3 things to know about the Charlotte to Atlanta high speed train project
The proposed high speed rail line from Charlotte to Atlanta made headlines last week as planners released their preferred route — through Gaston County, to the Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport, to Athens and finally Atlanta — but people should not be planning their trips any time soon.
The line has been in the planning phase for nearly a decade, with no dedicated funding for construction. Even the Biden administration’s bipartisan infrastructure package, if it makes it through Congress, wouldn’t make the project a sure thing.
Here’s what to know about the route, the cost and the hurdles.
1. Charlotte to Atlanta rail route
Until recently, it was unclear where the new high speed rail line would actually go. It still is unclear — the proposed route isn’t set it stone — but transportation officials in Georgia and the Federal Railroad Administration released a plan earlier this month that lays out their best case scenario.
The route starts in Charlotte at the Gateway Station in uptown, makes a stop near the airport, then heads southwest to Gaston County, and over the South Carolina state line.
Somewhere between the airport and the Gaston County stop, the train will move off of existing railroad tracks and onto the high speed rail line, which has yet to be built. That’s where the train can really pick up speed, from 80 to 110 miles per hour on the old line to as high as 220 miles per hour on high speed rail, according to the new planning document.
From Gaston County, the train heads south, passing east of Kings Mountain State Park and making a stop at the Greenville-Spartanburg airport. It will travel east of Greenville as it continues south, making stops in towns that include Anderson, S.C., and Athens and Suwanee in Georgia. Riders could exit in downtown Atlanta or at the airport.
With electric propulsion, the whole trip would take just over two hours. Direct flights can take about an hour and 15 minutes, not including the time spent in airport security lines.
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2. What’s the hold up?
The release of a preferred route is just one step in a long planning process, and the finish line is still waiting on a distant horizon.
David Carol, the chief operation officer at the American Public Transportation Association, said the route still has numerous hurdles to overcome: finding the exact patches of ground where officials could build a new rail line; acquiring the land; and, most importantly, getting the money.
The latest planning document estimates that the route would cost somewhere between $6.2 billion and $8.4 billion. So far, no government agency has set aside money to build it.
Carol, a former planner for the Charlotte Area Transit System, said transit advocates are pushing officials to establish a trust fund for high speed rail, where money could be set aside each year and couldn’t be transferred to other programs on the whims of changing administrations or Congresses.
The Obama administration, for example, spent $11 billion on rail but was hampered by Republican opposition in Congress. (Critics also say the administration’s strategy, which spread out the money rather than focusing on a handful of achievable projects, was flawed from the start.)
“Without a trust fund we end up with the same situation that we end up with with Obama,” Carol said. “You have these projects that take years and years to build without a reliable funding stream.”
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3. Money
Convincing the federal government to come together and support funding for high speed rail is, at least for now, a challenging prospect. There is a chance, though, that Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure bill could set aside some money.
Carol said the Senate bill’s proposed $66 billion for freight and passenger rail would equate to a “down payment,” and that most of the money would be spent in the Northeast and to support Amtrak. The success of the $973 billion infrastructure package remains in doubt on Tuesday, even as Senate Democrats hoped for a vote on Wednesday, according to The Associated Press.
“That $66 billion is not nearly enough for a huge, national high speed rail program,” he said, although it could bring the project one step closer to construction.
