Raleigh Union Station to Open this Spring
From the News & Observer...
“Union Station, the city’s new downtown train station and future transit hub, will open later this spring.
Amtrak passengers will begin using the new $87 million station sometime in the second half of May, following a ribbon-cutting ceremony on April 30, according to David Eatman, the city’s transit administrator. The building should be ready for the ceremony, but additional track and platform work and testing will delay the start of rail service there, Eatman said.
The station, at the intersection of East Martin and West streets, was built around the shell of a former steel warehouse in the center of a railroad junction known as the Boylan Wye. It’s across the street from The Dillon, a 17-story office tower and parking deck that rose in the past year inside the walls of another warehouse. ...
Union Station will replace the city’s current Amtrak station just across the tracks on Cabarrus Street. The existing station, which was built by Southern Railway in 1950, eventually will be demolished.
Nearly 151,000 people got on or off Amtrak trains in Raleigh in the year ending Sept. 30, 2017, making it the second busiest train station in North Carolina after Charlotte. Eight trains a day stop at the station now, and that will grow to 10 in May with the addition of another round-trip Piedmont train between Raleigh and Charlotte.
When construction began in May 2015, Union Station was expected to be finished in late 2017 and cost $80 million, with $53 million coming from the federal government, $9 million from the state and the rest from the city. When rising prices for steel and concrete added to the cost, the Raleigh City Council voted to kick in an additional $7.2 million, for a total of about $25 million. ...”