by Leo Suarez

Union Station Concepts Shown To Future Raleigh Train Riders

Last night, Raleighites had a chance to hear a presentation about the upcoming Union Station and to comment on some of the high level concepts being drawn up for the new station. This was the first of several meetings to show off the work as it progresses towards a more complete design.

I want to reiterate the fact that this meeting was indeed very high level and nothing concrete has been put into plan. The presenters spent about 30-45 minutes going through slides of the warehouse district and the viaduct building itself. Maps showed very rough concepts that the station will have, things like a mix of gathering space, retail, and operations space.

The presenters emphasized that they wanted the entrance to be grand and inviting. Borrowing from a plethora of examples from around the world, it felt like Raleigh’s Union Station will try to have that big and open-style entrance that others seem to have.

The very first concepts, the ones that have been out way before this meeting, of the station layout are actually being challenged. More emphasis on the gathering space, making it bigger and more voluminous, was shown in the drawings. There also was, what appeared to be, more thought put into the parking lot layout than before.

Here’s the original layout of the station area.

Raleigh Union Station Original Layout

Notice the parking lot layout relative to West Street.

And now here is the original floor plan for the interior.

Raleigh Union Station Original Layout

Here you can see the breakdown between the gathering space, shown in blue, the retail space, orange, and the office space, brown.

Last night, we had this new plan on the table.

Raleigh Union Station new layout

The same blue area in the image above shows an elongated gathering space that goes from the front to almost the back of the building. This comes from a different layout of the offices and incorporating some of the upper floors of the northern part of the building. The larger gathering space, suggested to be lit up with lots of natural light, is a great idea and I hope the planners can deliver it.

The parking lot has been rethought with a second entrance to West Street and a traffic circle in front to keep vehicles moving and avoiding conflict with parking. This is definitely a step in the right direction as car/bus traffic flow is being thought of in a smarter way.

I’m hoping the entrance in the front, with a pedestrian plaza, will really get some extra attention. As soon as travelers arrive at Union Station, they will be stepping into downtown and the plaza needs to make a statement. I’m hoping visitors will stop for a quick second and feel like taking a photo of themselves.

Great stuff so far. Expect more details during the next presentation.

by Leo Suarez

Raleigh Union Station Public Workshop, March 6

The first of a few public information sessions about Raleigh’s train station upgrade, Union station, is coming up. On March 6, come down to the session to see renderings and plans for the new station in the warehouse district. Citizens will be given the opportunity to comment and give feedback towards the future design steps.

The workshop will also go over the West Street extension, a project that proposes to extend West Street to the south to West Cabarrus Street. This extension is a major compliment to Union Station and the greenway system.

Union Station will be Raleigh’s new train station at West and Martin Street. The project will be a complete renovation of the Dillon Supply Company Warehouse. See previous posts on the topic for background information.

Raleigh Union Station Public Workshop

Date/Time: Wed., March 6 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.
Meymandi Concert Hall Lobby
2 East South Street
Raleigh, NC 27601
919-996-8700

Raleigh Union Station Public Workshop

by Leo Suarez

Transit for a Better Wake County

Transit for a Better Wake County from CAFT on Vimeo.

The video above is from the good people at Capital Area Friends of Transit. They are gearing up for another push to get transit moving forward and if that’s something you are into, take 20 seconds and sign their petition.

2012 saw heated debates on the subject and if you are new to the conversation, jump over to the Raleigh Public Record for more reading on the topic.

Talk of public transit, or at least of the elusive commuter rail, in Raleigh and Wake County has almost gotten to the level of a bad joke. But there is more to public transit than just commuter trains. There are more busses, bicycles, car-share programs and more up for discussion on the city, county and regional levels.

*Talk of Transit Never Quits

Supporters are hoping this is the year for it to happen. What was missing before and is now in the debate is local business. The video above features Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst supporting transit for the county. The county commission may not be listening to citizens. Maybe they will listen to big business.

by Leo Suarez

Pic of the Week

Zipcar in Glenwood South

Last week, the City of Raleigh announced that they are partnering with Zipcar, the popular car-sharing service. The first cars in Raleigh will be located in downtown, in the Glenwood South district near the intersection of Lane Street and Glenwood Avenue.

This isn’t the city’s first experience with car-sharing. In the summer of 2010, WeCar, owned by Enterprise Rent-A-Car, rolled out two vehicles in downtown. The service didn’t last and about two years later was pulled.

I’m hoping for success with Zipcar in downtown Raleigh as WeCar really lacked the backing and experience that Zipcar has. They must be doing something right if Zipcar has about 80% of the car-share market.

by Leo Suarez

Local Business Love It Promote It, LiPi Selling Downtown Wares Online

LiPi

These days, the retail scene in downtown Raleigh is more about quality than quantity. Growing by a few more shops each year, we’re not quite at the point where mass Raleighites visit for a day of shopping. While we’re waiting for downtown to be a shopping destination, there may not be a more innovative way to sell products than what Love It Promote It is doing.

The local startup LiPi, for short, is an online store for products from locally-owned businesses. I met up with Jayson Humphrey to talk about his business and what he’s doing for downtown Raleigh merchants.

“Locally owned retailers are the heartbeat of LiPi”, said Humphrey as he swipes the latest version of his application on his smartphone. What Humphrey does is work with shops within and outside of downtown and has them list their products on his site. Shoppers can then browse and purchase products straight from the retailers.

LiPi is optimized for all phones, tablets, and browsers. Navigating is very simple as they use a Pinterest-style layout to show off products to viewers.

LiPi, Inc. was incorporated in April of 2012 and launched their e-commerce site in December later that year. They have been expanding their product offerings and the number of businesses they partner with, most of them being in downtown Raleigh. Shops like Galatea Boutique, Symbology Clothing, and Cimos Raleigh are all selling products on LiPi.

The philosophy is simple, to bring all the vendors to one online place.

“It’s not shopping at Cameron Village or shopping at North Hills, it’s all under one roof.” I was very intrigued at what LiPi was doing and how it could really help retail.

Today, the shops in downtown are spread out and not clustered in a way that promotes shopping as an activity like the malls do. With LiPi at their side, shops can sell in their stores as well as online. This gives them more exposure and making them less reliant on foot traffic. Raleighites who don’t normally think of shopping in downtown can now access the products by using LiPi.

The best way to keep in touch with LiPi is to join their site to receive attractive weekly emails of “the best curated goods.”

You can’t get any of these innovative services in traditional malls, not yet anyway. With the growth of online shopping, this seems like a natural fit for retail in urban areas.

[UPDATE: 12-15-13 – Removed broken links]

by Leo Suarez

Café de los Muertos To Open In The Hue This Summer

Café de los Muertos

Look out for a new coffee shop in downtown Raleigh this summer. Confirmed by a sign on the space and some chatter on their website, Café de los Muertos will be setting up along West Hargett Street in the Hue building.

Their site has everything you need to know about these guys:

We are Café de los Muertos (Coffee of the Dead), and we are supremely dedicated to the perfect coffee cup, the perfect espresso, the perfect coffee experience. Café de los Muertos is a artisan coffee roastery that specializes in organic Fair Trade and Direct Trade coffee. We hope to promote coffee sustainability by supporting truly beneficial relationships among coffee bean farmers and our customers.

*Café de los Muertos – Who

Currently, this coffee shop is online only but the space in the Hue gives them a new home.

Reading through some of their material, it sounds like they will be keeping things local and open to collaborating rather than competing. I’ll sip to that.

by Leo Suarez

Talk of a Midtown Raleigh Bus Circulator, The M-Line, Begins

R-Line Bus in downtown Raleigh

We’re in a lull when it comes to transit news in downtown Raleigh. It feels like the plans are made but the funding of a half-cent sales tax increase to go towards transit improvements is stuck at the county level.

While politicians on the County Commission continue to debate the possible tax increase, one of the most successful transit stories in Raleigh recently has been the R-Line. This fare-less service that circles downtown has been increasing its ridership every year since it was launched in 2009.

So it’s only natural that others around Raleigh want to get in on the great service.

I recently heard of the Midtown Raleigh Alliance’s (MRA) idea of pitching a service called the M-Line, a bus circulator between midtown Raleigh and downtown Raleigh. There’s not much behind this idea really, just talk and a blog post. [UPDATE: Broken link]

Either way, let’s speculate and see if this idea is at all feasible.

According to the MRA, midtown Raleigh is the “area within a 2-mile radius surrounding North Hills.” The about page on their website claims the area has a “Distinctive skyline and 24/7 walkable urban center.”

Whether that’s actually true or not, the most likely place for the M-Line to arrive and depart would be from a spot in North Hills, the most urban area in midtown.

A park and ride situation could work but with parking so plentiful in downtown, once people are in their cars then it’s likely they will just go straight to downtown rather than transfer to a bus.

Using Google Maps, the quickest way from North Hills, the Renaissance Hotel to be more specific, to downtown, the state Capitol, is along Lassiter Mill Road, St. Mary’s Street, and Glenwood Avenue. Google also estimates the trip to take 13 minutes.

The trip could take longer if the route is changed to make more stops around midtown. So to keep the numbers easy, let’s say the trip takes 15 minutes. With one bus running the route, a round-trip takes 30 minutes with an average wait time of 15 minutes.

Compared to CAT

If there is a truly interest in an M-Line, this again shows citizen support for transit and perhaps readiness for this area to increase transit effectiveness.

Capital Area Transit’s Route 8 – Northclift is the closest route that goes from downtown to midtown. It’s similar to the route suggested by Google Maps. Route 8 starts at the Moore Square bus station and goes through downtown, north on St. Mary’s and Lassiter Mill Road to North Hills.

The current operating schedule of Route 8 is:

  • 5:55 AM to 8:52 PM | Monday – Friday
  • 7:00 AM to 8:12 PM | Saturday

The route has frequencies of 30 minutes during rush hour and an hour outside and on Saturday. That makes wait times of being 15 minutes on average during rush hour and 30 minutes outside.

With a similar route already being offered by CAT, supporters of an M-Line have quite a bit of work to do in order to justify it.

Just like my post back in July 2011 about the petition to expand the R-Line to Cameron Village, this is an example where adding another bus circulator would provide redundant service to the current CAT system.

If anything, M-Line supporters should be interested in taking what money that could be put towards this new line and into making Route 8 much more effective through greater frequency and expanded operating schedules.