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RALEIGH – Raleigh City Council Members are avoiding endorsing a specific high speed rail plan through parts of downtown, at least for now.

The project would ultimately connect Raleigh and Charlotte to Richmond and Washington, D.C. But, some say, not without disrupting the quality of some of Raleigh's historic neighborhoods.

"I know this is an ongoing process. You know we are trying to work our way through this. This does have potential benefits as well as problems but please stay involved and hopefully we'll get this rail line done as best we can,” said Raleigh Mayor Charles Meeker at Tuesday's City Council meeting.

The best the mayor and council members could give the public waiting to hear a formal endorsement of one of several proposed high-speed rail options for downtown was a long list of possible recommendations to be presented to the Department of Transportation.

"They're thinking about it which is more than they were doing previously," said Raleigh's Ben Kuhn.

Another Raleigh resident, Janice McLaughlin, was disappointed at the meeting. "The whole idea seems to be, 'Let's pick a route and then solve the problems,'" she said.

Though response from the public was mixed, some of the key recommendations from Raleigh City Council the public has heard before. That includes the option to coordinate with Triangle Transit; analyze a hybrid of the NC-1 and NC-2 proposals and modifying the NC-3 option, which was endorsed by City staff and the Passenger Rail Task Force.

Resident Steve Waters said, "I think the Passenger Rail Task Force picked the alignment that would be best, if you know these other hybrid alternatives didn't turn out to actually be possible. So, I think they did great work but I think we've got now a way to sort of solve the original problems without causing new problems."

One problem that did surface at the meeting was what some call the avoidance of the publicly-generated idea combining portions of the NC-1, 2 and 3 plans.

"I also don't feel they stressed looking at the NC-4 option,” said McLaughlin.

"But at the end of the day the state's going to do what the state's going to do,” said Waters. “So, we just have to hope that they're listening and concerned about the interests of the citizens of Raleigh."

Raleigh City Council members will next meet on September 21.