Another record year: Train travel is more popular than ever in North Carolina
North Carolina’s passenger trains had another busy year in 2024.
For the third year in a row, a record number of people rode the Piedmont and Carolinian, the state-subsidized Amtrak trains that connect North Carolina’s three largest metro areas.
The trains attracted 720,758 riders in 2024, according to the N.C. Department of Transportation. That’s up 12% from the year before and 55% more than in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic. November was the busiest month on record, with 69,457 passengers.
The numbers don’t include long-distance Amtrak trains such as the Floridian and Crescent that stop at various cities as they pass through the state.
NC By Train, the state’s intercity rail program, began in 1990 with the Carolinian, which makes a dozen stops in North Carolina on a daily round trip between Charlotte and New York City. The Piedmont started making daily round trips between Raleigh and Charlotte in 1995, with seven stops in between, including Cary and Durham.
Amtrak operates the trains, at a cost to the state of about $10 million a year.
Ridership has been helped by the addition of a fourth daily round trip of the Piedmont in July 2023 and a new schedule that carries passengers between Charlotte and Raleigh in as little as 3 hours. Including the Carolinian, people can choose from five daily round trips between the state’s two largest metro areas.
Ridership got a similar boost in 2019 when NCDOT and Amtrak began a third daily round trip of the Piedmont, before dropping sharply in 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic curtailed travel. It’s been steadily up since then.
NCDOT says some of the increase comes from promotions and marketing. Trains make special stops at the N.C. State Fair and the Lexington Barbecue Festival; in June NCDOT offered its first Open Express between the Triangle and Pinehurst during the U.S. Open golf tournament. The state also launched the N.C. Ale Trail by Rail, a partnership with the N.C. Craft Brewers Guild to promote breweries at each stop of the Piedmont.
