The airport seems pretty flaky on having any transit on their property unrelated to their bus system. I’m not sure the state or GoTriangle would be able to convince them to allow a rail station to go on their property, which would be ideal. Interestingly enough they’re building dedicated busways from the economy parking lots.
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Seems to me the passenger rail stop would be at the future regional transit center as is currently planned, which I’m assuming would then have frequent bus service to the airport also stopping at this highway BRT station.
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Kinda far - but not for the reasons you might think.
The main development plan for high(-ish) speed rail in the southeastern United States only calls for higher-speed service around the Triangle between Raleigh Union Station and Richmond. This means RUS would be the nearest actual HSR station.
But a station for trains, in general? Like @apbassett said, the closest one will be at GoTriangle’s new transit hub in RTP. When they build that in 2029, they’re expected to set aside space for it to connect to platforms for a future train station.
This will be around 3.5 miles away from the closest proposed site for the exchange hub. …but if the 100 and other BRT buses regularly go between there and RTP, it really shouldn’t be that inconvenient.
We COULD get a bit closer, though it may not be worth it. (click to see why!)
Remember that commuter/regional rail project that turned out to be too expensive? There’s an important piece of fine print in its announcement:
This longer-term work is actually taking place under everyone’s radars. If this eventually leads to regional rail getting revived in the Triangle and they keep all of their proposed station locations, then a potential station at the corner of McCrimmon Parkway and NC54 would be closer to RDU. However, this would only be a stop for regional rail; if a “bigger” station is only an extra mile away, then… well… I think the trade-off is pretty clear.
To be fair, though, this is not because RDU doesn’t care about public transit. The FAA has lots of strict rules about how airport-related money and infrastructure can be used. Until recently, this included rules about how airport-owned trains were not allowed to serve anyone other than airport passengers.
I’m not totally sure what the policy landscape looks like for buses (partly since Boston would be a counterexample of that), but I assume that this (or a similar flavor of dumb restrictions) would explain this?
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For the longest time i’ve wished and hoped for a rail system throughout the triangle. However, recently i’ve accepted the difficult nature of such project(s).
I know this sounds quite lame and sorta disappointing BUT, I’m now in the “FUND BUSES NOT TRAINS” camp.
Imagine if Raleigh/Triangle had one of the best and largest BRT networks in the nation.. Not as attractive as trains (I know) but seems to be a compromise that (mostly) everyone can get behind.
Anyone have any thoughts?
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Unless we have convenient light rail, I’ll continue to drive or take Lyft.
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Serious question: why? What’s different to you about light rail as opposed to BRT?
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Not sure. Seems cooler. It’s my gut feeling, not really a logical argument. I guess having a track and visible stops attached makes it seem easier. I guess BRT could have that but we’ll see how whatever gets built someday turns out.
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I’d encourage you not to actively rally against rail if that’s what we all really want and think is needed long-term. So we just need to advocate for fully separated BRT lanes and elevated stations that could be converted to rail someday. I’m big on building with the future in mind.
Reminder that Omaha is doing this with their public/private 3 mile streetcar. It’s using existing bus infrastructure, not even a true BRT, but using the raised stations. So someday if it made sense to convert BRT to streetcar, Raleigh would be able to do the same thing. I just don’t know what would need to be true for that to ever make sense if BRT is successful (what would you gain from the same thing on a rail?). Here’s an Omaha station from street view (I didn’t get pics in March bc of a blizzard lol):
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Guadalajara had a cool electric bus system that ran underground through downtown back in the late 70s. Today, its a real subway with trains.
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A 3 mile streetcar, I’m sure that’s going to be useful public transit. lol.
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Interesting…you do have to start somewhere right? It’s three more miles of streetcar than we have.
It’s half privately funded by Mutual of Omaha (company building the new tallest building in Omaha, under construction). When you reach a deal like that and the RoW is already primed, you absolutely build it.
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True. But it 3 miles more the. We have in Raleigh.
A mixed traffic streetcar, replacing a mixed traffic bus, is not an access improvement and can be a decrease of access (if it’s run less frequently or people often park in the lane). We shouldn’t build a streetcar like DC that we end up tearing out later because we don’t have the money to build the useful part.
Rail has features that are hard to replicate using buses, like the ability to operate on a more constrained right of way, and the ability to carry more people.
A surface running streetcar often doesn’t take advantage of these and instead often the features central to the construction of these projects are that a certain type of people will take rail vehicles that we want to attract to transit and that it will more significantly increase the value of the land around stations.
Let’s increase the value of stations by offering a compelling and useful transit service to them. Let’s increase the frequency, span, and speed of our routes and the one’s that are still overcrowding (like the 1 and 15), let’s put bigger vehicles on. Let’s give the bus the lane, so that the vehicles don’t bunch or get delayed by car traffic.
At some point, if we’re running big vehicles and they’re still overcrowding, let’s discuss next steps but let’s not get distracted by a sexy technology. We want to get Raleigh more transit oriented, let’s start where transit is already succeeding in Raleigh.
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Wake BRT: New Bern Avenue Pre-Construction Meeting
August 18, 2025
6:00p.m. - 8:00p.m.
The City is holding a pre-construction meeting for the Wake BRT: New Bern Avenue Project.
The City’s construction contractor will begin work on the project this fall. This meeting offers residents the opportunity to:
Meet with the construction team
Learn more about what to expect during construction
Ask questions related to the BRT project.
For more information on this project, visit the Wake BRT: New Bern Avenue Construction page.
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At yesterday’s Transit Authority meeting, we got an update about BRT and it’s below for your viewing pleasure.
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Pre-construction meeting was entertaining last night.
Baffled by the number of people asking questions as if this is the first time they have ever heard about the project. The people asking about “ridership” were awesome.
The lady who started rambling about “gamification” of the video of what BRT was going to look like & how the city should talk to Red Hat & Epic Games won “Best of Show” however.
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Wait. You’re baffled by how uninformed people are?! Come on now. 
(Yes, lots of people are oblivious about what’s going on in there city)
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I caught the tail end/last 15 minutes of it (because, well, work…). Judging by what I witnessed, I’m surprised the City team was still standing by that point.
While most of us are frustrated in general about the speed here, I think what was shared during the meeting was helpful overall, and the City got some good feedback somewhere in there among all the garbage, especially re: the need for clear, consistent communication to those of us over here on NBA.
Here are the slides. I’ll be counting down to Q4 to see if this kicks off on time…
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The link to the slides isn’t working for me