Council wants rail money(The Herald Sun)

DURHAM — City Council members are gearing up to fight several bills being considered by the N.C. General Assembly, including one that could prevent the state from accepting federal subsidies for a major rail project in Durham and other cities.

Mayor Bill Bell briefed members last week on what he and other big-city mayors in the state have been doing to both round up and protect the federal money, which they hope will pay for major track improvements on the main lines that link Charlotte, Raleigh and Richmond, Va.

His colleagues urged him to keep at it. “I’m really concerned about the role the legislature might play in this process, particularly the rail funding piece,” Councilman Howard Clement said.

Clement was alluding to a move by 13 Republicans in the N.C. House, led by N.C. Rep. Ric Killian, R-Mecklenburg, to file a bill that would bar the N.C. Department of Transportation from accepting or even applying for federal high-speed rail grants “unless the project has been approved through an act of the General Assembly.”

DOT has been gearing up to spend more than $500 million in federal economic-stimulus aid on the corridor, largely to double-track parts of the main line, upgrade road crossings and revamp key rail junctions.

One of the most important pieces of the project targets a stretch of track on the eastern edge of Durham, in RTP near Hopson Road.

Engineers intend there to spend about $18 million to straighten out a curve, install a 2.4-mile-long passing track and eliminate a grade crossing by installing a bridge to carry the line over Hopson.

Statewide, the project’s goal is to boost the train-handling capacity of corridor, and allow the trains that operate in it to run at somewhat faster speeds, up to about 79 mph in many places.

DOT officials stressed, both to the federal government when they applied for the grant and to reporters afterward, that the operational benefits of the upgrades would flow not just to passenger trains but to the freight traffic that moves through the corridor.

Killian and his allies — seven of whom are freshmen legislators — contend the project by facilitating increased passenger service will impose higher operating costs on the state, jeopardize freight traffic and burden small towns on the route that aren’t in line to receive direct service.

But Bell told council members it’s not clear to him the bill enjoys wide support even among Republicans. “I don’t want to say it’s the whole party,” he said.

House Speaker Thom Tillis, R-Mecklenburg, has been noncommittal. He “doesn’t have a position [on it] at this point, but he supports the information-gathering process that’s going to take place as a result of this bill,” said Jordan Shaw, a Tillis spokesman.

Two Republicans outside the General Assembly, former Durham Mayor Nick Tennyson and former Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory, made it clear Friday that they hope both the bill and the project receive careful scrutiny.

McCrory — a former gubernatorial candidate who’s been leading Gov. Beverly Perdue in polls gauging voter opinion on a possible rematch of the 2008 election — said DOT officials “need to do a better job of explaining the cost-benefit assessments” of the project.

But he added that boosting the line’s capacity “would have positive long-term ramifications” for the state.

“It would be wrong to reject the grants before getting the facts,” McCrory said.

Tennyson — who like McCrory has a record of supporting rail-based mass-transit projects — said officials have to think of transportation as a network that by necessity uses many different kinds of technology.

“Public investments are in the system, not in specific facilities,” Tennyson said. “The fact you don’t ever drive on some road in the system doesn’t mean the money [to build it] was wasted, it just means it was necessary to make it a complete system.”

DOT officials have stressed that planning for the corridor has spanned decades, unfolding under governors of both parties.

The state House did weigh in on the issue in July 2009, voting 99-18 for a nonbinding resolution that encouraged DOT to apply for high-speed rail stimulus grants. The majority agreed “the capacity of the rail network serving North Carolina is strained, which impacts our consumers, producers, shippers, communities and citizens.”

The resolution attracted bipartisan support. All Democrats who cast votes that day backed it, while the GOP caucus split 34-18 in favor.

Tillis and his now No. 2, House Majority Leader Paul Stam, R-Wake, both voted for the resolution. Killian opposed it.