S-Line gets $1 billion, NC gets $3.5 M for rail lines
Tuesday Senator Thom Tillis did not wait for the official announcement date but told the Town of Wake Forest and NCDOT about two large grants which will spur existing efforts to build passenger rail lines across the state and connect Wake Forest to the daily trains between Raleigh and Charlotte. The largest, a $1 billion grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation to the S-Line project involving North Carolina and Virginia to rebuild a passenger and freight route connecting North Carolina to Virginia, Washington, D.C. and the Northeast Corridor. That connection currently has to be made through Rocky Mount, a detour that increases the travel time by an hour. Some of the former Seaboard track in Virginia was abandoned and sold or torn up in the 1970s,severing the link between the North Carolina state line and Petersburg, Va. “This $1 billion grant for North Carolina to make progress on the