Wilmington to Triangle rail system/Issues we care about
It’s nice to see that Charlotte added a light rail system last week. And while I don’t think Wilmington is big enough to command such a system, it would be nice for the area to consider passenger rail service between Wilmington and the Triangle. I Googled this topic and came up with the following report of the NC legislature, which was issued earlier this year. I then went to the Star-News to search for any stories on this topic but came up empty.
Imagine taking a fast train to Raleigh, getting there in less than 2 hours, going to a concert or a sporting event, and returning to Wilmington the same day. Lots of folks make that same trip every day, in their SUVs, choking the I-40 corridor. Given the fact that even W says we’re addicted to oil, doesn’t reestablishing a rail system make sense?
My point is this: How can we as citizens get involved in issues we care deeply about if our local media is apathetic, at best, about its reporting. Not to beat a dead horse, but there are more important issues than interactive maps showing fugitives’ last known addresses. I’m still confused why newspapers are involved in this issue. Shouldn’t they just steer us toward a WPD site that does the same thing? Someone at the Star-News spent a lot of time getting that thing set up. Is that journalism? Maybe today it is – a self-proclaimed geek flexing his techno muscles.
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Man, I’d love it. I used to train/bike commute some, got to read the paper and books on the way to work and home. At least once I got on a train heading into SF for a ball game at Pac Bell, and there was like this awesome seething subculture of dudes with igloo briefcases and families in red and gold, tailgating early in train car 5.
For about 6 months when we lived in Singapore, I biked/trained to work and back. I very memorably managed to read Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine and a 1968 biography of Johnny Cash. I also remember reading many issues of the late, lamented Brill’s Content Magazine, which was an insightful look into the business of journalism and often shined a spotlight on conflicts of interest within the media. I may have been the only one in the Lion City interested in it, and obviously it didn’t do too well stateside either.
Brill’s Content! Wow, I was also a subscriber. What became of it?
Brill’s Content - there’s a flashback. I too subscribed, for most of its life, I believe. I really liked it at the beginning and didn’t much miss it when the end came. Its sister website, contentville.com, which I think was intended to charge for content assembled from elsewhere, was pretty annoying at the time, although it may have more of a peer group now.
It had flashes of absolute brilliance and things I’d never seen before, but it also had a lot of plodding silliness and many exercises in vanity from its namesake owner, Steven Brill - who made his name and his money with that exercise in excellent taste and intellectual discourse, Court TV.
Here’s a good overview of Brill’s Content in life from Columbia Journalism Review
http://backissues.cjrarchives.org/year/00/2/brills.asp
and an obituary
http://www.writenews.com/2001/101901_brill_inside_close.htm
As for the question that is the actual subject of this post: there has been a pretty good deal of coverage, if not in-depth analysis and long-form reporting, of the many efforts to reestablish passenger rail between Wilmington and Raleigh. There may be a bigger problem with the search engine at the Star-News website than what it should find if my memory serves me correctly. I’m not sure what you searched for, but here is the most recent coverage, since this was the most recent activity along those lines:
http://www.starnewsonline.com/article/20070820/NEWS/708200353
Since you didn’t mention it, perhaps you aren’t aware that there is no RAIL between here and Raleigh - there is a gap between Castle Hayne and Wallace that must be restored in order to get both people and freight moving along that route again. Google “castle hayne to wallace” and that will give you a good starting point to explore current activity along those lines, although there is plenty more. The key fact to keep in mind is that FREIGHT justifies the rails, passenger traffic can then be added in – passenger service itself could never pay for the infrastructure needed.
Here is an article from the Goldsboro News-Argus that also gives some of the history.
http://www.newsargus.com/news/archives/2007/08/17/the_trains_are_coming_back_to_goldsboro/index.shtml
And I definitely agree with you about the most-wanted map at the Star-News website - if they merely wanted to perform the service, they would prominently display a short description with a link to the police department’s site, not strip the data and recreate it. And it’s useless information anyway - the house next door to me is included, and it’s not the guy who has lived there for at least six months.
Sorry to take up so much space, but there were three fairly meaty topics here!