Would you want it to come through here? Would you ride it? What about it would be most important to you? Speed? Reliability? Destinations?

A special two-state group is studying the prospect of a high speed rail corridor from Washington all the way to Charlotte. And they want to hear your opinion on the whole thing.

What would worry you most about a high speed train? Noise? Blocked crossings? Safety?

They’re starting to hold a series of public meetings during which anyone can get information and give his or her opinion.

The first meeting in this area comes on May 16 in Concord at the Cabarrus County Senior Center. Meetings are also scheduled:

• May 17 in Charlotte at the Charlotte Museum of History.
• May 31 in Salisbury at the Rowan County Agricultural Center on Old Concord Road.
• And June 1 in Lexington at the Davidson County Cooperative Extension Center.

Each meeting lasts from 5 to 7:30 p.m.

Don’t come expecting to see train schedules and routes. David Foster, rail environment programs manager, said the project is far from getting that specific.

The high speed train probably is still a decade away, Foster said. But by August, the Southeast group hopes to finish gathering public input and data and begin writing a report recommending a “general location.”

Public hearings and more reports will follow, and Foster said the group hopes to have decided where the train would go by early in 2002.

Within the 500-mile corridor between Washington and Charlotte, the study has identified 1,000 miles of rail lines that a high speed train could use.

And Virginia and North Carolina transportation officials have banded together to try to try to explore the best plan.

The population along Interstate 85 between Charlotte and Raleigh is expected to increase by 1.5 million in the next 15 years. And that kind of density makes the Southeast corridor attractive to federal officials who are considering setting up funding for high speed rail.

Federal officials have designed five study corridors around the country for possible funding — the Northwest, around Seattle and Portland; another West Coast corridor from Los Angeles to San Francisco, possibly to San Diego; a Midwest corridor, reaching from Chicago to St. Louis; the Northeast corridor from New York to Boston; and the Southeast.

Though Congress has not passed a consistent funding source for high speed rail, one proposal calls for setting up a trust fund — of as much as $1 billion — much like the Highway Trust Fund, according to David B. Keever, a private analyst working with the Southeast group.

So officials in North Carolina and Virginia want to be ready to compete for federal money when Congress appropriates it.

Julia Hegele, marketing manager for the Rail Division of the N.C. Department of Transportation, said the state already considers Salisbury “a role model” for its willingness to close a number of rail crossings.

And though that will strengthen the argument for using a route through Salisbury, Hegele said the state needed to close those crossings anyway.

The state already is trying to increase the speed on the existing passenger route between Raleigh and Charlotte. Right now, trains can’t travel faster than 79 mph on that line.

But the average speed is still 46 mph, Hegele and Foster said.

A high speed train, with new technology that allows the train to tilt in a curve without spilling passengers’ drinks in their laps, would travel up to 110 miles per hour.

Improved rail service is only a matter of time, Hegele said. Even with the present limitations on rail service — including reliability and lack of options — train ridership increased 22 percent last year.