All Aboard: Growing NC passenger rail

Norfolk Southern, Amtrak, the North Carolina Department of Transportation, and the North Carolina Railroad Company welcomed a fourth daily frequency of the Amtrak Piedmont service on Monday, July 10. The expanded Piedmont service, coupled with existing Carolinian service, now offers passengers five daily round trips between the commercial centers of Charlotte, NC, and Raleigh, NC, with intermediate stops serving seven communities in between. This marks the second such expansion of passenger service in the State in the last five years, allowing more travel flexibility for passengers with 10 daily options for intercity travel across the state, and beyond via connections to other Amtrak services.

The roots of this expansion date to 2012, when the railroads and public partners reached agreement on the Piedmont Improvement Program (PIP), a nearly $500 million public-private partnership aimed at eliminating chokepoints, increasing speeds, and improving other infrastructure supporting more efficient and coordinated operations across the State. The PIP exemplifies what can be achieved when communities, passenger rail agencies, and freight railroads come together to strategically expand service and improve operations, a model that has been duplicated in other states more recently across the NS system. This collaborative model allows Norfolk Southern to move the freight for that powers the economy, while passengers travel reliably and efficiently across the network.

Additional information on the North Carolina state-supported passenger services can be found at NCbytrain.org.