NC By Train– expansion, promotion, reflection
Exciting transit news from North Carolina! Our state’s passenger rail system, NC By Train, has added a fifth round-trip train from Charlotte to Raleigh to its daily schedule. See the chart below for revised run times.
Note that with the new schedule, some trains will not stop at smaller stations such as Burlington or Salisbury. I’m interested to hear thoughts in the comments on whether this decision was worth the marginal decrease in run times (around ten minutes).
To celebrate this expansion, all regular adult fare tickets for Piedmont and Carolinian in-state routes are half off through the end of July with the promo code ’v854.’ Make sure to book your tickets soon for your next trip on NC By Train. For more information on the promotion, click here.
I’m excited to see this expansion coming from NC By Train in the wake of increased ridership. One major fault in North Carolina’s passenger rail system I still see and hear from others considering taking the train is the current location of the Charlotte Amtrak station and its lack of connectivity to other modes of transit in town. The opening of the new Charlotte Gateway Station in Uptown (which is expected in the coming years) will certainly help remedy this issue. Furthermore, construction connecting Raleigh directly to Richmond (and the rest of the Northeast Corridor) may help encourage ridership for folks across North Carolina traveling north. I’ve had others remark to me the time difference between taking the train from Charlotte to Raleigh (3 hours) and driving (2.5 hours) preventing them from riding NC By Train given the cost of a one-way ticket ($27). I hope this is the next issue North Carolina’s Department of Transportation addresses as it improves overall service.
Investing in a more accessible and faster passenger rail system will reduce traffic levels that have reached critical mass in major metropolitan areas and simplify both intra- and inter-state travel for millions of North Carolinians.
If they're looking to make a true express service, then they should only stop at CLT, GRO, DNC, RGH. That being said though, an extra train that hit all stops would be very useful.
The biggest problem I have honestly isn't that it's necessarily slower than driving (it is, but also you don't have to focus on driving) or that it is more expensive (which it really is, 30%-100% more expensive depending on passengers and fuel economy) it's that public transit, once you arrive, makes it super difficult.
As an example, I *could* have taken the train to High Point this weekend *but* buses were running *once per hour*. Same thing for the Triangle, once per hour. If you want to take the morning train and the afternoon train that severely limits what you can do unless you want to pay for Uber/Lyft/Taxi everywhere.