Local news coverage of the ARP funding award:
https://www.heraldsun.com/news/local/article252150863.html
Nothing really new, but does share some details on the timeline of the project.
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This is probably what you’re looking for, @HardeesBiscuit. GoRaleigh got $5.4M from the federal government for the New Bern BRT. This is on top of the $35M that the FTA already promised us for this project, and is a part of the Biden administration’s way to say “hey, your Small Starts project looks promising, and we don’t want Covid to kill it off; here’s some help so you can stay on track”.
Some of us threw around ideas on what that money could go for on Tuesday, if you want to go back and see that conversation.
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Not totally surprising. A shelter is an easy public benefit to extract from a developer.
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Right - I just threw that in there because there was some discussion above of future BRT on Atlantic here but it seems that the city is still just planning for a conventional 15 min frequency bus route as laid out in the Wake County Transit Plan
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this may have been buried in all the presentations but how many neighborhood routes (if any) would link into the western blvd brt for connections and x-fers? thx
I don’t think anything is set in stone yet (if I recall correctly, they’re still solidifying exact station locations, among other things). That being said, we do have a pretty good idea of where stations will be located based on the LPA document, and I’ve been keeping pretty good track of where future and existing routes will be going because I’m a nerd, so… let’s break it down by station.
Wilmington/Salisbury at MLK: Wake BRT Southern Corridor; GoTriangle 301, 305
Western at Saunders: GoRaleigh 7, 21; GoTriangle 301, 305
Western at Boylan: GoRaleigh 11; GoTriangle 301, 305
Western at Hunt: GoRaleigh 11; GoTriangle 301, 305
Western at Pullen: GoRaleigh 11, 11L, 16; GoTriangle 301, 305
Western at Avent Ferry/Morrill: Wolfline Routes; GoRaleigh 11, 11L; GoTriangle 301, 305
Western at Gorman: Wolfline Routes; GoRaleigh 12; GoTriangle 301, 305
Western at Method/Kent: GoRaleigh 12; GoTriangle 301, 305
Western at Blue Ridge: GoRaleigh 11L, 27; GoTriangle 301, 305
Western at Powell: GoRaleigh 11L, 27; GoTriangle 301, 305
Western at Jones Franklin: GoCary 9B; GoRaleigh 11L, 27; GoTriangle 301, 305
Western at Wolf Wood: none
Western at Farm Gate: none
Cary Towne at Trinity: none
Cary Towne at Maynard: GoCary 1, 9B; GoTriangle 301
Maynard at Sloan: GoCary 1
Maynard at Chatham: GoCary 1
Some of these would require some slight realignments to work (for example, connections for Cary Towne at Maynard) and a couple of these are dependent on planned route realignments (such at GoCary 9B and GoRaleigh 16). Of course the two termini (GoRaleigh Station and the soon-to-be Downtown Cary Multimodal Transit Facility) will have connections to most GoRaleigh and GoCary routes as well as several GoTriangle routes. I suppose that they could also extend GoRaleigh 26 to meet at Western at Wolf Wood, but I expect they will instead extend it to the commuter rail park-and-ride at Corporate Center Dr (if they alter the alignment at all).
Hope this helps! I was bored and felt like getting you a detailed guesstimate.
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thanks for that. would some of these routes then not go downtown anymore and just operate around an area of the brt line?
It looks like they intend to keep most of these lines on same routes they currently follow, with maybe some small adjustments. The one exception I can think of is GoRaleigh 16, which will be rerouted to run from Crabtree to NCSU’s Centennial Campus instead of downtown.
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I think the 8 will be rerouted to serve Atlantic Ave
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As a former resident of Powell Drive, I hate the 11L. It is a likely contender for the worst GoRaleigh route. The worst parts were:
- Some people would ride this crooked miserable route downtown (including the transfer to the 11) instead of the 300, 305 etc to save a buck on the fare. Really sad to see people forced to do this
- not sure about today, but the 305 provided a quick efficient route downtown for a lot of riders in the Buck Jones Road area, but it only ran at rush hour and at some point it was only hourly. Meanwhile the miserable 11L? Half hourly all day.
I honestly find it difficult to take any route restructuring seriously that doesn’t do at least something to make that route better.
(The 301, also in this part of town, also deserves a nomination for the worst GoTriangle route.)
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Sorry, yeah, was strictly referring to routes that intersect with Western BRT. There’s a few other routes in the system that are changing.
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Oh my gosh, as someone who works by Lake Johnson, the 11L is one of my least favorite routes, and the bus never came on time. It’s hourly service though all day.
They were planning to expand service on the 305 but pushed that back due to COVID though they did extend the route to Holly Springs.
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In my sorta-periodical scan of City Council meeting agendas, I saw an agenda item that should have been a boring bureaucratic procedure on inter-governmental agreements -until you read the fine print.
Remember the Western Blvd. BRT route that’s about to start preliminary design and environmental studies? That one that’s supposed to go from downtown Cary to Moore Square?
Well… something happened. I’m not sure if this is a mistake or something slipped under the radar, but… take a look at the DTR inset for the corridor map in that agenda entry:
Where did that come from? I’m definitely not complaining about getting a RUS-GoRaleigh Station BRT connection earlier (as opposed to waiting for the Capital Blvd. line’s planning studies to happen), but… what?
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Well then! I thought that wasn’t supposed to happen until the Northern Corridor (aka Capital Blvd) went into service. Not so sure about the routing choice (does it stop at Moore Square NB twice?), but this would certainly be a welcome addition to the system.
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Wonder if it would make sense to utilize the West Street extension for the western corridor spur to Raleigh Union Station?
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Do not like.
Tell me, how is that tangled pretzel knot of a bus route better than a loop, like this:
There are plenty of other loop options as well:
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Side note but ummm Google?..
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I like how a loop looks on a map (and it’d be especially great if BRT was grade-separated), but wouldn’t that just add time for passengers?
I thought the whole idea of BRT is that traffic signal/lane priority and other features were supposed to help buses move faster between stations. But if you force a New Bern line passenger from the Museum of Natural Sciences to swing all the way down to RUS before they can go towards WakeMed, for example, doesn’t that extra movement eat away at the time savings we worked so hard to get?
(Though, to be fair, I get that you really don’t like the downtown transit plan that GoRaleigh’s going by.)
EDIT: I also noticed one of the loops you drew in your map involves Hargett and Martin streets, so I’m also confused because that’s essentially what that map does. It just looks pretzel-y because it forces inbound buses to stop by GoRaleigh Station while going up Wilmington St. (which you need for efficient bus/BRT transfers). Did I misinterpret that, or…?
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Compared to the route you linked, a loop only lengthens the bus route by 1/4 mile - from 2.15 to 2.4 miles
You gain:
- A legible, consistent route shared by all BRT buses
- A stop in all four quadrants of downtown, adding Glenwood South and the state government complex
I’m not a service planner so I may be missing something, but something about that route just seems wrong to me.
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RHUS
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