Lake Norman Publications

Red Line commuter rail: ‘Priority’ or ‘pipe dream?’



The O-Line in northern-most Mecklenburg, including tracks here above the trestle at the Cornelius/Davidson border, have been idle for years. Lee Sullivan

A recent daily newspaper headline was an attention-grabber for those aware (or perhaps completely unaware) of the Lake Norman area’s history of unmet mass-transit expectations, or attuned to the current debate concerning a proposed new Mecklenburg County sales tax to finance transportation projects.

Declaring “Commuter Red Line emerges as priority for transit tax” in a front-page headline, the Charlotte Observer article about a city council meeting indicated there was a renewed official push by city leaders for a passenger rail link between north Mecklenburg (with an always-assumed service extension to Mooresville along the same tracks) and Charlotte.

“Red Line” was the moniker applied to the northern spur of Norfolk Southern Railway’s O-Line tracks through Huntersville, Cornelius, Davidson and Mooresville in the 1990s, when a half-cent Mecklenburg County transit tax was pursued to finance future transit network upgrades by what became the Charlotte Area Transit System (CATS). The Red Line vision was for passenger rail service to north Mecklenburg, and probably eventually Mooresville (even without Iredell County contributions) as part of the CATS network.

As part of preparations for what proved to be a successful transit tax campaign 23 years ago, a regional 2025 Transit and Land Use Plan was established with the vision for individual county passenger rail corridors – Blue, Red, Gold and Silver – intersecting at a central hub in Charlotte.

Based on the plan, the Blue Line between downtown and Charlotte’s South End would be first. The Red Line was supposed to be next. And those on the front lines of transit discussions at that time remember the outlook for the Red Line was promising. 

“There were multiple studies done, there were ongoing conversations and everything was progressing toward the Red Line,” Carroll Gray told the Citizen in 2018. Gray, president of the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce for more than two decades, was directly engaged in regional, state and federal conversations about the future for passenger rail service.

“Developers acquired properties, (transit-related) projects were proposed, including things like Antiquity in Cornelius and Bryton in Huntersville,” Gray said. “All along the N.C. 115 corridor near the O-Line, even into Iredell County and Mooresville, developments designed with the Red Line in mind were planned.”

Bill Thunberg, a former mayor of Mooresville and a longtime member of regional transportation organizations, agreed with Gray’s assessment.

“People thought it was imminent, for good reason,” Thunberg said. “The plan in the early 2000s was to make the corridor to the north the next one.”

How it unfolded

In Charlotte, service on the first section of the Blue Line began in 2007.

Next, a short downtown section of the CATS Gold Line opened in 2015, with Phase 2 expansions to the east and west now under construction.

And the hottest topic in CATS discussions now is the Silver Line, a long-range plan for a 26-mile light-rail link between the west and southeast sides of Charlotte featuring connections to Charlotte Douglas International Airport, Gaston County and Matthews. In fact, the day after the prominent headline about renewed Red Line prioritization, an advertisement in the Observer promoted a CATS public hearing about Silver Line plans.

And the Red Line?

In Davidson, fallen trees often lay across abandoned tracks for months. In Cornelius, a section of track near Antiquity was dismantled for almost a year. In Huntersville, trains sometimes park under the signature overpasses in the Bryton development on the town’s southern edge and provide service to Commerce Station industries, and at times travel as far north as the Bailey Road area.

At the line’s north end, rail used to be a lifeline to a major denim production facility on Mooresville’s South Main Street – now home to Aliño Pizzeria, The Barcelona and Michael Bay’s ongoing commercial reimagining of the former mill’s million square feet – and for a while another mile south to an industrial operation near Timber Road.

The mostly unused line is still owned by Norfolk Southern, the entity that completely derailed Red Line discussions more than a decade ago when, after a leadership change, it abandoned previously expressed interest in partnering on the project, dismissing the possibility of passenger rail service on its tracks.

A passage in the recent Observer article indicated another “change in leadership” at the railroad company, which motivated Thunberg, still active in regional transit matters, to conduct a quick Google search for potential positive news.

“I didn’t see any real change,” Thunberg said.

Corporate adjustments mentioned by a Charlotte planning official apparently referenced a re-shuffling of divisions at Norfolk Southern last June when John Scheib stepped down as executive vice president and chief strategy officer. But James Squires, who assumed Norfolk Southern leadership in 2015, remains CEO and, as Norfolk Southern made clear soon after the article appeared, the company’s stance emphasizing no O-Line passenger service has not changed.

It’s rarer than it used to be, but Norfolk Southern trains are still spotted on parts of the O-Line in downtown Mooresville, providing service to Bay State Milling’s Main Street facility. Lee Sullivan

Track turf war

From a practical standpoint, Red Line prospects seem more than probable. Tracks and right-of-way already exist, and the planning official who identified the line as a “priority” also indicated implementing Red Line service – which would expand passenger rail access to roughly 10 percent of Mecklenburg’s population – would require an investment of about $600 million, or 5 percent of the estimated $12 billion price tag for the CATS package of proposed future upgrades.

However, this is business. Norfolk Southern owns the line. And until Norfolk Southern agrees to allow use of the tracks, the issue is dormant. And as Gray, Thunberg and former Davidson Mayor John Woods – also a long-time participant in regional transit discussions – explained three years ago, control of the O-Line is leverage Norfolk Southern has no interest in relinquishing.

The line – as Gray, Thunberg and Woods acknowledged years ago, and railroad historian and writer Dan Robie explains in an essay on the wvncrails.org website – combines with Norfolk Southern’s L-Line (between Winston-Salem and northern Mooresville) to provide an alternative to a high-demand 90-mile section of North Carolina Railroad Company (NCRC) owned track Norfolk Southern currently pays to use between Greensboro and Charlotte.

“I think Norfolk Southern wants something more long-term, more permanent than the current lease,” Woods said at the time.

Thunberg said he believed in early passenger rail discussions, Norfolk Southern executives had the same goal, but adopted a different strategy to get there.

“The previous management may have had the same objective,” Thunberg said in 2018, “but they thought allowing CATS to use the line would put them in a better position to negotiate terms. The new management doesn’t share that perspective.”

And Gray described the 90-mile section of NCRC track as the “prize” Norfolk Southern wants.

In the meantime, as Robie explains in his essay, Norfolk Southern, even though “the secondary main line function” of the Winston-to-Charlotte connection “has vanished, the potential exists for it to be reinstated” as an active rail corridor, providing a “buffer” in future lease negotiations with the state railroad.

He acknowledges, “External political pressure has been exerted on Norfolk Southern for the development of co-existing use on the route – primarily Mooresville to Charlotte on the O-Line – for light rail.” 

And he describes the corridor as a potential regional transit asset.

“Not a busy line with its heyday long since passed,” Robie writes about the O-Line, “it meanders through a region steeped with a manufacturing and agricultural past, but may yet play a future key role in commuter service serving the northern section of the Charlotte metropolitan area.”

But he adds – based on what Norfolk Southern wants, what both Norfolk Southern and NCRC are unlikely to concede and the fact that, in the meantime, rail transit funds will be spent elsewhere – for now O-Line rail passenger service falls into the category of “a large-magnitude pipe dream,” with its fate likely to be determined by “politics, funding and community support.”

 

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