I can’t even suggest a fix!
The more I look at that Alt 3 counterclockwise loop option, the more I think that it’s the best alternative. I really only see two issues with it: the amount of time it would take to get from Moore Square to Union Station (which would probably be the most popular reverse segment), and the ROW acquisition to connect Lane to West. That being said, the benefits far outweigh the potential obstacles:
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All four segments of the loop have plenty of ROW to dedicate to a bus lane. Half of Wilmington is already dedicated to or planned for a bus lane, Lane is comically massive for the amount of traffic it gets (or lack thereof), and West and Martin can both sacrifice parking, no problem. Plus you’d only need one lane on each segment, not two.
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It makes getting around downtown a breeze. When I used to drive for Uber (ugh, I know), I had plenty of rides that were just someone going from Glenwood South to Fayetteville. This could cut into some of that demand and alleviate downtown traffic, especially during peak hours.
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It reduces the number of transfers folks will have to make once arriving in downtown.
Also, I wonder if you could just have the southbound and westbound routes run straight down Salisbury instead of going over to Blount. You could just shift the Landis stop over to the Convention Center. Plenty of room for a stop there anyway.
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Yes, the time from Moore Square to RUS is indeed a bit long.
As for the land for the Lane-West connection: GoTriangle already owns the land for that connection. If for some reason that still isn’t possible, just use Jones or Edenton instead, I guess. Which shortens the loop, but reduces the reach into Glenwood South.
That would be possible but the diversion over to Blount is so that Western/Wilmington BRT buses can stop at Moore Square on the way into and on the way out of downtown. (Well, across the street from Moore Square on the way out.) If this feature is not desired, then sure! Ditch the diversion over to Blount.
The biggest downside of the counterclockwise route is that you’re making left turns from what will mostly be right-side curb-adjacent bus lanes. This is possible with signal changes and dedicated signal phases, but maybe not ideal. None of the places where this would have to happen are super heavy traffic, but buses might experience some delay if the signal change can’t be triggered right away.
Clockwise options exist too, which gives the route all right turns, but that steps on the West Street cycle track and forces BRT buses to stop across West Street from RUS.
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On another forum I lurk on, I found a little tidbit that should be kept in mind regarding rolling stock once BRT starts becoming a thing. One of the influences of Wake BRT seems to be the rousing success that the Pulse BRT up in Richmond has had. However, they way they operationally built that could be a cautionary tale for the Triangle as they plot out BRT.
The GRTC in Richmond operates a 100% Gillig fleet which currently GoRaleigh (and GoDurham) area and GoTriangle basically is save their two battery electric buses that rarely go past RTP. The wheel profile and floor level on a 35/40’ Gillig is different than that of any other bus being made today - New Flyer, NovaBus, Proterra, BYD, El Dorado, even 29’ Gilligs - and has backed the GRTC into one model even as their ridership reaches the point of making articulated buses feasible. As every sketch of Wake BRT on the New Bern Ave corridor shows articulated buses in use, it’s a cautionary tale to consider.
I wonder how feasible it would be to borrow some of the articulated buses that Duke or Chapel Hill have as a feasibility test to see how they’d operate on the future corridors. This summer would’ve been a great time to have done it, Chapel Hill parks theirs for the summer and Duke uses theirs irregularly. Now if they could be accommodated at the GoRaleigh or GoTriangle garages would be a bit of a challenge given the status quo.
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Welcome to our community! 
Raleigh’s BRT engineering/design standards are being made with the explicit assumption of 60’ articulated buses. The design review poster from 2019 says it’s to “[maximize] design options and station placements for future BRT corridors”. From that, it sounds like GoRaleigh already thinks about where you’re coming from, so I doubt we’ll repeat Richmond’s mistake(?) of starting with a “regular” 40’ bus.
That is… … articulated buses have more standardized designs, …right? We’re about to get to the point of the design study where we’re picking out rolling stocks and detailed schematics, after all.
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@keita Thanks for the clarification and it’s good to see that GoRaleigh/GoTriangle are preparing well for this. It makes me wonder if any future bus orders would be done would be with an eye towards being able to interline buses on BRT corridors to run as either extensions or to run for parts of routes.
My main experiences with BRT have been Pittsburgh (a legacy system with no level doors in play), Boston (a “you tried” bandaid to barely meet Big Dig mitigation on two fronts), and Hartford (a mostly grade separated former rail ROW that was to be LRT). And of those three, Hartford has the best example for us to emulate in terms of multiple routes using the same ROW. Imagine a rush hour only 33X on the New Bern ROW or as proposed here a Cary-Crabtree via Blue Ridge route along Western Blvd. We took Hartford’s hockey team, let’s crib their BRT operations too! 
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GoTriangle and NCDOT are already thinking about that, too, with the FAST network study that finished earlier this year. That doesn’t mean GoRaleigh and the City have decided to adopt its recommendations wholesale or that NCDOT projects have made them a parts of their design documents, but it’s an awesome start.
The Inst. for Transportation and Development Policy thinks two out of three of those places aren’t really worthy of being called “BRT” in the first place, so there’s also that.
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Pittsburgh is an odd duck in which it’s a proto-BRT which really isn’t in many ways. An acquaintance lives near the end of one of the busways there and it is never a selling point nor has ever been. It’s an enigma in a way, in the same boat as Ottawa to be fair.
Boston is just a joke between the over-built stations in the Waterfront tunnel to that the Washington Street routes were a slap in the face in terms of replacing the old Orange Line El. Then again, anything tied to the Big Dig seems to be low-key cursed in some way or another. What other BRT(Lite) system helped kill off a bus manufacturer as the Silver Line did for the US operations of Neoplan?
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I hadn’t seen this map or maybe it was posted here and I don’t remember it. When is an appropriate time, we think, to rezone all this? Before, during, or after the BRT is rolling? My vote goes for yesterday but perhaps others have another POV on this.
Second, New Bern probably needs a lot more TOD here. It’s as if they are ignoring the low-density houses just east of downtown.
Note: saw this attached to this Planning Commission agenda
It also mentions no required parking with a max 2 spaces per unit. That seems high to me, would think 1 is more appropriate.
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My gut says you rezone after at least 60% design is complete. BRT should take priority, and all development should be built with the final design in mind (I’m mostly thinking in terms of ROW, particularly with stations).
And I should say, I don’t know enough about any of this to know whether or not the city can prevent a developer from encroaching on ROW that they might need but have yet to solidify. Perhaps they can, but even then, I think that we should try to ensure that stations will integrate fairly seamlessly with future development, when possible. The only stations we’ve finalized so far (in terms of location) are the ones along the New Bern corridor.
On the flip side, the longer we take to rezone, the fewer opportunities we’ll have for dense development. So yeah, no clue what the right answer is.
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The city and county can prevent it if there’s a project that’s actively in the works and is a part of a metro area’s comprehensive transit plan. I’m not a lawyer, but Durham’s MPO recently had to deal with the exact opposite situation: they had to let go of their right-of-way preservation from the light rail project in key areas.
My understanding of their reasoning was that there are no real, evidence-backed plans for a replacement BRT corridor yet, so the MPO would’ve risked a lawsuit from developers if they held onto that right to build. I think the converse is true, too, then: if there is a legit plan for a big transit project, then the city can use its bully pulpit and hold the threat of eminent domain over potential developers and landowners. (Real lawyers, please confirm or call me out?)
On the DOLRT theme, though, I agree: you should at least have significant progress in your design before you truly enact policy changes. Otherwise, you still run the risk of misleading people’s behaviors through policies for an infrastructure project that might not happen.
The City is doing exactly that with their fifth BRT project: the Equitable Development Around Transit plan. Despite the name, that’s not just about affordable housing; it also includes policy recommendations and planning guides for TODs and station-area overlays.
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Off the top of my head, some of the risks from rezoning earlier may be:
- As @colbyjd3 mentioned, it may enable some development that wasn’t possible before that doesn’t align with or even obstructs the BRT plan.
- It may stir up some local opposition earlier in the process, which may pose more of a threat early on as opposed to later when BRT has become an inevitability.
I’m not an urban planner, and I’m sure others are more aware of the potential risks and benefits, but I’d love to see it rezoned earlier rather than later. I think it signals that the city is serious about transit, and that communities and developers should be planning on it. At the end of the day, if BRT wasn’t happening or doesn’t happen for whatever reason, I’d still think that there should be more density along these corridors. But maybe that’s just my excitement talking?
I agree! The New Bern corridor is the only planned BRT line that gets strictly less dense as it approaches downtown (see sections 3-1 and 3-2 in the EDAT).
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Before BRT! 90% of the corridors have existing quality bus service, and redevelopment is already rolling ahead on some of these sites – e.g., the old K-Mart on Western. Certainly for New Bern and Western, there’s adequate ROW in place. I could see concerns about potentially getting in the way for Wilmington/Saunders, though.
This work seems on schedule given what they promised last fall. I asked city planning staff about it; they noted that the EDAT policy guidebook is already incorporated into the comp plan by reference, so anyone along the corridor is already justified in asking for an upzone to what the (usually much denser) EDAT map shows.
Also, the map intentionally doesn’t show anything currently zoned Residential (R-2 through R-10). The text change under present consideration is only for the mixed-use districts; the “TOD-R” overlays are going to be a second text change.
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If anyone is incredibly keen on seeing BRT happen… and has BA+5yr or MA+2yr of experience:
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Does BSing about this stuff on forums and Twitter count as experience? Cuz I got like 17 years of that
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This is great info. Thanks! I could not zoom in well to see tod overlay and would like to see specific blocks affected by the overlay. Any ideas?
The pdf is all there is from what I’ve seen. I guess you could reach out to the contacts in that pdf and ask for a huge map file or maybe submit some addresses to see if it would be affected. I bet you could post the sites or addresses here and some of us could figure it out. 
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RUSBUS actually doesn’t have much room to expand I wonder if in the future (50+ years?) that train platforms will get a covered roof that also acts as a 2nd floor bus port. See Amsterdam Centraal station.
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Thanks, I am thinking about the area around Lincoln Ct and Pettigrew, South of New Bern. How far does the overlay go? I was trying to zoom into the pdf but it starts to get blurry, at least with my tech skills
That’s an incredible photo! never been to Amsterdam, but that would be a sweet longer term plan. Seems like Raleigh (and the US in general) is always playing catchup to countries like that. We must keep encouraging our officials and workers to start to get ahead!