Charlotte, North Carolina
The Burgeoning Financial City of the South
Charlotte, NC has recently been one of the fastest growing large cities in the United States. As a result of financial mergers, friendly business decisions, and simultaneous growth across North Carolina, Charlotte is an attractive true urban development project for a modern urban transit hub. Charlotte is more like Washington, DC than New York City, and has firmly developed local transit infrastructure to both accommodate and integrate. A modern transit solution of this type would aim to serve the local constituency while creating the kind of regional and national scheme that would further make Charlotte a leading visitor's attraction in the nation.
Charlotte and Raleigh, NC are the primary reasons for the southward bend of the Redline Transcontinental line. They are both far enough inland from the Atlantic Ocean that a straight shot South along the Atlantic Coastal Corridor would miss them, and they are far enough North from the Gulf that the Southern Transcontinental Line would miss them. In this way, both Charlotte and Raleigh make excellent additions to the Redline, and by virtue of the expedited growth of the two cities, a route between the two cities facilitates a regional link as well as a national one, with the city pair currently in the process of promoting improved inter-city transit solutions.
An attempt at placing an urban central station has not been attempted yet, as there may be considerations for a secondary inland port to further accelerate Charlotte's growth. There is, at present, only a need for the East-West alignment of the Charlotte-Raleigh link, which has had a certain amount of transportation planning already done for that purpose. For that reason, experts looking at this particular problem would likely have informed opinions for how to best integrate a station solution into the cityscape.
