I saw a Facebook post with a photo of one of the new articulated buses at GoRaleigh station, and a person commented that they are training drivers in order to begin using these buses on the 1 and 15 routes starting in September.
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Sometimes negativity doesn’t get circled back to, so I’ll risk being obnoxious here and point out:
Eastern BRT got a bid (phase 1 at least) and those bendy busses are apparently not gonna sit and rot indefinitely.
Doesn’t feel too long ago we bullied a councilperson off the site about those two things (please note I say this tongue in cheek).
Anyway, food for thought!
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Yes it’s rather strange that affordable housing projects have surface parking, it should be affordable housing has no surface parking but is near employment hubs, transit options, and possibly a public parking structure.
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Depends how you look at it. I’m thrilled BRT is starting and glad I was wrong about the bids (although they were all over budget). But honestly, it felt like a kick in the butt was needed for this project, there was seemingly no fire lit, no consistent updates happening, and once the discussion came about here, I (and hopefully everyone else) had more confidence that something was going to happen sooner rather than later, and it did.
You can always @ me. Saying it’s tongue in cheek doesn’t make it less passive aggressive lol. And bully is the wrong characterization, that’s not what happened. We had a discussion about BRT and didn’t see eye to eye at all. But no I didn’t bully anyone.
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The more I think about it, let’s go ahead and pull receipts, I’m sure chat gpt can help and people here love using that. You’re setting a good precedent here. But I’m not going to accept being the poster person for forum negativity when I’m 99% positive and this was the one project I soured on. Seriously?
Everyone’s disappointed Jonathan left, got it.
But please, 2025 was the year “no new residential projects were going to break ground” and “the amphitheater is moving.” I’m not sure we want to go down this road.
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I probably shouldn’t have posted that at all. I really didn’t mean ‘bully’ seriously. It was meant as a nudge, not an attack, which is basically impossible to do right on a text forum, so that’s my mistake. I also didn’t remember who was involved in that interaction to begin with.
Anyway, I think I probably did the wrong thing here, and I apologize for my lack of tact and the passive aggression.
I still want to highlight that things weren’t so gloomy as they seemed, and for whatever reason our available council representative was unwilling or unable to shed any light on that in advance, but the project is still moving. Unfortunately that means there may not be many tea leaves for us to read, and we may ultimately just have to decide whether we trust our representatives based on known factors and let that trust inform how we respond to silence in the unknown. Of course, perhaps there was also opportunity for more transparency here.
(In retrospect this last paragraph was all I needed to post, wasn’t it… My bad).
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I heard that they were hesitant to start operating them on the 15 as it would “start the project” with regards to New Bern BRT but staff might have figured out a path to operate them. I did hear that they’re coming to the 1 though.
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Janet Cowell shared a rendering of a bus transfer facility near the airport on I-40 to her Instagram today. Is this just a pie-in-the-sky proposal or have plans already included something like this happening?
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I wouldn’t call it a pie in the sky proposal per se but the State through the FAST study is looking into this idea.
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Joe Milazzo at RTA is very serious about pushing this project forward…Busses able to quickly come off the interstate to drop passengers here and continue onward + very frequent circulators from those busses bringing pax here to RDU.
At least, that was my understanding of it.
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Just for clarification, that’s the Regional Transportation Alliance (local private business stakeholders) and not the Raleigh Transit Authority.
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Considering they are just completely rebuilt the Aviation Parkway interchange, and the Airport Blvd interchange upgrade is about to wrap up, I don’t see this happening anytime soon. Unless this would be its own exit just for busses.
I would love to see this, but I think this ship has sailed. At least for now.
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It would be for busses only with intent of allowing busses to connect to RDU shuttles quickly, without having to spend time making the time consuming loop through the terminals, speeding up commute times for riders that aren’t headed to the airport.
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Clockwise roundabout… lol. That’s gonna be a tough left turn depending on how big the RDU shuttle will be.
In all seriousness though, that is a brilliant design for this bus station.
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Another interesting slide from the release that has been highly anticipated. BRT near the fairgrounds/arena district.
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Wow, this would be absolutely phenomenal.
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This project would be more complex than it looks. The I-40 median between EB and WB lanes as it exists today is not wide enough to support two bus lanes. Worse, the Harrison, Reedy Creek, Aviation Parkway, and Airport Road overpasses have piers in the median. This project would require a lot of concrete work that extends on either side of the proposed access point for quite a distance. If you rebuild only the I-40 lanes in the immediate vicinity of the proposed access point, you’d have a challenge for bus drivers to weave between the outermost lanes and the innermost lanes during rush hour.
It looks great on paper but I question how feasible this really is, without an expenditure of mid 8-figures.
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Yeah FAST is just looking at the implementation of transit when I-40 is widened again. It will probably end up looking like Hwy 401 in Toronto. Separated auxiliary lanes (2-3) for local traffic and non-tolled express lanes (4 like I-40 is now) for through traffic, with exits only for other interstates.
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For those keeping score, the FAST buses proposal is the same group of proposals as the one for extending BRT lines to the state fairgrounds, per the density/sprawl thread. Here’s the full slide deck if you’re interested!
Another thing to remember is that NCDOT is also using the Triangle as a guinea pig for potentially making FAST (i.e. BRT-friendly) bus infrastructure into standard practices that can be deployed throughout all of North Carolina. This is probably one of the reasons why NCDOT is heavily involved in this study.
Zooming in on the RDU-specific proposal:
As @CivilFuture pointed out, the whole point of FAST bus infrastructure is to build them whenever road expansions or upgrades are already happening. This is exactly why NCDOT is involved.
This is why the proposal has ramps both on the shoulders and median: buses are just expected to use whichever ones they can access more easily. See this diagram from the slide deck (the yellow lanes are BOSS lanes - i.e. the highway shoulder where buses can run):
The presentation specifically suggests these three places for this exchange station:
The location on the right fits best with RDU’s upcoming expansion of Park Economy 3 lot (which is the only known construction plan around here that could be relevant), as well as the Vision 2040 plan where it comes from. If it’s either of the other two locations, this would also involve new roadwork for those circulators, too.
Anyways, this obviously brings RDU much closer to our public transit network, shutting down the “they need to bring trains to RDU” crowd once and for all! But according to the RTA, there are many more benefits than just those.
Click here to see what the more interesting ones are!
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By allowing buses to briefly pause at the station over the Interstate and then easily return to the freeway, the location allows essentially any current or future bus or transit route that traverses I-40 to become an airport route.
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Locating the station in the center of a roundabout over the freeway, with buses rotating clockwise, ensures that bus or other doors will be on the right side, adjacent to the exchange station – which ensures that transit users can immediately enter the station without either waiting outside or crossing active traffic.
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By keeping buses on the interstate, and away from the terminals, the location frees up valuable terminal curb space.
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The exchange station will be connected with the terminal area by dedicated, frequent, RDU shuttles that will simplify campus travel. Those shuttles may be electric and/or autonomous.
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The number, frequency, and operating agencies serving the station can change throughout the day/over time.
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The station can [be] served by some or all of the proposed BOSS and DMSS ramps initially. As long as one set of BOSS ramps are in place (e.g., westbound BOSS ramps), the station can activate, with access to I-40 west from the other direction of I-40 and/or from RDU shuttles via the adjacent interchanges/U-turns as needed.
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The attractive appearance of the exchange station is still very important. It will be iconic and prominent, easily visible, and serve as a recognized marker for this connected region and as a point of regional civic pride.
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While there won’t be a single BRT or transit hub for this polycentric region as it develops a regionwide BRT network, with 10+ BRT corridors along streets, freeways, and arterials, the central, prominent location and iconic appearance of the RDU exchange station will make it a centerpiece of regional transit and transportation.
…and as a result, per the RTA:
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Asking as a laymen for this topic but how far is this (or these) proposed station(s) from future HSR? Seems like a hub like this could be a great place for a commuter rail stop as well. Everyone (people even less educated than I) think rail has to go TO or THROUGH the airport given it’s geographical location to Raleigh/Durm but a station like this where rail drops off/picks up with frequent bus connections seems logical to me. (?)
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