The chief of North Carolina’s rail operations has declared that his agency is still moving full speed ahead with its plans to expedite passenger service between Raleigh and Charlotte.
Jason Orthner, the director of the NCDOT’s rail division, disembarked in Burlington on Monday to share this news with the city’s elected officials in advance of a forthcoming public relations initiative that will take him and his colleagues to communities all over the Piedmont.
During a city council work session that evening, Othner announced that his agency is on track to hit its highest ridership since at least 2018 – thanks, in part, to its efforts to streamline service between the state’s two largest metros.
“Since the pandemic, we continue to have more people riding our trains,” he added. “Something is obviously happening with the intercity rail service…and over the next few months, we’re going to be rolling out our largest community engagement program to date for our passenger rail service.”
Orthner’s appearance in Burlington on Monday came roughly a year since a contentious scheduling change put him on a collision course with the city’s municipal leaders. This scheduling overhaul ultimately saw the rail division eliminate stops in Burlington and three other cities in order to reduce travel times for trains running between the Queen City and North Carolina’s state capital. In Burlington’s case, the agency chose to drop its southbound morning service to Charlotte after it realized that this particular train was seeing an average of just 5.2 passengers boarding or offloading in Burlington.
During his presentation on Monday, Orthner assured Burlington’s city council that rail ridership in Burlington has actually been on the way up in spite the city’s elimination from this southbound commuter service. He pointed out that, between July of 2023 and July of 2024, the rail division has logged 28,927 passengers at the Burlington station – an increase of roughly 6.4 percent over the course of the year.
This jump in ridership was nevertheless small consolation to the city’s leaders – as Burlington’s mayor Jim Butler revealed during Orthner’s latest tête-à-tête with the council.
“I want to stress to you guys how much it means to the city and the council…to reinstate that stop,” he told the rail division’s director at Monday’s work session. “Sometimes you don’t see the value of something until you lose it.”
Meanwhile, Harold Owen, Burlington’s mayor pro tem, questioned the need to eliminate Burlington from the southbound commuter train given the paltry gains in travel time that the rail division’s own numbers suggest.
“You’re impacting about 200,000 people,” Owen professed, “and you’re going from 3 hours 10 minutes to 2 hours 58 minutes; that’s only 12 minutes difference.”
The council went on to inquire if the rail division would reconsider its decision to bypass Burlington given enough of a clamor from the general public. Orthner conceded that he and his colleagues may very well consider this change if it emerges as a “theme” during the open houses that they have in the works later this fall. The division’s director added that one of these get-togethers is scheduled to take place in Burlington, which will give the city’s residents a chance to intercede directly with the agency’s administrators.
In any case, Butler insisted that it might behoove him and the rest of the council to help drum up interest in passenger rail serve if they intend to compel the division to restore southbound morning service to their community.
“We owe an obligation to help improve ridership,” the mayor said. “We want to assist in outreach and community engagement…That’s what we’re looking for – some collaboration and dialogue so we can add that stop back.”
