(The following story by Bruce Siceloff appeared on the News Observer website on May 12, 2010.)
RALEIGH, N.C. — Steady growth across the Triangle will make our traffic worse over the next decade, and thousands of students and workers will be eager to park the car and catch a train.
That’s the forecast in a new report on demand for commuter trains that would run every 40 minutes during the morning and afternoon rush hours. Now we’ll see whether taxpayers, elected leaders and commuters buy into the idea.
The state-owned N.C. Railroad commissioned the ridership study for a possible 140-mile line from Greens boro to Goldsboro. The study found healthy interest in service between Greensboro and Burlington, but the biggest numbers were concentrated in the Triangle.
A 50-mile stretch, with 11 stops from Durham through Raleigh to the Wilson’s Mills area in northern Johnston County, would serve a projected 8,238 riders each workday by 2022 – or 2.1 million a year.
“It tells us the ridership is there and will continue to grow,” Christie S. Cameron, vice chairman of the N.C. Railroad board, told a few hundred participants Wednes day at a two-day rail and business conference in Raleigh. “We can predict what investments need to be made.”
The findings support plans by Triangle business and government leaders to consider commuter trains as a quick-start phase in a long-range effort to boost transit service. Plans also include more bus routes and, eventually, electric-powered light rail.
Several things would have to go right for the Triangle to join about two dozen metropolitan areas across the country that have rush-hour rail service.
Students and workers would have to accept the new way of getting around – and they would have to be assured of convenient bus connections to get them from rail stops to their destinations.
And taxpayers would have to agree to help pay for it as part of the proposed half-cent sales tax for regional transit improvements. The proposed sales tax could go to voters in the fall of next year.
If the forecast is accurate, the Triangle would have a busier rail line than the commuter trains that now serve such cities as San Diego and San Jose.
“Look at other high-growth areas around the country,” said Scott Saylor, the N.C. Railroad president. “There aren’t many that don’t have commuter rail.”
Commuter trains use regular diesel locomotives tocarry suburban residents to jobs and universities in urban areas, serving stops a few miles apart.
Unlike light rail, and unlike a regional rail plan that was scuttled a few years ago after it lost federal support, commuter trains make less frequent stops and do not provide day-and-night service.
Start with rush hour
But rush-hour trains could be introduced at less expense and several years sooner, because they would use existing tracks. A 2008 study pegged the capital cost at $2 million to $9 million a mile. The railroad would have to add double tracks between Cary and Durham to handle the added traffic.
“It doesn’t make sense to run commuter rail all the way from Goldsboro to Greensboro,” said Masroor Hasan of Steer Davies Gleave, the transportation consulting firm that conducted the study. “If you want to start with one section, I think that section should be Durham to Wilson’s Mills.”
The ridership forecasts were based on projected population and job growth, traffic congestion levels, and plans for improved bus service in the Triangle.
The study found relatively weak demand for commuter trains between Burlington and Durham, including a proposed spur line from Hillsborough to Chapel Hill. Students, university workers and other commuters in that area already have free transit or other good options.
Leaders in Wake, Durham and Orange counties are working out details of a transit plan to be submitted to county commissioners in the coming year.
“There have to be cost-benefit decisions made,” Saylor said. “No one suggested that we’re going to run out and do it tomorrow. But if we don’t to something, we’re all going to be stuck in traffic in 10 or 15 years. We know that.”