The Southeast High Speed Rail Corridor (SEHSR) is a proposed passenger rail transportation project in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern United States to build high-speed passenger rail services into the Southeast. Routes would extend south via Richmond and Petersburg, Virginia, with a spur to Norfolk in Virginia's Hampton Roads region; the mainline would continue south to Raleigh, Durham, Greensboro, and Charlotte, North Carolina. Since the corridor was first established in 1992, the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) has extended it further to Atlanta and Macon, Georgia; Greenville and Columbia, South Carolina; Jacksonville, Florida; and Birmingham, Alabama.
History Funding for the SEHSR in the early 2000s was by the USDOT and the states of North Carolina and Virginia. Both states already funded some non-high-speed rail service operated for them by Amtrak, and own locomotives and passenger cars.
On January 28, 2010, the White House announced that Southeast Corridor would receive $620 million of its request. Alt URL This money was primarily for capacity upgrades along the Raleigh–Charlotte portion of the corridor ( the Piedmont Improvement Program), along with some money for the Richmond–D.C. portion, as the Tier II Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the important Raleigh–Richmond portion was not expected to be complete until 2015. The first large section of the SEHSR, from Washington, D.C., through Virginia and North Carolina south to Charlotte, was projected in 2010 to begin service sometime between 2018 and 2022, based on funding availability.
In 2019, the Commonwealth of Virginia announced it would acquire the abandoned portion of the CSX S-Line between Petersburg, Virginia and Ridgeway, North Carolina; negotiate rights for a route from Petersburg to Richmond; acquire large portions of right-of-way and track from CSX between Richmond and Washington; and purchase and rebuild the bridge over the Potomac River.
Later in 2020, the State of North Carolina received federal funding allowing for the purchase of the active segment of the CSX S-line between Ridgeway and Raleigh.
Tier II planning is complete for the Washington to Raleigh section, and for portions of the Raleigh to Charlotte section. Tier I planning, in cooperation with North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, is complete for the Charlotte to Atlanta section, with some routing to be determined.
Route D.C.–Richmond
The D.C. to Richmond segment of the proposed corridor travels along 123 miles of CSX track currently used by CSX freight trains, non-high-speed Amtrak trains, and the VRE commuter rail's Fredericksburg Line. Federal funding in the amount of $75 million issued in September 2012 paid for construction of a third main track in Stafford and Prince William counties, while Virginia's Atlantic Gateway infrastructure project funded additional main tracks in two segments in Fairfax County along with some of the design and engineering costs for providing relief for the capacity constrained Long Bridge over the Potomac River between DC and Alexandria. In October 2014, the Federal Railroad Administration filed a notice of intent to perform (in partnership with the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation) a Tier II EIS for upgrading this segment, with the aim of increasing train frequency and cutting the current travel time by thirty minutes. The draft version of the Tier II EIS was released in September 2017, with the final version released in May 2019. The study covered the corridor from the Long Bridge to a rail junction at Centralia, five miles south of Richmond. A new bridge would be built over the James River to expand service to Richmond Main Street station (RVM). Currently north-south through trains stop only at Richmond Staples Mill Road station (RVR), using the bypass Belt Line across the river. RVM, near the State Capitol, is preferred under federal guidelines as a central city location. The package of projects between DC and Richmond are projected to result in travel times of 2 hours and 15 minutes between the two cities.
Significant infrastructure changes between the draft and final EIS in May 2019 included:
Coordination with VRE station expansions and improvements. Clarification that Ashland (ASD) would receive no additional track or station improvements. A bypass had been considered before the draft version. Clarification that all Amtrak trains would stop at both RVR and RVM, except the non-stop Auto Train from Lorton to Florida.
In December 2019, Virginia agreed to acquire 350 miles of right of way from CSX, effectively giving the Commonwealth control over much of the Richmond-D.C. leg of the corridor. As part of the deal, Virginia will build a new two-track rail bridge over the Potomac River for Amtrak and VRE trains parallel to the existing Long Bridge. The new bridge will take passenger traffic off the existing bridge, which will serve only freight traffic. The Long Bridge has historically been one of the worst bottlenecks in the national rail system. The Commonwealth of Virginia will cover roughly one-third of the costs, federal funds (including Amtrak) will cover another third, and the remainder will be sought from a variety of regional partners, such as VRE, the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority, the District of Columbia, and Maryland, all of which have pledged support for bridge expansion.
Richmond–Norfolk (Hampton Roads spur) In 1996, USDOT added a connection from Richmond east to Newport News to SEHSR. However, with the extension of Northeast Regional Amtrak service to Norfolk in December 2012, the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation (DRPT) re-evaluated rail access to the Hampton Roads metropolitan area and on September 1, 2012, announced that while rail service from Richmond to Newport News will be maintained, the preferred high-speed corridor has been shifted to a Richmond–Petersburg–Norfolk alignment. The current Amtrak route through Suffolk would change to achieve more separation from freight, and a suburban station would be added at Bower's Hill in Chesapeake.
In November 2014 the Hampton Roads Transportation Planning Organization (HRTPO) released a report recommending a different route, from Richmond to Suffolk to Norfolk via a new crossing of the James River near Charles City, bypassing Petersburg. This would provide combined high speed rail for a western portion of the Newport News route. It is not clear if the 2014 report will influence the project.
Meanwhile, Virginia plans to expand conventional Amtrak service to both Newport News and Norfolk as part of a funding plan announced December 2019, encompassing major steps towards SEHSR on the Washington to Raleigh line.
Richmond–Raleigh (S-Line)
Between Richmond and Raleigh, the corridor uses the CSX S-line (the former Seaboard Air Line main line), which generally parallels US 1. The tracks on the segment of this line between Centralia, Virginia and Norlina, North Carolina were removed in the late 1980s and through traffic shifted to the CSX A-line (the former Atlantic Coast Line main line). The relative absence of freight trains along the remaining portions of the S-line will mean that significant curve straightening and other work can be accomplished without disrupting current service.
The S-line also provides a more direct route for trains between Raleigh and the Northeast via Richmond. Since the abandonment of part of the S-line, Amtrak trains traveling north of Raleigh use the A-line and the North Carolina Railroad between Raleigh and Selma. (The A-line does not pass through Raleigh, instead running roughly parallel to Interstate 95 through Rocky Mount, Wilson, and Fayetteville.) The new S-line route will include station stops at Norlina, North Carolina, Henderson, North Carolina and Wake Forest, North Carolina.
The proposed project does not include electrification of the railway, unlike in the Northeast Corridor. However, top speeds would be raised from , resulting in an average speed of . Travel time currently between Richmond and Raleigh on the Carolinian and Silver Star is close to four hours, but full implementation as proposed would reduce this to nearly two hours. The proposed two hours in time savings is nearly evenly split between the shorter distance provided by the more direct S-line routing and speed increases.
The overall project cost for fully restoring and improving the S-line, including the curve straightening and new bridges necessary to raise top speeds to , has been estimated at $4 billion. In response, the North Carolina-Virginia Interstate High-Speed Rail Compact Commission has proposed investigating a staged effort that would first restore the S-line to its max speed state from the 1980s and pursue other improvements only after service was restored. This would have the benefit of reducing the travel time between Richmond and Raleigh by nearly one hour for a much lower startup cost, though it may somewhat increase the cost of performing the later improvements. The Silver Star would also travel over a restored S-line, as it did before 1986, and would also see the improvement in travel time.
As part of Atlantic Gateway, Virginia sought to take control of the abandoned S-Line right-of-way between Petersburg and the North Carolina border. In late 2019, negotiations were concluded and CSX, Virginia, and North Carolina reached separate deals that called for the two states to acquire the portions of the S-Line within their respective boundaries. Virginia will acquire of the S-Line between the North Carolina-Virginia line and Petersburg, while North Carolina will acquire of the line between Ridgeway and the North Carolina-Virginia line. North Carolina officials said that the Virginia deal will boost their efforts to acquire the remainder of the S-Line to Raleigh, which remains in light service as the Norlina Subdivision of CSX carrying some freight traffic. The North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) was awarded a $47.5 million federal grant in 2020 to purchase the line.
In early June 2022, a $58 million federal grant under the Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvements program to fund the initial engineering work necessary for rebuilding the S-Line between Raleigh and Richmond was announced. NCDOT projected a service begin on the route between 2025 and 2029.
On December 5, 2023, United States Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, U.S. Senator of North Carolina Thom Tillis, and Governor of North Carolina Roy Cooper announced the state will be receiving a $1 billion federal grant to develop the S-Line between Raleigh and Wake Forest for high-speed passenger rail service. On July 1, 2024, Buttigieg and Cooper, along with various state and local officials, participated in a groundbreaking ceremony for the project, marking the official start of construction.
Raleigh–Charlotte The segment of the corridor between Raleigh and Charlotte travels along currently operational lines of the North Carolina Railroad (NCRR), roughly parallel to I-85. The portion of the route between Raleigh and Greensboro is over the H-line, while the Greensboro–Charlotte section travels along Norfolk Southern's main line. (While the lines are owned by the North Carolina Railroad, Norfolk Southern has an operational contract for trackage rights.) Both see current freight and passenger traffic (Amtrak's Carolinian and Piedmont), with freight traffic along the main line particularly heavy. However, double-tracking was removed from several sections of the Greensboro to Charlotte main line since its heyday, and significant signal upgrades, curve straightening, super-elevation, and restoration will be required to support high-speed passenger service along the corridor without interfering with freight operations.