Easy, cheap rail proves elusive

The optimistic $100 million estimate vanished as the transit agency hit roadblocks

Commuter trains could be built cheap! They would be running soon!

Triangle leaders trumpeted rail transit in the early 1990s as a simple bargain that would make smart use of a quiet, state-owned railroad running through the center of the region.

The tracks were positioned perfectly to whisk riders to and from Research Triangle Park, where Interstate 40 rush-hour drivers were often sitting still.

The Triangle Transit Authority said back then that it would cost as little as $100 million to get trains rolling by 2000 from West Durham to North Raleigh through RTP, Cary and downtown Raleigh. But those plans carried a big assumption: that TTA would get free access to the existing tracks, which it could share with the freight trains.

TTA also expected generous concessions from the freight railroads.

Instead, TTA learned it would have to build its own track within the railroad right of way, then that it would have to build two -- at an extra cost of more than $170 million. Inflation, spikes in construction costs and unexpected engineering challenges added millions more.

The railroads did not surrender their interests for the sake of commuter rail. They extracted concessions that added more than $74 million in unexpected expenses, TTA says.

Today, the cost of the Triangle's commuter rail system is estimated at $759 million. And it's a shorter version, with fewer stops, than TTA originally proposed. This past summer, scrambling to trim costs, TTA cut the length of station platforms in half and reduced its trains from two cars to one.

Major increases in costs aren't unusual in transportation projects, highways included. The 29-mile northern section of the Outer Loop in Wake County, for example, was expected in 1994 to cost $443 million. Today, the estimate is $757.5 million -- roughly the same as the rail system.

But highways don't get the same scrutiny as rail projects. Under new, stricter federal guidelines, the price tag threatens to prevent the rail project from winning more than $400 million needed from the Federal Transit Administration.

Was TTA foolishly optimistic in its early plans? Will costs soar even more? Did the railroads skunk the rail agency during years of negotiations?

"As more information has become available through time, those early numbers look exceedingly naive," said David D. King, deputy state transportation secretary.

"The freight rail lines pretty much have TTA over a barrel and can demand about anything they want and get away with it," said Edison H. Johnson Jr., director of the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization. "When you're spending other people's money, you don't really care what it costs."

Idealistic agenda

The railroads were supposed to be the key to making the project quick and cheap.

In the early 1990s, Triangle city and county leaders decided that rail transit would help them take control of the suburban sprawl that was causing traffic congestion. Along with providing expanded travel options for thousands of commuters every day, local governments could direct some of the region's growth to dense, efficient developments along transit corridors.

They looked to a little-used rail corridor owned by N.C. Railroad, a private company then owned mostly by the state. Passing within yards of the Triangle's worst traffic jams, the track carried fewer than a dozen freight and Amtrak trains each day.

The Triangle Transit Authority was chartered by the legislature in 1989 to improve public transportation in Wake, Durham and Orange counties. Its first studies of transit and land-use options emphasized the railroad corridor's strategic value.