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Study needed to evaluate rail realignment plans

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A proposal for a major realignment of Wilmington’s rail system will take its next step forward when the task force in charge of examining the issue begins the search for a firm to put together a comprehensive study.

Laura Padgett, who was until recently a member of the Wilmington City Council, will continue her involvement in local public policy as the chair of the task force examining a proposal to relocate the trains that run through the city and replace them with a trolley system that could help bring new economic opportunities to parts of the city.

The first step in considering a proposal of its size is to commission a comprehensive feasibility study to examine every step of the project while getting a clearer picture of the project’s costs and challenges, Padgett said. Even though the details are still murky, Padgett said the public is enthusiastic about the prospect of a major rail realignment in Wilmington.

“The public has been rather overwhelmingly in favor of it,” Padgett said. “People see the opportunity to make different use of the rail right of way. It would be a transformative change for Wilmington.”

The idea of a comprehensive rail realignment was first proposed by Glenn Harbeck, Wilmington’s planning director, in April, with the goal being to both improve safety and transportation within the city while also making the city’s port more competitive.

The concept is to reroute the two east-west rail lines that run through the north and south ends of Wilmington, which would be replaced by a new north-south rail that would be located west of the Cape Fear River. The new placement would be safer, since the tracks wouldn’t cross through populated neighborhoods, while allowing for more rail traffic into the city’s port, which would have to be accessed with a rail crossing over the river, Harbeck said.

In place of the rail would be a trolley system that would give residents a new public transit option that would reduce traffic while also potentially open up neighborhoods to new commerce possibilities.

“The trains can be heard all over the city,” Padgett said. “This will create opportunities for new economic development, especially on the south side, where that property may not be at its best use.”

The plan is essentially two proposals, each with separate stakeholders, challenges and costs, said Harbeck and Padgett. The first is rerouting the rails, which would require the input of companies like CSX, which owns the rails. The second part of the proposal is building the trolley system.

The task force studying the issue has 10 members, including representatives from CSX, the North Carolina Department of Transportation and the Wilmington Urban Area Metropolitan Planning Organization. The next step will be a request for a proposal from consulting firms that can conduct the comprehensive study, Padgett said. The task force has $300,000 available to conduct the study, which includes $100,000 from the city, $100,000 from NCDOT and $100,000 from Wilmington MPO.

When the rail was first laid in Wilmington, it helped meet the industrial needs of the growing city. But with the city’s projected population increase of more than 50,000 people during the next 25 years, Harbeck said the city needed new transportation options.

“For the first time in my lifetime, we’re seeing a reversal of migration back into the city,”  Harbeck said.

New developments along the river, as well as downtown parks, the new performing arts center and several proposed new hotels downtown will bring more people downtown. A trolley system would make it easier for the city to meet the needs of a growing downtown population.

“All of those things require parking,” Harbeck said. “How much parking can we accommodate?”

Padgett said the proposal fits into the city’s ambitious growth plans.

“People are more interested in quality-of-life issues and want new bike and pedestrian paths more than they want big, new roads,” Padgett said. “There are few opportunities to build new roads and a lot of people are concerned about big interchanges that connect roads. A better solution is to provide more public transportation.”

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