Higher Speed Rail in NC and VA - “Lengthening and Strengthening the Northeast Corridor”
Growing regions require sustained investments in metropolitan and intercity transportation in order to remain competitive with the rest of the world and to sustain our quality of life. The emerging Southeast High Speed Rail (SEHSR) corridor will create faster and more convenient travel opportunities between Charlotte, the Piedmont Triad, Durham, Raleigh, Richmond, Hampton Roads, Northern Virginia, Washington, D.C., and the Northeast.
With final approval in March 2011 of nearly $500m in federal funding to advance higher speed rail from Raleigh to Charlotte, the RTA is now focused on accelerating the completion of the missing Raleigh-Petersburg-Richmond higher speed connection, in cooperation with business groups from across the region, including the Richmond and Hampton Roads areas of Virginia. This key linkage has the potential for 110 MPH trains that would "Connect the Capitals," join the twin urban “job crescents” of North Carolina and Virginia together, link us to the Northeast, and help position the markets in the southern mid-Atlantic area for ongoing prosperity.
Corridor travel times will be competitive with or faster than flying or driving between cities in Virginia and North Carolina. In addition, mainline Southeast corridor operating revenues are expected to exceed expenses, providing the basis for private operation as a concession -- without any public subsidy.
Higher speed rail has the potential to transform business and personal relationships between the two capital regions as well as the two urban crescents that serve as the twin economic engines for Virginia and North Carolina. Higher speed rail travel times of under two hours between Downtown Richmond and Downtown Raleigh will be substantially shorter than current drive times between the two capital cities.
You can also view a letter to President Obama signed by the mayors of Durham, Richmond, Raleigh, and Norfolk -- and the chamber executives serving those communities -- advocating for new or reallocated funding to advance the Raleigh-Petersburg-Richmond higher speed rail shortcut. The Raleigh-Richmond-Washington-New York corridor received a score of 19.02 using the America 2050 methodology, which is among the highest scores in the United States.
For North Carolina and Virginia, the new higher speed rail connection would link Virginia's and North Carolina's urban crescents that are the primary centers of job creation in the two states.
- Virginia's "urban crescent" consists of three metro regions — Northern Virginia/Washington, DC; Richmond; and Hampton Roads — that extend over a 200 mile arc from northern to southeastern Virginia and collectively serve as the economic engine of the Commonwealth
- North Carolina's "urban crescent" consists of three metro regions — Research Triangle, Piedmont Triad, and Charlotte — that extend over a 200 mile arc in central North Carolina and collectively serve as the economic engine of the State
- Higher speed rail from Richmond to Raleigh would join the eastern end of North Carolina's urban crescent with the midpoint of Virginia's urban crescent and provide a new linkage between the economic and population crescents of the two states
For Raleigh and points south and west, the benefits of a new higher speed rail connection to Richmond and points north and east include:
- Much faster access to Richmond and the Capital Region of Virginia from the Research Triangle area and the entire urban crescent of North Carolina
- Opportunities for expanded connections with Virginia Commonweatlh University, University of Richmond, and the Virginia Bio-Technology Research Park
- Opportunity to connect to Northern Virginia and Washington, DC within four hours by rail
- A new rail connection to Hampton Roads, America's First Region, via Petersburg
- Completes the primary missing link in in the Southeast High Speed Rail corridor
- More trains serving the proposed multimodal center in Downtown Raleigh
- Other communities in the Carolinas will receive analogous benefits as their journey times north also decrease.
For Richmond and points north and east, the benefits of a new higher speed rail connection to Raleigh and points south and west include:
- Much faster access to Raleigh, Durham, Cary, Chapel Hill, and the entire Triangle region
- Opportunities for expanded connections with NC State University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Duke University, and the Research Triangle Park
- Direct rail access to the Triad and Charlotte regions of North Carolina
- Opportunity to become a mid-Atlantic passenger rail hub, with rapid trains to the north (Washington, DC), south (Raleigh), and east (Hampton Roads)
- More trains serving the Richmond Main Street station -- infusing life into that area of town
- Bottleneck improvements and speed enhancements between Washington and Richmond (e.g. the Acca railyard) will then become a focus of North Carolina as well as Virginia
- Other communities in Virginia will receive analogous benefits as their journey times south also decrease.
The RTA supports the creation of a Richmond-Raleigh higher speed rail corridor free of at-grade crossings for safety, operational, and competitive federal funding reasons. We also support additional bridges where feasible to maintain or enhance connections within communities impacted by the proposed high speed rail rail corridor. In addition, we support the parallel greenway concept. We encourage an ongoing dialogue between the NCDOT Rail Division and the respective communities as the high-speed rail corridor is finalized to find the best corridor location for each community
While the nicknames of Virginia and North Carolina may be The Old Dominion and The Old North State, a higher speed rail connection will be a new and game changing concept for travel between Richmond and Raleigh — and between Virginia and North Carolina. For more information on higher speed rail in North Carolina and the Southeast High Speed Rail corridor, visit the Southeast High Speed Rail (SEHSR) website here.
