by Bob Roberts
kitchin wrote: ↑Wed Oct 06, 2021 9:44 am North Carolina has owned Raleigh - Charlotte since the mid-1800's, but private railroad has rights and that corridor will remain mixed pax-freight even with SEHSR I believe.I could not resist a small and off topic nit-pick, my apologies:
The NCRR corridor is 200 ft wide from Raleigh to Charlotte so there is plenty of room to add dedicated passenger tracks. That said, NCDOT has shown no signs of being willing to pay the incremental maintenance costs for Class 6 operations on the existing track (something they built with the ARRA funds west of Greensboro), let alone the cost of operating separate tracks. So I think you are correct about mixed traffic, but higher speeds and dedicated track are certainly possible. The determining factor is what happens from Charlotte to Atlanta, the Greenfield, true-HSR, route was selected as the preferred alternative. If a miracle happens and those tracks are built then building HSR between Charlotte and Richmond (all state-owned ROW) begins to make sense.
More realistically we are a decade(?) away from commuter rail on the Raleigh-Durham section of the NCRR (possibly as far west as Burlington and as far east as Selma) and perhaps 20 years away from commuter rail from Charlotte-Gateway to Salisbury. This is going to clog up the NCRR unless proper station sidings are built.