New Charlotte,NC, Amtrak station

[daveklepper]

Utility work will begin in CHARLOTTE next year for the long-planned Amtrak intercity railroad passenger station in the Uptown area, The Charlotte Observer reports:

 

<https://tinyurl.com/yalrkr5y>

 

An uptown train station for Amtrak? It’s still alive, Charlotte planner reassures September 05, 2017 7:10 AMSEPTEMBER 05, 2017 7:10 AM

 

BY ELY PORTILLO

 

[e-mail]

 

Plans to build a train station uptown and move Amtrak service from its cramped quarters on North Tryon Street are still alive and moving forward, a Charlotte Area Transit System official told city leaders last week, though plenty of questions remain.

 

After more than a decade of talk and planning, Tina Votaw, the Charlotte Gateway Station project manager, acknowledged that the project has been “kind of a sleeper.” The 17-acre site, which runs along the train tracks between Bank of America Stadium and Ninth Street, remains mostly surface parking lots.

 

Utility work to make way for the new station should start in early 2018, Votaw said. But beyond relocating utility lines and preparing new bridges for passenger trains, officials are hoping that actual work will send a message: The project is finally happening. That’s why Votaw said she believes it’s crucial to publish a request for proposals from developers for building the actual station at the same time preliminary work starts.

 

“It’s important we show the community, especially the development community, that we’re moving forward,” she said. “It’s alive, it is well, there is momentum

 

Design work for the five new bridges that would be required for train service should be wrapped up this fall. After that, if work started next year on the preliminary phases, the station could be completed by 2024, though Votaw stressed the timing is tentative.

 

Funding for the first phase, estimated to cost $70 million to $80 million, includes a $30 million federal grant and a pledge of $48.75 million from the N.C. Department of Transportation. The city of Charlotte has also pledged $33 million from its capital budget for the station.

 

The Gateway Station would be connected to the uptown transit center and the Blue Line light rail by the streetcar line that’s under construction on Trade Street.

 

But there are still a lot of question marks. The final station could cost hundreds of millions of dollars and would require a partnership with a private developer. Votaw said CATS would likely put out an open-ended RFP, which would require federal agencies to sign off as well, to see how developers suggest building the station.

 

“We’ve got this property,” she said. “We want a station sooner rather than later. Tell us how you would do it.”

 

Greyhound also owns a 1.3-acre parcel on West Trade Street, in the middle of the planned Gateway Station site, where Greyhound operates its uptown Charlotte bus station. The plan requires purchasing that site. Votaw said the future train station would have intercity bus-service, but only on a “roll-through” basis, with none of the behind-the-scenes maintenance and other operations Greyhound does there now. They would also have to relocate during the whole construction period.

 

“Finding a home for them is a struggle,” she said.

 

Trains ran uptown until 1962, when rail service was relocated to a facility on North Tryon Street that’s now small, outdated and disconnected from the city’s downtown center. Planners and local leaders hope bringing them back will spark a major development boom on the surrounding blocks, including the publicly owned land.

A preliminary planning study by CATS and a planning consultant suggests the surrounding land could support the development of hundreds of thousands of square feet of office space, new shops and restaurants, hundreds of apartments and a hotel.

[oltmannd]

Charlotte sure does need a new train station.  The Southern was building "Amshacks" before Amtrak.  Charlotte has one and it's pretty dumpy.

 

[runnerdude48]

While I agree with Oltmannd that the current Charlotte station is outdated, it would be far quicker and more cost efficient to renovate that station into a modern facility than to spend "hundreds of millions of dollars" on building a new station uptown for the relatively few passengers who would use it.  A better use of that money would be a light rail line to Charlotte-Douglas airport with limited stops and modern equipment to serve the millions of passengers who arrive and depart that facilty.

The current station has good (free I believe) parking and while it is not downtown there are plenty of cabs available out front at train times that will take you downtown for a reasonable fare.  For those too cheap to hire a cab, there is a public bus that runs to and from downtown on Tryon Street (but probably not during the times the Crescent stops).  There has to be an end to these huge costly rail projects if anything is ever going to be built.  Seven years and hundreds of milions of dollars isn't going to make it.  Think Niagra Falls without the customs facilities.

[oltmannd]

It's not really a rail project at its heart, its real estate development. Should get station part at a big discount....

[A McIntosh]

While it is too early in the game, would Brightline be interested in getting its foot in the door? So far, they have been able to get two opulent stations built.

[Phoebe Vet]

They had the ground breaking ceremony this morning.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gateway_Station_(Charlotte) 

 

[blue streak 1]

Phoebe:  Any diagrams of the new  station and track work ?  Any provision to build additional tracks if needed in the future ?

[Phoebe Vet]

The plans have changed so many times it's hard to keep up.

This is the latest:

http://charlottenc.gov/cats/transit-planning/charlotte-gateway-station/Pages/gateway-station.aspx 

[PJS1]

runnerdude48

 There has to be an end to these huge costly rail projects if anything is ever going to be built.  

As long as government owns the projects, which are backstopped by the taxpayers, and most Americans remain ignorant of finance, there will be no end to the lard laid on public projects.

[daveklepper]

It is the real-estate angle that makes this new station a more practical solution than remodeling the old one.