismantle, our passenger rail system is to ignore the success of the European (subsidized) model, and the lessons that should have been learned from the four days after 9/11, and the warnings about the near-future gridlock in the skies over the major city airports -- with antiquated air traffic control, to boot.

George mentioned above the STAC (Special Transit Advisory Committee) that he (and I) serve on. At today's meeting, regional staff presented the outline of a conceptual plan for a commuter/rail/light rail/bus rapid transit system for the Triangle area.

New on the drawing board since the Old Phase I of the TTA commutter rail system would be service to Carolina North (CN) frrom both the North and South. UNC STAC representative Carolyn Efland today several times mentioned the need for transit service to CN. The new plans take the old TTA DMU (Diesel Multiple Unit) commuter rail service Phase I as a central base and propose DMU service from Burlington to Selma (via Durham, RTP and Raleigh) all along the NCRR corridor, as well as service from downtown Raleigh to I540 along the CSX tracks that roughly parallel Capitol Blvd. From University Station (between Durham and Hillsborough) DMU servce would follow the existing State University Railroad (SURR) and terminate at Carolina North, with a mention of a stop at Eubanks Road.

Service to CN from the South would be an extension of the Durham-Chapel Hill Light Rail proposal, which now might either be light rail (LRT) or bus rapid transit (BRT). BRT differs in that the vehicles would be regular or extended length buses running on a fixed guideway system, rather than light rail cars. Service would start at Duke Hospital (a stop on the proposed DMU service), generally follow 15-501 (perhaps in the median), parallel to or following I-40 from 15-501 to near Highway 54, traveling through Meadowmont with a stop at the new 54 East development (the old University Motor Inn), then following 15-501 up Manning Drive to terminate at UNC Hospital. What appears to be Phase B of the LRT/BRT would be an extension from UNC Hospitals up Columbia Street then west to Carrboro along an unknown corridor, then clearly following the SURR through Carrboro to Carolina North where the DMU from the North terminates.

This is an initial proposal as a jumping off point, no stations or precise alignment is shown.

Will this all ever happen?

Will, there was not that level of detail yesterday, but it was mentioned that in some cities BRT vehicles leave the guideway.

Gerry,
Thanks for posting a great summary of what was covered at yesterday's STAC meeting. It provided a well-worded description of what was presented schematically and will, I'm sure, be very useful to all, including STAC members.

Will,
The process we are hoping to work through on the STAC is to develop a consensus as to (1) WHERE transit services should be located in the next 30 years; (2) HOW that service should be accomplished (i.e., what transit mode: rail, light rail, BRT, bus, etc.); (3) WHEN that service should be enacted (i.e., prioritization); and (4) FUNDING mechanisms. I think that after yesterday's meeting we are fairly close on number 1. We haven't tackled numbers 2, 3, and 4 yet. As you might imagine, we expect that number 3 will not be easy given that every community will have their own interests in mind. But if we can reach consensus on number 3 then we will have taken a great step forward in developing a REGIONAL transit plan. Wish us well and offer us your support.