Today, NCDOT’s Rail Division officially received the first $20.3 million of the $545 million allocated to our state for high-speed rail improvements under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. North Carolina was granted the sixth highest award to any state as part of President Obama’s high-speed rail plan, demonstrating the growing strength of our rail program.
We recently introduced a new mid-day service on our Piedmont route between Raleigh and Charlotte and are planning to launch a fourth daily service between the two cities as early as 2012. This initial $20.3 million will go toward refurbishing passenger coaches and locomotives to help support these expansions. It will also help create 34 new jobs for Amtrak train engineers and conductors, as well as personnel who operate and maintain the trains.
The rest of the money will help us make other needed improvements, including purchasing new locomotives and passenger cars, upgrading stations, building passing sidings and double tracks, closing highway/railroad crossings and constructing new highway bridges. All told, we’re expecting that this rail recovery money will create or maintain as many as 4,800 jobs across the state over the next four years.
The national long-term vision for the future of rail is focused on creating an efficient, high-speed passenger rail network that connects major population centers 100 to 600 miles apart. Short-term, the program will aid economic recovery and help improve existing rail infrastructure and equipment. North Carolina’s efforts, in partnership with other nearby states, center on developing the Southeast High Speed Rail Corridor to ultimately connect Washington, D.C. and Charlotte at speeds up to 110 miles per hour.
Throughout the month of July, North Carolina and Virginia are hosting a series of public meetings between Richmond and Raleigh to gather input on proposed corridor designs and their potential impacts. The first one will be held tomorrow in Warren County. In addition, the Virginia-North Carolina Interstate High Speed Rail Compact held its inaugural meeting today in Raleigh.
For more information on Southeast High Speed Rail, visit www.sehsr.org.