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It’s a nice spring day in the year 2025, and you have a 10 a.m. business meeting in downtown Raleigh.

So, you grab a fingerprint-activated car key and set out in your biodiesel coupe for the drive down 12-lane Interstate 40/85, one that takes just as long as it did last century because of relentless congestion.

Maybe not, suggests a study released Thursday by the N.C. Railroad: You could take a commuter train.

The report by the state-owned railroad says commuter rail is compatible with the heavy volume of freight trains that already use the tracks along a route from Greensboro through Burlington, Durham and Raleigh to Goldsboro.

North Carolina could become “a national leader in commuter rail” by pursuing the idea, NCRR President Scott Saylor said.

“This is a relatively new concept that has not been looked at before,” Saylor said of the report. “Our viewpoint is, we want the different regions to take a look at this and let us know if it is something they might be interested in.”

The catch? The project would cost $1 billion in construction costs, two-thirds of it for 56 miles of double tracking to keep freight and passenger trains out of each other’s way.

Saylor acknowledged the study is only a first step that leaves some key unknowns — for instance, whether enough people would ride regularly to make it practical.

But it settles the threshold question of basic workability and cost, two issues that must be resolved before further consideration, he said.

The service being studied is not metropolitan-style light rail such as Charlotte’s recently unveiled LYNX system. Light-rail routes run several times per hour with stops as close together as a quarter mile.

Commuter rail uses larger, heavier equipment and operates with much less frequency, making stops normally spaced 2 to 10 miles apart.

For NCRR, engineers assumed there would be four morning trains, one midday train and four afternoon trains serving the 141-mile line from Greensboro to Goldsboro.

In the study by consulting firm HNTB, engineers theorized the rail service would involve four routes:

• A Green Line from Burlington to Greensboro running mornings between 6:15 and 8:50, with return trips between 4:30 and 6:30 p.m.
• A Blue Line running east from Greensboro and Burlington through Durham and Research Triangle Park to Raleigh, operating on a similar schedule.
• A Red Line running between Goldsboro and western Durham.
• A Yellow Line, a 10-mile spur serving Chapel Hill and Carrboro from the western Durham stop.

The line would be accessible to more than 2 million people, including students at 18 universities and colleges.

The railroad’s ownership of a 200-foot swath of land across much of the state is key to commuter rail’s practicality. That’s much wider than the existing track system, meaning additional tracks could be added without buying more land.

“That’s important because it makes it possible to deliver this at a much lower cost than other states,” Saylor said.

One drawback for the Triad: The project only extends to Pomona in west Greensboro. A useful system also would have to serve Winston-Salem and High Point.

But commuter rail in that direction is being studied separately by the Piedmont Authority for Regional Transportation, partly in areas where the tracks aren’t owned by the N.C. Railroad.

Meanwhile, Saylor said he’s waiting for reaction to the study and to commuter rail in general from leaders across the Triad.

Contact Taft Wireback at 373-7100 or taft.wireback@news-record.com