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NCDOT study calls for return of passenger rail service to Asheville

Ray Rapp

By Lightning Reports, Published: May 6, 2023

Ray Rapp, a former four-term state House member from Mars Hill, will discuss "Back On Track: The Return of Passenger Trains To Western North Carolina" during Saluda Train Tales at 7 p.m. Friday, May 19, at the Saluda Historic Depot.

Rapp, a former Mars Hill University administrator who is co-chair of the Western North Carolina Rail Corridor Committee, will talk about the N.C. Department of Transportation feasibility study completed April 1 for the resumption of passenger rail service between Salisbury and Asheville. AMTRAK has included Asheville in its future planning and has targeted 2035 for the launching of this service.

The NCDOT Rail Division's new study proposes three roundtrips per day along the 139-mile line with stops in Statesville, Hickory, Morganton and Marion and a running time of 3 hours and 25 minutes. The study projects 100,000 local trips and more than 150,000 "offline connections" annually.

The initial capital cost is $665 million and 80 percent of the funding would be covered under an $80 billion Biden administration appropriation to expand AMTRAK services. At the end of March 2023, NCDOT's Rail Division submitted its application to the FRA's Corridor Identification Program for 13 such lines in the state. The Asheville-Salisbury corridor was ranked among its highest recommendations. Rapp will share the pathway and possible hurdles to bringing back passenger service to the mountains after a nearly 50-year hiatus.

Rapp has lectured extensively on regional rail history. As early as his undergraduate career, Rapp was fascinated by the way railroads united the country after the Civil War by linking east, west, north and south. “In ten short years after the arrival of the railroad in 1880, Asheville more than doubled its population and modernity transformed the mountains,” he says. “Especially fascinating to me was the challenge of building railroads up the Blue Ridge escarpment to the isolated mountain communities.” This was done by laying looping tracks up the mountain and creating the steepest standard gauge mainline grade in the US.