How NC got funding for greener transportation.

North Carolina struck green this week with more than a billion dollars in grants for passenger rail service expansion from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act funds.

By far the largest grant came in $1 billion for the opening stage of a new high-speed Amtrak rail link from Raleigh to Richmond. The track improvements and new passenger route will greatly reduce travel time and increase passenger rail service capacity from North Carolina to Virginia’s capital city, and beyond to points north and east.

“This is great news and underscores our successful efforts to build a transportation system that works for all North Carolinians,” Governor Roy Cooper said. “The S-Line is a critical project that will provide fast, frequent, and reliable service connecting North Carolina, Virginia, and the Northeast. It extends our already popular passenger rail service between Charlotte and Raleigh, and provides people, especially those in underserved areas, a safe, convenient, and inexpensive way to get where they’re going.”

Other rail expansion projects

Just as important in the long run, the NC Dept. of Transportation also received seven $500,000 planning grants to study other passenger rail expansion projects involving North Carolina cities. Those detailed studies of the scope, costs, and planning for rail service expansion projects will cover service between the following cities:

• Charlotte and Atlanta
• Charlotte and Kings Mountain 
• Charlotte and Washington D.C. 
• Fayetteville and Raleigh 
• Wilmington and Raleigh
• Winston-Salem and Raleigh
• Salisbury and Asheville

To conclude, the more energy-efficient train travel becomes an attractive and viable alternative for regular intercity travel, the more it can substitute for highway and air travel. These modes of travel tend to be higher-cost and higher-pollution, thus making travel cleaner and better for all North Carolinians.

This is just another way leaders make travel clean. A few weeks ago, the national Federal Highway Administration (FHA) issued a new rule which should boost state and local efforts to move toward cleaner transportation alternatives. But North Carolinians want more. North Carolinians want cleaner transportation and cleaner energy according to a new poll by our sister organization, the North Carolina League of Conservation Voters Foundation.

We must elect leaders who will reflect North Carolinians’ desire for a cleaner future.