As a North Carolinian, I'm incredibly psyched about this map. Not only because it finally includes an Asheville connection, but because connecting the piedmont

As a North Carolinian, I'm incredibly psyched about this map. Not only because it finally includes an Asheville connection, but because connecting the piedmont cities with high speed rail could be a game changer for job mobilitiy and affordable home ownership in the region. Many people don't realize how dense the population of the NC piedmont is, because it's not localized around one big city. But if you follow that line between Charlotte and Raleigh, you'll actually find about 6.5million people over 11.2k sq miles, which is comparable to Atlanta's 6.5 million over 10.5k sq miles![1] Right now, the best jobs in the state are divided between Charlotte-area, and Triangle area (Raleigh and Durham). House prices are going up like crazy in those areas, meanwhile the more affordable cities that are outside the range of a comfortable commute to those cities (High Point -> Triangle), (Winston -> Charlotte) can't quite compete with the network effects around banking, healthcare, and tech that are driving the growth in the big areas. Those cities wouldn't actually be a terrible a commute away from Charlotte or The Triangle (45min-1hour in ideal conditions), but traffic during peak hours and constant road construction along those routes would make it miserable. If there was fast, reliable train service, I could definitely see commuters giving those areas a closer look. Especially since so many jobs these days seem to be less stringent about office time (ie, only go into the office 2x a week). [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piedmont_Crescent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piedmont_Crescent