USDOT’s Pete Buttigieg helps kick off $1.1 billion passenger rail project in Raleigh
U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg took part in a groundbreaking ceremony in North Raleigh on Monday for a bridge that will carry Durant Road over a railroad line.
The bridge is part of a $1.3 billion project to provide passenger service between downtown Raleigh and Wake Forest by 2030. It’s the first leg of what state and federal officials say will be a direct high-speed rail connection between Raleigh; Richmond, Virginia, and the Northeast.
Buttigieg came to Raleigh last fall to announce nearly $1.1 billion in federal support for the project. He’s back four months before the presidential election to tout one of the signature achievements of the Biden administration: the 2021 infrastructure law that provides $1 trillion for roads, bridges, railroads and ports across the country, including the Raleigh-to-Richmond rail line.
It’s the start of a national tour for Buttigieg to highlight federal infrastructure spending. He’ll be in Winston-Salem on Tuesday to see the Northern Beltway and take part in a groundbreaking for the Salem Parkway multi-use path. He’ll then return to Durham, which just received a $12 million federal grant to improve 33 intersections downtown.
“Every one of those projects — and the 57,000 others that are funded, and counting, through President Biden’s infrastructure package — is really about one simple purpose, which is to make everyday life easier for the American people,” Buttigieg said, speaking at a podium that bore the president’s name in an empty lot near the Durant Road crossing.
Gov. Roy Cooper, who leaves office in January after two terms, was among the dozens of local and state officials who joined Buttigieg at the Raleigh event. Cooper said record ridership on the state-supported Piedmont and Carolinian passenger trains in North Carolina suggests demand for rail travel will only grow in the future.
“When I think of the way we’re getting from one place to the next in a faster and cleaner way, passenger rail is going to play a significant role in all of this,” he said.
Contrast with ‘a prior administration’
Monday’s groundbreaking felt at times like a campaign event. Though Buttigieg never mentioned Donald Trump by name, he said Joe Biden has made good on his promises to improve transportation infrastructure.
“I would be remiss if I didn’t note that this is in contrast to what we’ve seen before,” he said, “a prior administration that declared ‘Infrastructure Week’ every year without any results until it became a punch line, a byword for all talk and no action.”
Buttigieg was introduced by Santana Cruz Jr. of Cruz Brothers Concrete in Graham, a subcontractor on the Durant Road project. Cruz said the company and other small businesses across the state are thankful for federal funding that makes projects like the rail line possible.
“It’s one of the largest projects added to our portfolio,” Cruz said. “And the scale of this project provides job security and reassurance for us and our employees.”
Four rail crossings to be eliminated
The Raleigh-to-Richmond rail project will follow an existing rail corridor known as the S-line that in North Carolina is still used by a couple of slow-moving freight trains a day. The N.C. Department of Transportation will replace the tracks, build new stations and eliminate crossings at Durant, New Hope Church and Millbrook roads in Raleigh and Rogers Road in Wake Forest.
The Durant Road bridge will cost about $20.6 million, according to NCDOT. It will be built just north of the existing crossing, allowing the road to remain open during construction. In addition to sidewalks, the new bridge will have wider outside lanes to accommodate cyclists.
NCDOT has long sought to eliminate rail crossings in the Triangle, both to improve safety and the flow of traffic. So-called grade separation also eliminates the need for trains to sound their horns near homes and businesses.
When this first leg of the project is done, people will be able to take Amtrak’s Piedmont trains from a new station in Wake Forest through Raleigh, Durham and Greensboro to Charlotte.
The nearly $1.1 billion for the S-line is the largest single federal grant NCDOT has ever received. NCDOT and Amtrak will provide a combined 20% match, bringing the total to more than $1.3 billion.
