Tag / Transit

by Leo Suarez

Municipography, Capital Boulevard and a Transit Tax

Municipography is a summary of current issues going through the Raleigh City Council and other municipal departments in the city. The point is to try to deliver any video, photos, and text associated with the discussions happening at City Hall or elsewhere. Since this is a downtown Raleigh blog, the focus is on the center of the city.

I recommend email readers click through to the website to see the embedded video.

This week, there was action at both the city and county level. Heated comments took place at the Wake County Commission meeting over a tax increase that would support expanded transit options in the county. Raleigh city staff presented the Capital Boulevard Corridor Study, a vision to remake the area from Peace Street all the way to I-440.

Capital Boulevard Corridor Study


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City staff presented a general overview of the Capital Boulevard Corridor Study as well as some of the data gathered and citizen feedback. After some light conversation, the city council moved it to the Comprehensive Planning Committee for further review. An endorsement of the plan is needed before August to align with the NCDOT’s plans to design new bridges for Capital Boulevard at Peace Street and Wade Avenue.

Councilors briefly mentioned the topic of the at-grade intersection at Capital and Peace so I expect more conversation about it at the committee meeting. Still, city staff has added some excellent reading as an appendix to the corridor study and breaks down the metrics of measuring an intersection’s effectiveness. They explain the advantages and disadvantages of each interchange design including one type of at-grade proposal.

Wake County 1/2 Cent Sales Tax For Transit

On Monday:

In a 4-to-3 vote along party lines, members of the Wake County Commission Monday turned down a proposal to consider a transit plan and a half-cent sales tax referendum for this November’s ballot.

Commissioner Erv Portman presented the motion, at the very end of a meeting during which more than 20 people spoke in favor of putting the referendum on this November’s ballot.

Although Monday’s meeting agenda included no mention of the sales tax for an expanded transit plan in the Triangle, the topic dominated the public comment period.

Commission Votes Against Debate on Transit Sales Tax via Raleigh Public Record.

To hear/watch the public comment period, jump over to the Wake Board of Commissioners meeting agenda for June 18, 2012.

The needed 1/2 cent sales tax increase to secure a source of funding before transit in Wake County can be expanded has now been kicked down the road again. Durham County has approved it and is waiting for Orange and Wake Counties to do the same before they start collecting.

Orange County votes on the 1/2 cent sales tax increase this November.

by Leo Suarez

A Different Approach To The Transit Argument

Capital Area Transit bus

I’m planning to do a Municipography post for tomorrow cause there is good stuff to talk about in government this week. Yesterday, the Wake County Board of Commissioners had a meeting and the floor was open to those for and against the transit plan for the county. Today, there is a Raleigh City Council meeting and the Capital Boulevard Corridor Study is on the agenda. Hopefully, I can get video of both for tomorrow’s post embedded here along with some overview.

But the transit argument is one I talk about a lot, especially offline, so after hearing how yesterday’s meeting went on the 7th floor of the Wake Courthouse, I wanted to hopefully offer a different view on Transit for County and Raleigh.

I’m not going to mention congestion cause I feel transit doesn’t make a noticeable dent in it. I will not use words like “soaring”, “sky-high”, or “astronomical” if I mention gas prices because I’ve been to other countries and I just can’t complain at all seeing $8-$10 per gallon prices. All I want to talk about is the Raleigh of the future and what I want to see.

So they say that Raleigh and the county are going to grow. Great. The question is how do we want this city of the future to look like?

Continuing in the same pattern as today will result in more destinations with greater distance between them. Eventually Raleigh will be unable to grow her borders but the surrounding towns will swell outwards and continue weaving the fabric of this great metropolitan area. We citizens will move around that area as we’ve been doing for years now and to accommodate this future transportation need, roads and highways will be built. As growth continues, so does the cycle of building roads to meet the demand of transportation, the same transportation methods of today.

If that is your Raleigh of the future, fine. Make a convincing argument for it and I’ll respect you for that.

An alternative view is a Raleigh metro that seeks balance with it’s surrounding environment. I strongly believe that one of the North Carolina Piedmont’s biggest selling points is the vast amount of lush greenery and tree cover. I hear it all the time about how many trees there are here and how leafy it is. This appeals to a lot of people. Take away those trees and lush environment and you have a scene that isn’t Raleigh at all. This is part of our brand, this “city within a park”.

To keep Raleigh just like Raleigh, I want to see the future seek balance with the mountainous trees that took decades to grow so big. When driving out of the area, we should hit the beautiful North Carolina wilderness head on and not go through countless strip malls and neighborhoods like some larger cities have today.

To achieve this in some way, I want the future Raleigh to spend it’s transportation money in the city we’ve already built, not on the fringes where land can be exhausted. I see it as a way to re-innovate ourselves, not continue doing what is comfortable.

While my Raleigh of the future may sound like a treehugger’s fairy tale, there is some more to it. Investing in public transit within the city does amazing things for how we use our land. Public transit is a human scale investment because it moves people around. When people move around, buildings and shops that cater to people start popping up. When compared to a city where cars move around, the city is built with parking lots and plenty of room for those cars to get around.

I see two things happening when public transit is invested within the city. When people, not cars, are moving around, the resulting development ends up occurring near this new investment (transit) and on already existing infrastructure. (electricity, sewers, etc.) Investments on existing infrastructure cost citizens much less when compared to new developments that push our infrastructure further and further out. There’s an example in Asheville, NC about this very topic:

We tend to think that broke cities have two options: raise taxes, or cut services. Minicozzi, though, is trying to point to the basic but long-buried math of our tax system that cities should be exploiting instead: Per-acre, our downtowns have the potential to generate so much more public wealth than low-density subdivisions or massive malls by the highway. And for all that revenue they bring in, downtowns cost considerably less to maintain in public services and infrastructure.

The Simple Math That Can Save Cities From Bankruptcy via The Atlantic Cities

I strongly encourage everyone to read that article.

So to wrap this up, I hope everyone is thinking about what they want this area to be like in the future. There is strong evidence that the growth is coming so it has to be dealt with in some way. What way is up to us and we are deep into the planning stages for this right now.

Voice your opinion, for or against, public transit. It doesn’t matter if you never use it, you are a part of this city and it will impact you in some way.

Voice your opinion, for or against, new road construction. It doesn’t matter if you never use it, you are a part of this city and it will impact you in some way.

by Leo Suarez

Municipography, Walking, Union Station, and Commuter Trains

Municipography is a summary of current issues going through the Raleigh City Council and other municipal departments in the city. The point is to try to deliver any video, photos, and text associated with the discussions happening at City Hall or elsewhere. Since this is a downtown Raleigh blog, the focus is on the center of the city.

Walk Raleigh


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Matt Tomasulo and his Walk Raleigh signs have been accepted as a gift to the city. The signs brought international attention to Raleigh and after some time had to be taken down because of the lack of a permit. Still, the signs made their statement and some will be put back up for a 90 day pilot program.

The council unanimously approved.

Union Station Financials


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Last month, city staff was authorized to apply for a Transportation Investment Generating Economic
Recovery (“TIGER”) grant for a component of Union Station. The NCDOT and Triangle Transit are helping with the application too and have come up with this financial breakdown:

  • Station development: 80% federal, 10% state, 10% city
  • Rail/track/platform improvements: 80% federal, 20% state
  • Street improvements: 80% federal, 20% city

This puts the city’s cost at $7 million. Remember, that last year $3 million was approved by voters in the Transportation Bond. So the remaining $4 million will have to be worked into next year’s budget cycle. This move helps the grant application.

John Odom voted against this stating concerns about the cost while the rest of the council approved.

Commuter Rail Station Locations


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The city’s Passenger Rail Task Force stopped by to endorse the locations of the commuter rail stations in Raleigh. Those four being at:

  • Southeast Raleigh at Hammond and Rush Streets
  • Downtown Raleigh at the Warehouse District
  • NC State near Dan Allen Drive
  • West Raleigh near Corporate Center Drive

You can read about more about this as well as light rail and buses at the Transit tag link but for the best wrap up of the commuter rail plans jump to, “Transit, Commuter Rail, and More, We Dive Into The Docs.”

The council approved this unanimously.

by Leo Suarez

Municipography, Wake County Transit Plan

Municipography is a summary of current issues going through the Raleigh City Council and other municipal departments in the city. The point is to try to deliver any video, photos, and text associated with the discussions happening at City Hall or elsewhere. Since this is a downtown Raleigh blog, the focus is on the center of the city.

Making their way around Wake County is David King, the General Manager of Triangle Transit, and his entourage to present to all twelve of Wake’s municipalities about the Wake County transit plan. Yesterday at their February 7th city council meeting, Raleigh was given the presentation. It was meant for information only and the county is gathering feedback about the plan from citizens as well as city and town leaders.

One core point of the presentation more people need to be aware of is while light rail, commuter rail, and buses are being talked about, two plans actually exist. The “core transit” plan, as it’s called, is the plan that consists of the bus plan and the commuter rail line. It is estimated that this can be covered with local revenue sources only. The “enhanced transit” plan adds the light rail piece to the mix and King makes it clear that state and federal money would be needed to bring this addition to the area.

The feedback will determine whether county leaders put a 1/2 cent sales tax increase on the ballot one day and if voters approve, all the money generated gets funneled to transit these improvements. Here is the video of the presentation in Raleigh with David King and David Cooke, the Wake County Manager, talking transit, money, and future projections.


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Here’s a summary from the city’s press release.

A draft plan that recommends major transportation improvements in Wake County, including new commuter and light-rail services, was presented today to the Raleigh City Council.

Wake County Manager David Cooke and David King, general manager of the Triangle Transit Authority, appeared at the City Council meeting to give an overview of the draft Wake County Transit Plan. In addition to Wake County, contributors to the proposed plan were the 12 municipalities in the county, including the City of Raleigh, and area transit providers and agencies.

Raleigh City Council members did not take action on the draft Wake County Transit Plan but accepted it as information. Similar presentations about the draft transit plan are being made to the governing bodies of the county’s other municipalities. Wake County expects to finalize the plan late this spring.

The draft Wake County Transit Plan takes a two-pronged approach to meeting increasing transit needs as the county continues to grow. Wake County’s population, set at about 901,000 in the 2010 U.S. Census, is projected to top 1 million by 2015 and 1.5 million by 2035. The transit plan’s two-pronged approach is:

  • A Core Transit Plan that would expand local and commuter bus service and build a rush-hour 37-mile commuter rail service from Garner to Durham. It would also provide amenities such as park-and-ride lots, sidewalks, signage and bus shelters, benches and other improvements; and,
  • An Enhanced Transit Plan that would build light-rail service from Downtown Cary through Downtown Raleigh, up to Millbrook Road in north Raleigh. The route would cover 13.9 miles.

Wake County’s share of the of the five-year bus services improvements in the plan would be $138.3 million of the total $344 million needed for both capital and operating costs. The remaining funds would come from state and federal funds. The commuter rail service would cost $650 million, with Wake County’s share at $330 million and Durham County’s at $320 million. The commuter rail system is projected to begin operations in 2019 or 2020.

Twelve (12) stations are proposed for the commuter rail system, including four in Raleigh. The four Capital City stations would be located along railroad tracks at the following locations:

  • West Raleigh north of Hillsborough Street near Corporate Center Drive;
  • North Carolina State University;
  • Downtown Raleigh near West and Davie Streets; and,
  • Hammond Road/Rush Street area in south Raleigh

The proposed light-rail service would cost $1.1 billion, with most of the funding coming from state and federal sources. The light-rail system would have 16 stations, including 14 stations in Raleigh. The Raleigh station locations would be:

  • West Raleigh Station near Corporate Center Drive and Chapel Hill Road;
  • Jones Franklin Road Station;
  • State Fairgrounds Station;
  • Gorman Street Station;
  • North Carolina State University/Dan Allen Drive Station;
  • North Carolina State University/Pullen Road Station;
  • West Morgan Street Station;
  • Union Station-Morgan/Hargett Station in Downtown Raleigh;
  • Harrington Avenue Station between Lane and Jones streets in Downtown Raleigh;
  • Peace Street Station;
  • Whitaker Mill Road Station;
  • Six Forks Road Station;
  • New Hope Church Road Station; and,
  • Millbrook Road Station.

Local revenue sources to pay for the transportation improvements proposed in the draft Wake County Transit Plan would include:

  • A half-cent sales tax increase which would need approval by Wake County voters in a referendum. The Wake County Board of County Commissioners would schedule the referendum; and,
  • A $10 increase in annual vehicle registration fees. County commissioners have the authority to establish a new $7 vehicle registration fee, with the revenue going toward funding the transit plan. The board of trustees of Triangle Transit can increase the regional vehicle registration fee by $3 also to fund the transit plan. The current annual vehicle registration fee in Raleigh is $35. A $10 increase would raise the fee to $45.

To view the draft Wake County Transit Plan, visit the county’s website at www.wakegov.com and type “Wake County Transit Plan” in the search engine, or call 856-6160.

by Leo Suarez

Transit, Commuter Rail, and More, We Dive Into The Docs

Tomorrow is an interesting day for transit fans as Durham County steps up to tax themselves in order to bring upgrades to our region’s transit. A one-half cent sales tax increase will be on the ballot in order to make these things happen. Readers should pay close attention because Raleigh’s close buddy may be bringing some goods to this symbiotic metropolitan partnership.

The informative website Our Transit Future (OTF) has documents aplenty to read up on but in case you haven’t gone through them, I’d like to attempt to summarize some of the things that may benefit Downtown Raleigh in the near future if Durham voters approve the tax increase. The documents there describe future stations, timetables, expected ridership, and other facts that could come into reality in the Triangle within the next decade.

Clearly, this blog supports the upgrade of transit in the Triangle and I hope that this tax is passed in Durham County. Let’s see what aspects of the plan may have an impact on downtown.

Durham’s Plan Links To Raleigh

The Durham County transit plan will go towards the following Raleigh related improvements, according to the fact sheets listed on the OTF site:

Step 2 – Rail from Durham to RTP and Raleigh

  • 2012 – Initial planning and engineering begins
  • 2018 – Opening year of peak hour rail connection to RTP and Raleigh
    – Length of corridor: 37 mi.
    – End to end travel time: 51 min.
    – 4 stations in Durham county
  • Later Saturday and Sunday connectivity between Downtown Durham and Downtown Chapel Hill; between Downtown Durham, RTP, and Raleigh; and, between Chapel Hill, southern Durham, RTP, and Raleigh.
  • More frequent express trips between Durham and Raleigh.

Here’s a map of the commuter rail line planned for the Triangle going from West Durham to Greenfield Parkway, Garner.


Click for larger

There are some explanations as to why commuter rail is being planned from Raleigh to Durham while light rail is being planned from Durham to Chapel Hill.

Why is light rail the technology for the Durham to Chapel Hill rail line and commuter rail the technology for the Durham to RTP and Raleigh rail line?

The different technology choices for the Durham to Chapel Hill and Durham to RTP and Raleigh rail systems were chosen to best respond to the characteristics of the travel markets in each corridor.

Durham to Chapel Hill Light Rail: This 17-mile corridor already has high traffic, a demand for transit and features three travel markets that include all-day trips and many short trips:

  • Work and student trips to Duke University/Hospital and Downtown Durham from the west
  • Work and student trips to UNC-Chapel Hill/Hospital from the east
  • Low-income work and shopping trips from East Durham to retail districts along 15-501

Additionally, the corridor features significant special event attractions such as DPAC, Brightleaf Square, Ninth Street, and UNC Dean Dome. Some of the most-densely populated census tracts in the Triangle including UNC’s main campus and Duke’s east campus are within a short walk to rail stations. This rail corridor is also well-positioned to capture the already-existing 3,000 to 4,000 daily bus transit riders from points east traveling to UNC via park and ride and Triangle Transit services such as bus 805 in Woodcroft in South Durham.

Durham to RTP and Raleigh: This 37-mile corridor features multiple travel markets with long trip lengths:

  • Work and student trips to NCSU/Downtown Raleigh
  • Work trips to Duke Medical Center
  • Work trips to Research Triangle Park

The corridor features considerable work trips but comparatively less non-work trips than the Durham-Chapel Hill corridor. There is existing heavy transit demand for NCSU, and considerable transit demand for employment trips to downtown Raleigh. These long transit trips remove large amounts of vehicle miles traveled from regional highways, and
the higher average speed of commuter rail over great distances makes it the ideal technology to attract motorists out of their cars with speeds that will most likely be unachievable by car during rush hour in the future.

The documents also predict a daily ridership of 7,000 boardings per day between Raleigh and Durham.

Corridor Studies, The Gritty Details

Outside of the documents that revolve around the tax increase and transit investment plan are others that focus on the three transit corridors with much more details. (up to date as of July 2011) Those three are:

  • Durham-Orange Corridor
  • Durham-Wake Corridor
  • Wake Corridor

While the Wake Corridor information impacts downtown Raleigh more, tomorrow’s vote in Durham will most likely help some of the plans documented at the Durham-Wake Corridor link more. Having said that, I’ll focus only on the documents at that link and save the Wake Corridor for another time. (maybe when Wake votes for transit improvements next year?)

Commuter Rail

  • The commuter rail line between Durham and Garner will run in the North Carolina Railroad Corridor.
  • NCDOT will double track certain section in order to separate other rail traffic. (freight and high-speed)
  • Proposed Downtown Raleigh station location:
    – Location in existing railroad right-of-way neat the intersection of West and Davie Streets.
    – Station would have walk-up features, at-grade, side platform and pedestrian access to future Union Station.

This table shows the Commuter Rail Station-to-Station Operating Characteristics.


Click for Larger

This table breaks down the 51 minute end-to-end trip time so with it we can predict how long it will take to get to and from popular locations.

  • Downtown Raleigh and Downtown Cary: 11.7 minutes
  • Downtown Raleigh and North RTP: 25.2 minutes
  • Downtown Raleigh and Downtown Durham: 33.3 minutes

FYI, the North RTP station is approximately located near the intersection of Miami Boulevard and Cornwallis Road.

While weekend service is not planned, weekday service hours of commuter rail could look like what is described in this table.


Click for larger

If you are a map person and would like to view each and every section of the commuter rail line from end-to-end, jump into this 14 MB pdf here. There are also more detailed topography maps available for the entire line at the corridor link.

Below is a proposed platform layout for the downtown Raleigh station followed by an example of how other stations might look. The downtown platform would sit between the two tracks rather than having two side platforms.

Last, I’ve posted what I think is the most interesting table in all of the documents. Here are the projected ridership numbers from station to station. The table is packed so make sure and click the image to view it larger.

According to the table above, the most trafficked stations will be Downtown Cary, Downtown Raleigh, and NCSU, in that order. You can see that most of the traffic comes between Downtown Cary and to either NCSU or Downtown Raleigh. I feel this is predicting a future scenario where commuters park and ride into Raleigh.

To dissect the downtown Raleigh numbers even further, we’ll start with the 825 arrivals and 1,140 departures figures in the table. There are assumptions that about 15% of trips will be ones that do not involve a person’s home. Thinking about these numbers, this has to explain the difference of 315 between arrivals and departures. (do the math) So an educated guess as to a person’s non-home based trip would be something like leaving downtown to go to the airport for example.

So how can we have more people leave then show up each day? This is what I need to explore more as the numbers suggest that in some cases people will be arriving in downtown using some other method but leaving on the commuter rail lines. If anyone has any information on this I would most appreciate an insight to this.

by Leo Suarez

Possible $37 Million Bond Referendum For Transit On The Way

$37 million for Transportation improvements are being discussed for Raleigh and may be on this year’s October ballot. Sidewalk improvements, station upgrades, and greenway projects are just a few on the long list here. Downtown Raleigh would see some improvements if this is passed.

The list of projects that may get funded are below, starting first with downtown related ones, and how much of the pie each one would get. ($ in millions)

  • Preliminary engineering: Blount/Person corridor planning $0.25
  • Moore Square facility improvements $3.50
  • Rosengarten Greenway $0.50
  • South/Lenoir two-way conversion $2.00
  • City initiated new sidewalk $4.75
  • Transit corridor improvements (shelters & benches) $0.750
  • Tryon Road widening & realignment $1.8
  • Resurfacing Program $10.05
  • Petition projects $3.00
  • Sidewalk repair reserve $4.00
  • Streetscape: Hillsborough: Gardner to Rosemary $1.00
  • Walnut Creek Greenway – New Hope Road to Neuse River $3.20
  • Lumley/Westgate Road corridor (greenway & bike lane) $2.20

A public hearing about this referendum should be announced within the coming weeks.

We’ve discussed greenways coming through downtown before and the Rosengarten piece is a crucial connector from south of downtown into the warehouse district.

The Lenoir and South Street two-way conversion stretches the previous two-way conversion, completed in 2008, to the east and west out of downtown. For Lenoir Street:

  • Two-way conversion from Wilmington Street to East Street. This makes Lenoir two-way from Boylan Heights to South Park.
  • Sharrows from Dawson Street to East Street.

For South Street:

  • Two-way conversion from South Saunders Street to Dawson Street.
  • Two-way conversion from Wilmington Street to East Street. Both conversions make South two-way from Boylan Heights to South Park.
  • Striped bicycle lanes along South Street from South Saunders Street to East Street.

The description of the work for the two streets also mentions, “modification of traffic signals, turn lane improvements, installation of new pedestrian head signals, crosswalks, and raised landscaped medians.” The western side of South Street is pretty wide so medians would be an easy fit.

Source: N.C. Capital Area MPO, Roadway projects

by Leo Suarez

Light Rail in or over downtown Raleigh?

As a reminder, there are some transit related events that are going on right now. Remind yourself by clicking here if you’re not sure what I’m referring to. Anyway, two events are taking place in Raleigh this week and the downtown portion of the light rail plan is sure to bring controversy.

Some of the presentation materials have been posted online and I’d like to cover some of it here.

An excellent read, with images that I will be linking to, is over at The Indy. I recommend reading that first.

Rail route is blurry through downtown Raleigh via Indyweek.com

To recap, planners have a few alternatives to work with when the light rail trains, coming from the west, head towards downtown Raleigh. If you look at the initial alternatives study, the map of those routes look like the spaghetti bowl below.


Click for full, larger view.

The next step planners took to eliminate some of these routes was to look at each one and evaluate them on five parameters:

  • Potential Transit Ridership
  • Consistency with Plans and Studies
  • Stakeholder Support
  • No Irresolvable Environmental Impacts
  • Technical and Financial Feasibility

If one of these parameters failed for the studied route, it was thrown out. After that elimination round, we were left with this map.


Click for full, larger view.

Four plans remain and it will be these four that are open for comment at the Triangle Transit events this week. We can step through each one and take a look.

D2 and D3

D2 and D3 are similar except for the street they head north on when leaving Union Station. D2 would have tracks on Harrington Street while D3 would put the tracks on West Street. Both routes bring the trains on a flyover over the Boylan Bridge and would result in something like you see here and here.

As the trains head to downtown from NC State in the NC railroad corridor, “difficulties” in having the light rail line play nice with freight and future high-speed rail are why the plans to go into the air are on the table. I’ll admit the Boylan Wye is a complicated cluster of tracks but the freight rail companies do have a reputation of being against anything that could possibly disturb their operation.

According to planners, D2 and D3 would make the light rail line go right into Union Station, giving us that very important connection to other modes of transportation. It also avoids headaches with the track layout of the Boylan Wye.

These plans were moved forward because each one:

  • Capitalizes on potential development opportunities on the west side of downtown.
  • Serves both Glenwood South and downtown.
  • Does not include additional overhead structures.
  • Supports location of proposed Raleigh multimodal center (Union Station) concept.
  • Meets the Purpose and Need for the project

I’m not quite sure I agree with these. A train that goes into the air and weaves through downtown blocks may actually take away from development opportunity because it is consuming so much space for itself. Once the train weaves through, that land cannot be developed.

I haven’t been to a meeting yet so I’ll find out for myself later this week.

D5

D5 involves the same flyover going over the Boylan Avenue Bridge but instead of heading to the northern end of Union Station it goes south, towards the convention center. The line would run through the core of downtown, along Salisbury and Wilmington Streets, and back into the NCRR corridor to the north.

My feelings are the same with the flyover over the bridge but I’m not quite sure when the train finally touches down. This rendering and this rendering suggests that the train will most likely continue to be elevated all the way to South Street. Another thing to note is that other routes were turned down because they impact traffic on Dawson and McDowell Street. This leads me to think that D5 will continue to be elevated on South to go over McDowell and come down before Salisbury Street.

Again, lots of elevated tracks that take away from development opportunity. This plan passed because it:

  • Does not cross McDowell and Dawson Streets at-grade.
  • Penetrates core of downtown Raleigh.
  • Does not impact Morgan, Hargett, and Martin Streets.
  • Provides more direct access to the Convention Center.
  • Meets the Purpose and Need for the project.

D6

No renderings are provided for this scenario. Interesting.

D6 avoids the Boylan Wye and the possibility of going over the Boylan Avenue Bridge. The plan has the light rail line coming out of the NCRR corridor down by Charlie Goodnight’s and it hits the street at Morgan. It continues East and takes a left turn onto Harrington Street and continues on its merry way. According to the report, the plan:

  • Avoids Raleigh Wye and does not interface with freight and Southeast High Speed Rail track issues.
  • Does not include additional overhead structures.
  • Capitalizes on potential development opportunities on the west side of downtown.
  • Serves both Glenwood South and downtown.
  • Meets the Purpose and Need for the project.

The negative with this plan is that if the light rail line went down Morgan Street, the optimal station stop would be at the intersection of Morgan and West Street, the Union Station stop. But if you’ve been out there to see it, Morgan is not quite so flat in that area, a requirement for a light rail station to be ADA compliant. I’ve heard this is also the more expensive alternative, but will confirm at the meeting, because a lot of road work would have to be done to get that Union Station stop, something that is very important to the connectivity of the system.

Wrapping Up

I like to see all the materials first before I choose which direction to take my opinion but from what I have seen so far, the D6 route seems to be the best choice on the limited amount of information available.

D6 is the most pedestrian friendly and turns downtown streets into more efficient modes of transit, moving more people through without building more roads or widening them. In my opinion, trains on elevated tracks that are not over roads take away from potential development.

I’d be really interested to see what kind of road modifications need to be done to Morgan to get that Union Station Stop at the West Street intersection. This will likely be my first question to answer at the meetings.

The Mayor’s Passenger Rail Task Force supports a route similar to D6 and the Downtown Living Advocates are speaking out for the same thing.

Whatever your opinion may be, make sure to send it in.

by Leo Suarez

Transit Related Events and Links You Need To Know About

Watch the video “Overview of the Triangle Regional Transit Program (TRTP)” on YouTube

Later this month are some transit related events that are worth talking about. This round of workshops are particularly important because they are the last ones of the Alternatives Analysis.

For those that are not caught up, the Alternatives Analysis has been going on throughout most of 2010 up until now. Each piece of all the proposed transit corridors in the Triangle have different plans for them, or alternatives, for us to choose from. (or not to) With a lot of research and public comment, we are close to creating what is called the Locally Preferred Alternative. (LPA)

To move forward with this LPA, you need to send in your comments towards the plans that are out there and these meetings this month are the best place to do it. They are the final round before the LPA’s are chosen. The dates and locations for the meetings are:

  • Tue, Mar 22, 4 – 7 PM | Triangle Town Center, space 1001, next to Dillard’s, Triangle Town Blvd, RALEIGH.
  • Wed, Mar 23, 4 – 7 PM | Durham Station Transportation Ctr, 515 W. Pettigrew St., DURHAM.
  • Thu, Mar 24, 4- 7 PM | The Friday Center, 100 Friday Center Drive, CHAPEL HILL.
  • Mon, Mar 28, 6 – 9 PM | Mt. Peace Baptist Church.1601 Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd., SOUTHEAST RALEIGH.
  • Tue, Mar 29, 4-7 PM | Cary Senior Center in Bond Park, 120 Maury O’Dell Place, High House Rd. between Cary Parkway and NW Maynard Rd, CARY.
  • Wed, Mar 30, 4-7 PM | McKimmon Center, NCSU, 1101 Gorman St, RALEIGH.
  • Thu, Mar 31, 4-7 PM | RTP Foundation, 12 Davis Drive, RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK.

There is no formal start time to these meetings and no presentations will be given. You can show up when you can, look at the large maps, read the information and ask questions. At the end, any comments you leave will be taken into consideration for the final plan.

From what I’ve heard, the downtown Raleigh piece has been the most difficult to fit into place. Trains heading east towards downtown inside the NC Railroad corridor will either stay inside it until Union Station or glide off onto Morgan Street, each scenario presenting its own types of problems. One alternative has the trains flying over the Boylan Bridge.

If you do take the time to look at each alternative, remember that these are just different scenarios and that comments not supporting any of them are OK. I hope what will be presented is promising and that this does not turn into another dramafest like last summer with the high-speed rail meetings.

To further get your transit on, here are some links for you to explore. This blog supports transit in the Triangle and now has the links in the sidebar for future use.

Also, dive into the videos in this post created by the TRTP to promote the transit plan and encourage public feedback.

Watch the video “TRTP Alternatives Analysis Process” on YouTube