Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2019

High-speed has long been a tough sell in the US, but plans are still in the works for it to come to Charlotte - some day. Guest host David Boraks looks at the hopes and the challenges for fast trains.

It's been a decade since then-President Barack Obama made a multi-billion-dollar push for a network of high-speed rail.

"There's no reason why we can't do this," Obama said in April 2009.

But plenty of reasons, mostly financial and political, have materialized to sidetrack those high-speed hopes.

Work continues here and there, though, including a proposed high-speed corridor between Charlotte and Atlanta, which could melt the travel time between the two cities to the two-hour range.

High-speed rail could whisk passengers between Atlanta and Charlotte, N.C., in a little over two hours, but it would cost billions of dollars to build, a new study shows. https://t.co/nSk8C7Zylr — AJC (@ajc) October 21, 2019

Ahead of a public meeting on that Atlanta-Charlotte project, we look at where high-speed rail is going in America.

GUEST HOST

David Boraks, WFAE, reporter (@davidboraks)

GUESTS

Andy Kunz, US High Speed Rail Association, president and CEO

Jeff Davis, Eno Center for Transportation, senior fellow and editor of Eno Transportation Weekly

Carol Comer, Georgia Department of Transportation, intermodal division director

PUBLIC MEETING INFORMATION

A public open house on the Atlanta to Charlotte rail project will be held from 5:30-8 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 24 at the Metrolina Transportation Management Center, located at 2327 Tipton Drive in Charlotte.