It’s never really been that clear, as far as I’m aware. Early planning documents mentioned BRT and regular buses, but I haven’t come across any lists for which routes, specifically, will serve/terminate at RUS.
If I had to guess, this is because RUSbus needed to be designed first (to figure out how many bus bays it can even hold). Assuming the coronavirus doesn’t throw everything off, I’m hoping we’ll have the answer for this later this year.
The city just put out a video on the BRT plan for New Bern.
Great video, thanks for sharing!
A couple of thoughts:
• I’m really glad to see the video, and hope it means that the project is still full steam ahead in spite of the current circumstances (with transit ridership taking big loss in particular)
• Hopefully transit ridership will be back to pre-pandemic levels by 2023
• As excited as I am for the project, I’m kinda bummed about removing the trees in the median of New Bern Ave., even if it’s for a busway. Hopefully they plant enough trees to compensate.
We’ll probably find out before long. Raleigh’s city council archive portal just uploaded the agenda for this Thursday’s upcoming meeting for the GoRaleigh board -but some entries under the Staff Action Items section are still missing.
Side note: the Raleigh Transit Authority (the legal name and the government agency behind the GoRaleigh brand) apparently passed a resolution in March asking City Council to rename it the GoRaleigh Transit Authority. I guess this got lost in the COVID noise, among other things…
Thanks for posting. Looks fairly promising. IMO, to do it right, the entire route should have dedicated lanes, looks like this is about 60% dedicated.
Also, my goodness government takes forever. The tax was approved in 2016. Now we are shooting for one corridor by the end of 2023, which probably means 2024 at the earliest.
Agreed with @Christopher about the concern for public transit post-pandemic. Since we are years away from this project happening hopefully we’ll have the safety sorted out by then.
Which will be the second corridor to be built? I know they can’t do all four at once, but I would love to see the others come online quicker than the first. Fingers crossed that BRT is a success, and we will be seeing expansions to existing lines and additional lines in the coming years.
It has to be studied, then evaluated, then researched, then discussed, then polled, then public hearing, then back to step 1.
as you can see even just from this site there are a lot of opinions, and everyone wants to get their say, so yes, democracy does take a while haha
That doesn’t mean it make no sense, though.
The tax was approved only after Wake County residents first rejected it in 2014 (unlike the rest of the Triangle), plus Raleigh was rooting for light rail until as recently as 2015. They had to redo a lot of their work as a result, so I think we should be grateful it only took 4 years to see this much of a result.
If we could locally fund transit projects entirely by ourselves, then yeah, I think that’s enough information to get shovels into the ground. After all, money problems aside, this seems to be all XpressWest needed to go from “frozen in broke-ness” to “construction mode” in about two years.
But here’s the catch: XpressWest does not rely on federal funding for their bullet train between the suburbs of Los Angeles and Las Vegas. But Raleigh’s BRT is trying to get federal help -which means they have to play by federal rules (add like 2-3 years to your timeline and a few million more bucks).
Probably the western corridor, as I believe they began planning on that one next. Depending on route alignments both the western and southern lines could be much more complicated than the east route, so I’m not sure how much time that will add to each’s construction timeline. They could even be constructed at once, if transit isn’t a fatality of the pandemic. The City’s website states that planning for the northern corridor is slated to begin in earnest this fall, while the southern corridor will begin this summer. We’ll see if those timelines are affected.
It may take ~7 years for the first route, but the first always takes the longest. The remaining routes will have the benefit of processes/workflows established and organizational knowledge gained during the planning and build-out of the Eastern / New Bern route. Even if, for whatever reason, the final delivery date for the project as a whole was pushed out by 3 years (from the current goal of 2027 to 2030) that would still mean an average of only 2 years for each subsequent route.
I also think they are probably operating on the assumption that they need to get the New Bern corridor right on the first try, or there’s a real chance of the remaining 3 routes to be cancelled, shelved or significantly scaled back. If that’s the calculus, it’s likely transit would be hampered more in the long-term by rushing out a poorly implemented BRT than by taking longer to implement correctly. If the BRT (and commuter rail for that matter) is successful, it will pay dividends to transit’s viability in the future in terms of both public support and our subsequently more transit-oriented development and land-use patterns.
That said, I would be interested in seeing Raleigh’s transit authorities try out some “tactical urbanism” type approaches to investigating and implementing changes. If we want to investigate putting a bike lane somewhere we may not always need a plan, a study, a public comment period, a revised plan, etc. etc. before ever actually touching the road. I’m sure there are cases where real improvements could be significantly sped along if we were to just put some barriers up, announce a test period for a few days/weeks/months, and see what happens.
Hard agree on this @Mitch. If we screw up our first major transit route, we’ll prove the naysayers right. But, if we nail it, people will ask for more, and that will make it a whole lot easier to push forward other BRT routes and, hopefully, commuter rail.
Thanks for the video.
I wish they could put the bus lanes on the left side of New Bern and Edenton between Poole Road and Downtown. I guess that putting it on the right side is so that normal buses with doors only on the right can use it, which makes sense, but ispecially on Edenton - there’s something about having parking between the bus lane and the curb that doesn’t feel right.
When you watch the video, it’s clear to me that the lion’s share of work is in establishing the separate bus lanes along New Bern Avenue. Doing this while maintaining operation of the corridor is no small feat.
Also, be prepared for New Bern to lose A LOT of median trees along the BRT corridor.
You’re probably right. …and it’s probably going to take even more time because of those extra trees, too.
(Makes you wonder why we still haven’t worked out a way to uproot and move trees around during construction without those trees just dying so easily.)
In the video, the bus only lanes pave right over nearly all of them. It’s going to be sad because driving that stretch of New Bern is currently quite charming and pleasant.
Indeed; it reminds me of Western Blvd. near Pullen Park. If we’re going to have a 4-lane boulevard meant to funnel traffic in and out of downtown, can’t we at least make it a pleasant experience? The trees add so much character to the street.
I was hoping that instead the road would be put on a diet and one lane in each direction given exclusively to buses, but, alas.
Yeah I noticed that too maybe they’ll be a station stop. And the red Lane then parking on a separate land. Possibly they’ll widen the roads look to be the case in this demo video.
This looks similar the Metroway in the US1 median in Alexandria, which is an attractive BRT corridor.
I’m hoping that they’ll do the same treatment on Western. 2 car lanes in each direction and a bidirectional median busway. It would be SO cheap, no need to even rebuild the curbs at all between the Beltline and Gorman- only build the busway in the median.
…and the slide deck is uploaded, now! (also the meeting happened earlier today, but … …why yes I did absolutely go to that meeting… ha. ha. haaa…) Here’s the link to it.
Quick summary of what they mentioned with respect to BRT:
Here’s where we are in the grand scheme of things. Remember: after the final design is complete next year-ish, the FTA still needs to say this project is good enough to spend money on before construction can start.
HNTB was selected to run the show for the remaining steps of project development. They also worked on major recent transit projects like Brightline (now Virgin Trains USA), Charlotte’s latest light rail extension, and the MAX BRT in Kansas City.
What’s interesting, though, is that HNTB and its subcontractors aren’t just designing and building the New Bern line. As the contract stands now, they’ll also be in charge of designing the brand and passenger experience of the whole BRT system.
HNTB itself will be in charge of planning, signal engineering (read: making BRT work with road/pedestrian traffic), roadway design, tech infrastructure etc. The project manager in charge of this sounds like he knows what’s up, too. The same goes for most of the subcontractors like Neighboring Concepts, Public Participation Partners, and Susan Hatchell. Many of them were also involved in parts of projects like Charlotte’s light rail or Hunt Library, so I think their track record looks alright, at first glance.
I repeat, “most”.
PR Pros is apparently a Raleigh-based firm that “help[s clients] effectively communicate with their audiences and tell their unique stories.” Which is nice and all, but their website doesn’t exactly inspire my confidence in them as the subcontractor in charge of BRT branding…
To end with some good news, most transit projects and studies are being put on hold in the budget for FY2020-21 due to COVID choking off GoRaleigh’s revenue. One of the few exceptions, though, is the New Bern BRT project, so there’s still hope for this project happening on time!
