Category / Transit/Transportation

by Leo Suarez

Tracking Buses Online and On Your Phone

Recently, the city has created some online and mobile tracking services for the buses in Capital Area Transit. The best part is that they all have maps associated with them. I love me some maps.

For downtown, this includes the R-Line, which is technically part of CAT and is shown on the CAT tracking page. The Downtown Raleigh Alliance (DRA) tracks the R-Line on their page as well. Below is the link rundown so update your bookmarks.

DRA live map
www.godowntownraleigh.com/get-around/r-line/status

DRA live map mobile version
m.yourhere.com/rline-map.php

CAT Bus tracking
raleighrides.org/

NCSU Wolfline Tracking
ncsu.transloc.com/

I’m mentioning the Wolfline tracking system because it has been around for years and is still the better service of the few, in my opinion. Take a look at it to see what all the services should work towards becoming one day.

The R-Line mobile site is easy and straight to the point. If you have a smartphone, you can pull up the maps with the location of the buses pinpointed on the route in real time. The bus stops are marked by their appropriate names so finding where you are on the map is easy once you are at an R-Line stop. Streets and their names are also displayed so the map now becomes a personal guide to navigating downtown on your phone. It’s a great start for making the experience of riding a bus slightly easier and puts a system in place that can be easily updated and scaled out as transit in Raleigh grows.

by Leo Suarez

$545 Million For Rail Upgrade From Slow To Mediocre-Speed

The point of this post is not to sound pessimistic but I need to get one thing off my chest first. High speed rail does not consist of trains moving at 110 mph. That is not at all pushing the limits of what modern day trains can do. I’m sure it sounds fast but when North Carolina has trains zipping from one side of the state to the other at speeds of 200+ mph, then we can throw around the term ‘high-speed’. If you want an idea of what real high-speed looks like click and watch this video.

With that out of the way, our state is getting $545 million of federal stimulus money that will go towards improving rail transit. The bulk of the grant, $520 million, will go towards the Charlotte to Raleigh corridor with the rest being spent on the connection north to Richmond. This was part of $8 billion worth of stimulus funds being allocated between 33 states. Click here to see the entire list of states and who got what.

Its called the Southeast High-Speed Rail corridor that may one day connect Washington DC to Raleigh and Raleigh to Charlotte and on to Atlanta. We’ve talked about this before on the blog. Along with our ‘winnings’, Florida was the only other southeast state that received money however. Because it’s part of SEHSR, tracks will be improved to increase speeds and the frequency of trips between the queen city and the capital are planned to double.

I have not quite gotten around to doing the train trip to Charlotte but it is on the to-do list. Let’s see what the experience would be like if I left this weekend.

  • Booking a trip on Amtrak.com seems easy enough. Leave Friday, Jan. 29th and return Jan. 31st.
  • The Piedmont leaves at 6:50am for $25. I need to work so I’ll pass
  • The Carolinian leaves at 4:50pm for $25. My only other choice so I’ll go with this one.
  • I need a return trip. I again have a morning and afternoon option. The Piedmont it is at 5:30pm for another $25.
  • Total travel time: 3 hr, 24 min departure. 3 hr, 13 min return. $50 total cost

We’ll re-visit this post later in time to compare if things are getting better. Now I love riding a train but it also has to make sense. This might work when compared to a single person driving to Charlotte but if I bring the lady with me, splitting gas beats this situation every time. In this scenario, the cost is what is driving people away and so is the ease of a major highway connecting the two cities.

I’m hopeful though, as always, and think that the faster trains would make them competitive with the highway. If driving and riding took the same amount of time, the convenience of sitting in a spacious rail car and never being slowed by traffic might be worth it to some people.

As for downtown Raleigh, this corridor would go right through it and more passengers means much more headaches at an already too small train station on Cabarrus Street. The additional trains and passengers may help get us talking about that multi-modal transit center for the Boylan Wye.

Also, the Southeast High-Speed Rail project has a great website.

by Leo Suarez

How Free Is That Parking Outside of Downtown?

I thought this video was very interesting and brings up some great points. Although cities in New Zealand are used as examples the exact same principles apply right here. Soon, downtown Raleigh will install pay stations for on-street parking that has, mostly, been free for decades. What is not being talked about are the plans to lower or eliminate the minimum parking requirements (MPR) in downtown.

The video suggests that paying to park is like paying for what you use rather then buying goods at prices that factor in the cost of the MPR. In theory, eliminating MPR should lower prices and give the consumer more of a choice. That choice being to pay to park or use another mode of travel to avoid paying. The cost to provide that parking is not passed on to the consumer where it is in the “free” parking lots of the suburbs.

Interesting stuff!

by Leo Suarez

City of Raleigh | More Than 150,000 Passengers Ride Downtown Raleigh’s R-Line

A total of 152,634 passengers rode the R-Line from Feb. 13, its first day of service, to Dec. 5, according to a report on the latest ridership totals. The report also found that during this time:

  • An average of 519 passengers rode the R-Line daily, including weekends;
  • The bus carried an average total of 535 riders each weekday;
  • An average of 719 commuters rode the R-Line on Saturdays; and,
  • The R-Line’s average passenger count on Sundays was 241.

via City of Raleigh | More Than 150,000 Passengers Ride Downtown Raleigh’s R-Line.

by Leo Suarez

Try Transit, Win Prizes

This week is Try Transit Week. Jump into the event website or read the cliffnotes below:

Try Transit Week is an annual campaign sponsored by Durham Area Transit Authority (DATA), Cary Transit (C-Tran), Capital Area Transit (CAT), NCSU Wolfline and Triangle Transit. The goal of the campaign is to encourage Triangle Commuters to try an alternative mode of transportation in an effort to help save our environment, reduce the stress of traffic congestion and save money on expensive gas prices.

This year, each of the sponsors is hosting events across the Triangle area including a Fare FREE Day, a “Stuff the Bus” food drive and various give-aways to show appreciation to our bus riders and operators.

If you are on Twitter, you should be following these accounts

Go here is you want to participate in the scavenger hunt and win free stuff.

by Leo Suarez

Raleigh’s Transit Could Use An Upgrade

I’m sure everyone will agree with that title. The good news is new buses are being purchased and put into the fleet thanks to some stimulus money. The baby steps are better then nothing or perhaps much better then the cuts in transit that other cities are making around the country. The cost to upgrade a transit system is expensive. If you follow the local and national transit scene like I do then you are quite familiar with seeing prices in the hundreds of millions and even in the billions of dollars to bring big time mass transit to a city and state.

We could go on and on about how the bus services in the triangle do not adequately provide an alternative to driving. But is it possible to take our current system and make it more efficient? Rather then add new routes to serve more customers at a higher cost, should the powers that be explore ways to fill our current routes for much less? Here is a list of suggestions that may motivate more people to leave the car at home and travel by bus around the triangle. Should Raleigh adopt any of these?

  1. Smart cards

    The use of transit smart cards in larger cities make it easier to manage paying for any kind of transit. I recently had a chance to experience the first ever such system that was implemented in 1997 in Hong Kong. The Octopus Card is used to pay for all transit and can even be used to make purchases in grocery stores and vending machines. You just swipe the RFID card across the receiver and money is deducted from your account. Money can be added at pay stations without ever replacing your card. It would be cheaper to get in on this system early and expand it over time with our transit network. Currently, the “Acorn Pass” could be used to pay for bus fares and parking meters.

  2. GPS Tracking

    Just like the Transloc System that the NCSU Wolfline already has, a real time GPS tracking system would help people plan their trips if they knew where the bus was at any moment in time. This is especially helpful for those routes that stop only once an hour and would prevent major headaches. The maps could be online and accessed by computer, phone, or monitors at major bus stops.

  3. Shelters and Benches

    This one is easy. More shelters and benches at stops would make it much more pleasant for people waiting for their ride. To take it one step further, the shelters could harvest solar power and use it to run lights to keep the area well lit at night. While controversial, I think advertisements on the shelters could be used to counter the cost.

  4. Subscribable Information

    Information goes a long way and we need to make it easy for people to get information about routes and changes to that route. Riders should be able to subscribe, by phone, e-mail, home address, anything, to information updates to any route that they choose. New subscribers should be mailed brochures with bus riding information, route maps, and schedules. They should even be given magnets for people to put up on their fridges so the information is easily accessible. Little things like this could make people more confident and comfortable with leaving their car at home for the day.

  5. Wifi

    Wifi on buses would be a huge incentive for the tech crowd in the area. A lot of work, and internet browsing, is done on laptops or smart phones so that added access is very valuable to those that can work on the go. I’m right here with this one and would love to start doing my work on my laptop when I sit down on the bus rather then when I arrive at work. It is a much more efficient use of my time.

Number 2 may be on the way, as the N&O post mentions that the stimulus money will be used for “a real-time bus arrival system”.

by Leo Suarez

Fayetteville Street’s Road Diet

This video by Streetfilms talks about the results of New York City’s closing of parts of Broadway to vehicular traffic. Pedestrians have taken over and created a space for themselves. There is also no increase in traffic problems after two months of the streets being limited to cars.

Fayetteville Street was once a pedestrian mall from 1977 to 2006. Five blocks from the capitol to the old civic center were pedestrian only. Streetfilms brings up the term, Road Diet described as:

A road diet is a technique in transportation planning whereby a road is reduced in number of travel lanes and/or effective width in order to achieve systemic improvements.

Was the Fayetteville Street pedestrian mall too much of a diet or did it come at too early of a time for Raleigh?

If you look at a picture of Fayetteville Street before the 1977 makeover, you can see that it was much wider then it is today. Actually, the original width of all four roads leading from the capitol, those being Hillsborough, Halifax, New Bern, and Fayetteville, were at one point 99 feet wide, according to the original plan by William Christmas. I’m pretty sure Hillsborough Street still retains the original planned width so you can use it as a reference.

There are lots of factors to consider here but I’ll try and keep it simple. Currently, Fayetteville Street’s road is thinner, compared to its original layout, resulting in wider sidewalks and a more pedestrian friendly environment. The balance between cars and pedestrians seems appropriate for the way Raleigh has developed over the last 30 years. The pedestrian mall never stood a chance with the way Raleigh sprawled out and forced people to buy cars and love highways. However, with green being so hot right now, people driving less, and mass transit being pushed, a long walkable area may slowly start to seem like a good idea.