TTA gets green light

This article originally appeared in the Raleigh News and Observer on Jnaury11, 2003

By VICKI HYMAN, Staff Writer

Nearly a decade after the notion was proposed, the Triangle Transit Authority has won federal approval for a 35-mile, $724 million commuter rail line linking Raleigh, Research Triangle Park and Durham.

The nod from the Federal Transit Administration, announced Friday, lets the TTA start spending about $57 million in federal, state and local dollars on land for the stations, tracks and rail yard, about 110 acres in all. The local agency hopes to start service by December 2007, with trains running along an existing freight corridor.

The decision this week does not guarantee federal funding for the rail line. Train supporters will have to continue lobbying federal regulators and the region’s congressional delegation, whose members will have to fight to bring the dollars home.

Some property owners will start receiving letters this spring outlining the agency’s interest in their property, and a series of community meetings to discuss station designs will begin in March.

Groundbreaking for the rail yard and maintenance shop, track work, bridges and some of the 16 stations along the route may begin by the end of the year.

The TTA probably will buy property first in the RTP area, where the earliest construction will start, but it also will focus on complicated acquisitions in downtown Raleigh and downtown Durham.

“It’s good that there is going to be some resolve on this,” said Dan Wilson of Raleigh, who along with his tenants has invested more than $1 million renovating an old brick building for restaurants, shops and offices that, it turns out, will be torn down to make way for the downtown Raleigh rail station.

“I’ve been put in a situation where my financial future is very uncertain,” Wilson said. “To use an extreme situation, if a hole was to come in the roof, you don’t want to fix it.”

Four homes, 35 businesses and seven other buildings must be demolished, four private rail crossings will be closed, and three bridges will be built at major highway crossings to separate traffic from freight and commuter trains. Dozens of businesses, schools and government offices will lose bits of property during construction.

The TTA has condemnation power and quick-take authority, which lets the agency deposit the fair market value of the property with the courts, take possession and haggle over the price later. But officials said they wanted to work with property owners and use condemnation as a last resort.

The agency must follow federal guidelines for relocating the homes and businesses, including helping them find similar space and paying moving costs.

The federal approval was expected, but TTA officials still exulted over the notice, which capped a five-year environmental study plagued by delays.

By 1998, the TTA had settled on a plan to run self-propelled diesel rail cars along the freight corridor between Raleigh and Durham. Sharing the corridor meant the agency wouldn’t have to carve out a new route for its trains, which would have cost more and taken longer.

But negotiating an agreement with the private, state-owned N.C. Railroad Co., which owns the corridor between downtown Raleigh and Duke Medical Center, took much longer than expected, and an agreement to buy land from CSX Corp. through North Raleigh is still pending.

The TTA still faces some hurdles to meet its 2007 deadline.

The agency needs permission from federal regulators to begin final engineering work, and it is bumping up against another deadline not of its own making.

The transportation planning board for Durham and Orange counties is updating its long-range plan for highways and transit. But it won’t finish by Feb. 28, when the federal government will temporarily cut off funding for new transportation projects.

That would delay the TTA’s final design by a few months, pushing the start of the service for the trains to 2008.

“It’s made me think January and February are pretty crucial weeks for this project,” said Anne Franklin of Raleigh, chairwoman of the TTA board. “A lot of things have to come together in a short time.”

To get permission to start final design, the TTA needs to show federal regulators that it has the technical resources to build the system, including enough staff, a solid construction management plan and agreements with the freight railroads that use the corridor. Without an agreement from CSX, the FTA might hold back its approval.

A CSX spokesman said the company is continuing to negotiate with the TTA and could name a price for the property by the end of next week.

A more formidable issue — and perhaps the most critical — is winning FTA funding for half the cost of the project, and then ensuring that the Triangle’s congressional delegation earmarks the money to back it up.

Dozens of other cities are competing for the same, relatively small pot of transit dollars. The TTA has positioned itself well by asking for a 50 percent match from the federal government, compared with other cities that are seeking as much as 80 percent in federal dollars.

The TTA’s $724 million cost, in 2002 dollars, is comparatively high, but the system is more extensive initially than proposed rail lines in other places: 35 miles compared with 5- or 10-mile stretches.

Charlotte, for example, expects to spend $371 million to build a light rail line linking its downtown with its outer loop 10 miles away. Charlotte is still a few months away from receiving federal approval for its project.

Federal approval notwithstanding, the TTA will continue to be dogged by skeptics.

The TTA has secured its 25 percent local share of funding for the rail system through a 5 percent tax on rental car receipts in Durham, Orange and Wake counties. State transportation officials say they will cover the remaining 25 percent. But TTA officials say they will need another tax or fee increase to expand the system beyond the initial 35 miles, to Raleigh-Durham International Airport and Chapel Hill.

Some local legislators have already said approval for another tax is unlikely anytime soon. Sen.-elect Clark Jenkins, a Democrat from Tarboro and outgoing member of the Board of Transportation, this week criticized the TTA system, calling it a “high-priced show dog.”

By 2025, about 28,000 people are expected to board the train each day, and some critics point to the TTA’s own environmental study that shows the rail system won’t make a significant dent in traffic or air quality.

But TTA supporters say the rail system will give commuters at least the opportunity to avoid sitting in gridlock. “While it won’t remove congestion,” TTA General Manager John Claflin said, “it will help balance it.”

Copyright 2003, The News & Observer Publishing Company.