With record ridership, two NC Amtrak stations are among the nation’s busiest

Richard Stradling
·3 min read
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Historic growth in passenger train ridership in North Carolina is elevating Raleigh and Charlotte on the list of Amtrak’s busiest stations.

Raleigh Union Station was the 44th busiest on Amtrak’s national train network in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, with 219,538 passengers. Five years ago, Raleigh ranked 64th with 172,106 passengers.

During that time, Charlotte moved from Amtrak’s 55th busiest station to its 38th, handling 261,510 last year. Both stations are among the five busiest in the Southeast, along with ones in Richmond, Norfolk and Alexandria, Virginia.

Last year was record-setting for Amtrak trains in North Carolina. More than 641,000 people rode the Piedmont and Carolinian, Amtrak trains subsidized by the N.C. Department of Transportation. That was 23% more than the previous record set in 2022.

Amtrak said that in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, more than 1,178,000 people got on or off its trains in North Carolina, including the four long-distance trains that pass through the state each day. That’s up 34% from the previous year.

“The growth we’ve seen in ridership in 2022 and 2023 is unprecedented,” Jason Orthner, NCDOT’s Rail Division Director, said in a statement.

The increase was helped by the addition of a fourth daily round trip of the Piedmont between Raleigh and Charlotte last July and a new schedule that shaves a few minutes off some of those trips. Including the Carolinian, which runs daily between Charlotte and New York City, people can choose from five daily round trips between the state’s two largest metro areas.

The new schedule for the Piedmont and Carolinian passenger trains is set to begin July 10, 2023.
The new schedule for the Piedmont and Carolinian passenger trains is set to begin July 10, 2023.

Two stations, one new, one old

Raleigh Union Station opened in 2018 on the west side of downtown, in an area known as the Warehouse District. Its cavernous waiting room was built in the shell of a former steel warehouse and is also used to host political rallies and other events. The station has the first, and so far only, raised passenger platform in North Carolina, allowing people to walk on or off the train without stairs.

Charlotte will have the second raised platform when its new station opens in Uptown Charlotte. NCDOT completed the platform and the tracks on North Tryon Street in 2022 and had hoped Charlotte Gateway Station would be handling Amtrak passengers by 2025.

But it’s still not clear when the rest of the station will be ready.

The city is working with a development partnership of The Spectrum Companies and Republic Metropolitan on a master plan for the station. The goal is to build housing, offices and retail around a transportation hub for Amtrak, local and regional buses, the CityLYNX Gold Line street car and future light rail and commuter rail lines.

The city and the developers should finish the plan this fall, including a schedule and strategies for financing it, said Brandon Hunter, spokesman for the Charlotte Area Transit System.

“Given the project’s current phase, it’s premature to specify an opening date for the Amtrak station,” Hunter wrote in an email.

Meanwhile, Amtrak continues to handle record numbers at its current Charlotte station. It was built by the Southern Railway in 1962 at the edge of the company’s freight yard, about a mile and a half from the city center.

Construction on the platforms and tracks at Charlotte Gateway Station was nearing completion when this photo was taken in late 2021. The city doesn’t know when the rest of the station will be completed.
Construction on the platforms and tracks at Charlotte Gateway Station was nearing completion when this photo was taken in late 2021. The city doesn’t know when the rest of the station will be completed.