Seems pretty bold to draw a road extension through two fully-tenanted and pretty busy strip malls (i.e., A&C Supermarket and International Food). Granted, it would probably be a net gain to city coffers if the city bought both and re-sold them afterwards, but:
Commercial land is real expensive up-front
Might slow the process (and here I was wondering if the Western Blvd extension, entirely through woods the city owns, would unduly delay West BRT)
Not a great look to displace Chinese and Mexican businesses, even if they’re in strip-mall formats
Honestly, I agree and I have a bad feeling about that shopping mall. I’d like to see the TIA for the Tryon/Wilmington intersection, though, since I don’t want to bring out the pitchforks prematurely
At least in the Southern Gateway Corridor Study (which this BRT study builds off of), there was an attempt at making the road extension sorta swerve around those existing strip malls… but the study was done in 2016, and socioeconomic equity was not in their scope.
With these practical problems, you can see exactly why it was the smarter move to break up the BRT project into its four parts and start with the New Bern corridors (in terms of getting something approved)… …and it makes me worried to find out just what we’re going to
Update: as of about 45min ago, the full Wilmington St. route is unanimously endorsed by City Council for the southern BRT corridor’s LPA!
Once the off-air version of the livesteam comes online, you’ll probably find this in the 3:15:00 mark or so in this video. I can’t link it to an exact timestamp though, since the City Council meeting is still ongoing as of writing.
EDIT: The on-demand version of the video is ready now. Here’s the exact time when the mini-speeches about the vote starts.
Based on the LPA, I’m guessing this pretty much also settles the route for the Western line as it enters Downtown—it would only make sense to use the same alignment for both services, right?
The Western line (yellow) would probably merge with the Southern line (blue) at MLK/Wilmington/Salisbury and continue north to GoRaleigh Station, unless they plan for it to run to RUSBUS?
Pretty much, yeah. To be fair, though, how BRT is supposed to run north of Western/MLK was already decided back in 2019 through GoRaleigh’s Downtown Transportation Plan. The “mid-range” map in the executive summary looks almost exactly like what you drew.
With the plans we have now, BRT won’t connect Moore Square and RUS until the Capital Blvd. line (the one going through a neighborhood that’s basically planning anarchy) gets built.
For those of y’all who are new to this thread or this site, yes, many of us think this is stupid, too. And yes, we called the city-hired consultants on it as early as November 2018.
My only Con with the initial New Bern Ave. route is the continuation beyond 440. I understand it won’t include some of the infrastructure builds and improvements similar to inside 440, but if your familiar with the traffic in that area, I foresee the bus getting stuck in traffic, becoming inconsistent and missing the time windows.
I think eventually they should branch the line and bring it up 87 as more commuter type thing and have in line median stations at park and rides at the exits.
I think BRT belongs along New Bern Avenue, in bus lanes, in the median- where the people and businesses are, rather than along I-87 which spends a lot of its length essentially elevated over a flood plain.
East of the Beltline, there is plenty of space for it. The reason, as I understand it, that this isn’t being planned already, is money - namely, widening or replacing the bridges over Crabtree Creek and the Beltline would blow the budget. The Beltline bridge may actually wide enough to accommodate BRT lanes, with some reconfiguration of the interchange (but it needs sidewalks too, so might as well widen it up) but the Crabtree Creek bridges are definitely inadequate.
Non stop BOSS lanes for express buses could make sense on I-87, but the density just isn’t there along that corridor to justify the significant expense of on-line BRT stations, IMO
Yea probably a bit too aspirational for now on my part, but hopefully one day we get to the point where all our interstate approaches have in-line stations. At that point, we’re looking at a system that’s as useful as full out heavy rail.
As for the 440 bridge, looking at it’s structure it probably has 10-20 years at best left in it’s life.
I think soon we’ll see that whole interchange blown up and redone. Hopefully not as a DDI because that is really hard to work in the BRT
It’s meh. Not the worst. Not my favorite. Would rather have that over a completely separate brand, personally. The logos are kinda bland, though. Also, why orange?
My guess is that orange is the only ROYGBIV color not prominently being used on another Go brand. Red for Raleigh, Green for Triangle, Blue for Durham, Blue/Green for Cary.
GoWake Access uses purple, GoTransit Partners (GoTriangle’s nonprofit arm) is gray, and the default GoTransit brand (which you only see on GoPasses, nowadays) is brown. Besides, you’d probably want to stick to similar colors, anyways, since different shades of the same color are usually hard to tell apart -especially if you are colorblind or have other visual challenges.
The city is asking for feedback on the Go+ brand and logo, by the way. You’ll get to pick your favorites in the surveys about BRT corridors here.
In case any of y’all were curious, the video also said the study wanted to use the “Go+” name, purposely, rather than things we’ve mentioned here like “GoRapid”. This is because it integrates with the GoTransit brand family and it doesn’t clash with existing services in other cities which has “Rapid” or “Max” in their names.
Ultimately, I’m fine with it. I’m just glad it’s still the GO band more than anything. Keeps it clear that it’s the same system, just an enhanced service.
Next Thursday (May 6), GoTriangle’s Operations and Finance Committee will meet and talk about an expanded scope for the northern (Capital Blvd.) BRT corridor study.
This means GoTriangle and CAMPO wants to seriously think about extending the northern BRT corridor past 440, and move beyond the semi-official pipe dream we have now!
This Wake Transit Work Plan amendment is listed as a funding allocation change for the 4th quarter of FY2021. This is in line with the city’s plan of making this study public later this year. There is no change in the price tag, and only the scope of the project will change.
EDIT/ADDITION: Two days before that, City Council will talk about amending its budget allocation for the major investment study on extending BRT into Clayton and RTP. The Nelson\Nygaard-run study will now be partly funded by county transit taxes and the RTA as well. The RTA’s involvement in this will be interesting, since it’ll help us tell just how serious they’re willing to be with their FAST network idea.
Yeah the terminus of the northern BRT route at Crabtree Boulevard was always a head scratcher for me.
Though I’m not sure how realistic getting it up to Triangle Town Center is by 2030 because NCDOT is going to re-do the 440 & Capital Blvd interchange at some point (NCDOT STIP says funding is scheduled for after 2029 lol) and the city is doing an area plan for Capital Boulevard between 440 & 540 (and what they’re proposing for that is just a mammoth undertaking and will be probably be built out in stages if they are proposing interchanges at each major intersection). Ok, now I’ve spelled this out, maybe they did have a good reason for ending the first BRT phase at Crabtree Boulevard haha
I guess a more achievable shorter term goal would be to build the Six Forks Road extension and getting BRT up to North Hills.
