Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) in Raleigh

[keita]

I’m kinda surprised I didn’t catch this when it happened, but City Council got through a few key procedural milestones for the BRT projects in the past few weeks!

1. HNTB is officially in charge of making sure BRT both works AND looks well.

@orulz

For BRT I want design that is […] uniform throughout the entire BRT system

Council gave a thumb’s up to HNTB executing the “Wake BRT System Standards” as well finishing where WSP left off on the New Bern BRT design.

The formatting on the city’s PDF copy of the slide deck is broken. But from the City Council meeting recording on June 2, it looks like the City of Raleigh gets the final say on how rider-centric yet sexy the BRT experience will be.

You can watch the actual presentation in the council meeting recording.

2. HNTB is also, now, officially in charge of completing the design for New Bern BRT.

See my previous post on this for details. Except the subcontractors I mentioned before have their feet wet for real, now.

3. WSP will start figuring out the details for the Western Blvd. and southern corridors.

The original plan in the 2016 referendum was to have WSP work on the basic design of all 4 BRT lines at once. But especially after the Durham light rail dumpster fire, our strategy now is to make sure New Bern gets through the project pipeline first.

…and, should things go wrong, let New Bern take the hit, and make sure we learn from its mistakes for the other three lines (rather than doing it all at once, and putting the whole BRT system at risk of crashing and burning from one screwup).

Now that WSP’s job for the New Bern line is complete, the city gave them a green light to figure out the Locally Preferred Alternative for the next two lines. Thanks to this contract:

@from a city memo dated June 1

[The] scope of services will allow the design team to begin working on critical components of traffic analysis, sketch-level design for corridor alternatives, developing preliminary cost estimates and finalize BRT routing through Downtown Raleigh. This [also includes] support for finalizing identification of the Locally Preferred Alternative (LPA) for both corridors.

The fee for contract amendment is not to exceed: $500,000. This covers period of performance from July 2020 to October 2020.

This means, with the help of GoTriangle, NCDOT, city departments etc., GoRaleigh and WSP will:

• figure out if BRT should run along Wilmington St. or McDowell St.
• how should BRT approach Garner
• how should BRT route itself west of the Hillsborough/Western intersection
• how would these BRT routes run downtown and connect with the New Bern service
• learn about big-picture traffic trends/needs/challenges along the corridors
• figure out if either of the routes stand a chance at getting federal funding help

They will not do things like:

• figure out how to lay out lanes within every inch of the BRT corridor, including sidewalks, bikeways, and greenways
• do more detailed traffic analyses (e.g. to see if BRT could make traffic worse)
• do environmental analyses (i.e. who or what could the BRT projects be harming or destroying?)

…unless they opt to make another, separate contract amendment for “0-30% design” this Fall.

What about Capital Blvd.?

The northern line’s still scheduled to be on ice until this fall.

I’m not sure if this was a budget thing or they knew this from the start, but I think it was a smart move to wait to start planning this leg of the BRT system. The

New plans for the midtown/St. Albans area are set to come before the Council this July, and they include suggestions for BRT spur lines. Plus there’s the really-cool-lookin’ Capital Blvd. North corridor study which is implied to be adopted sometime this year, though I’m having a hard time finding a specific timeline.

Wait, are there two different companies doing almost the exact same things?

Surprise, surprise: GoRaleigh board members were also confused and had the same exact question.

@GoRaleigh board chair Tolulope Omokaiye

So this [update about the WSP contract amendment] is not an action item […] but you all (WSP) are informing us of what you have already done. […]

If we have a [Raleigh Transit Authority] and a part of our job is to approve these contracts before they move on to [City Council] for approval, it shouldn’t have been that the council votes on it, then they talk to us about it like we’re voting on it [when the decision] is already done.

This feels similar to the last meeting we had where they kept throwing things in front of us and we didn’t have time to think about it -we just have to vote “yea” on it.

So… please don’t waste our time. […] Don’t act like we have more power to do something […] if you all have already moved forward with it.

WSP reps conceded on their procedural screwup and apologized to chairwoman Omokaiye about this, and committed to making sure they work with HNTB to have a smooth public outreach campaign so the public doesn’t have the same confusion/problems.