While we should extremely sensitive to black communities’ understandable leeriness towards developers and governments using “progress” as a Trojan horse for displacement, this feels particularly absurd. Who are these guys?
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The BRT will be going along Western Boulevard, but I agree that it is not directly connected to Heritage Park (as if I remember correctly, Heritage park is at ground-level underneath and adjacent to the Western Boulevard bridge).
Gentrification is an issue, but the city creating more small-a affordable housing (although we can all argue we want to see even more!) on this parcel is most definitely not gentrification. This is a prime example of how the city is running the BRT line beside a large housing complex that will benefit low-income residents. It’s exactly, in my opinion, what the proponents of equitable transit should be wanting from BRT.
With that being said, I understand why residents in East Raleigh feel that the BRT is coming in to gentrify their area. I don’t fully agree that it is, but I can at least understand why it looks that way sometimes. This example, though, is just certainly not that.
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Did anyone attend the TOD meetings? I missed the southern corridor one tonight. Was wondering if anything of note was brought up. Thanks!
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Couldn’t stay for the whole meeting, but I didn’t hear anything that wasn’t already known in the half hour or so that I was there. The presentation was mostly just a pretty quick overview of what TOD (Transit Oriented Development) is and why the city wants to rezone along Wilmington.
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Presentation’s up on YouTube
To comment, scroll down to “TOD Mapping” for Southern or Western
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New FTA planning grant announced. Other recipients include Charlotte’s Silver Line and Charleston SC.
NC
City of Raleigh
The City of Raleigh will receive funding to plan for TOD along 12 miles of the proposed Western Corridor bus rapid transit line between downtown Raleigh and the city of Cary in Wake County.
$405,000
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It’s free real estate money.
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Urban planning expert Yonah Freemark pointed out that this most likely indicates the projects themselves will also get federal funding. Very likely that we now have two out of five fixed guideway projects more or less solidified.
“The following advertisement is intended for Jim Boonie only.”
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Five? 4 BRT and…commuter rail?
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Yep, four BRT and one commuter rail. Though I imagine the Northern BRT is going to end up being split into two separate projects (North Hills and TTC). I believe they’re in the early stages of studying that exact thing.
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They’re weighing the options of bringing BRT into RTP and Clayton, too. They had a small update about this on Wednesday, where they noted that:
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True, though I consider those to be extensions of the Southern and Western lines (though they may not be; we’ll see!).
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Indeed, thank you fellow citizens for paying your taxes, you did good. You got some back.
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Could just keep the money payed in federal tax here in Raleigh and not DC, we could have had high speed rail on every street. We have the talent to spend it wisely on our own.
Not to get too far down the rabbithole of a contentious issue, but North Carolina is one of the states that gets more money/investment back from the federal government thsn it contributes in taxes: Balance of Payments Portal | Rockefeller Institute of Government
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We may have the talent to design good transit solutions, but we also need politicians to budget money for them.
There’s a reason why we keep applying for federal moneys: our overlords at the General Assembly refuse to help. The last time anyone in the Triangle asked for state funding, they went out of their way to specifically prohibit that in the state budget.
Besides... (click me!)
We already fund a huge chunk of our own transit through the transit sales tax. So if we’re getting more bang for our buck through federal taxes as @oakcityyimby pointed out, what’s wrong with taking advantage of that opportunity? By helping Raleigh’s residents move more efficiently, Washington benefits as well: it can create more opportunities for interstate commerce (read: jobs!) and grow its tax base.
We could totally diversify revenue streams, though, but that seems to be an active field of research and experimentation. Public-private partnerships for big transit projects are a massive challenge that we haven’t really figured out yet, as the drama in Maryland’s Purple Line light rail project shows us. Ad revenue doesn’t account for much, and real estate is also such a recent development that GoTriangle hasn’t even seriously considered it -at least, not yet. Transit projects also get overpriced, run over time, and underdeliver in the US, but people including in the Bay Area are still fighting to get decision-makers to do better.
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Oh wow, that’s so awesome. How much went to the Taliban this year. Please, we are getting shafted a million or shall I say a billion different ways. But hey, it’s only your money, lol.
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I don’t want to belabor the point you astutely introduced to this discussion but a state assembly that cared about urban areas even a little bit would result in transformative projects getting approved and built much faster. We basically compete with one hand tied behind our backs (on this and many other urban QOL issues in NC, I might add).
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Not quite downtown (just south of Downtown South), but a new development plan just came through on the Wire. 348 apartments, 489 bedrooms. Not exactly urban form at 505 parking spaces, all surface parking, but right on the proposed Southern BRT corridor. Seems like somewhat of a wasted opportunity to me, but I’m trying not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
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The parking is disappointing for sure. Hopefully there is a plan to add in a sidewalk to Rush Street for pedestrians. I’m underwhelmed by the standard apartment design but as you stated, trying not to be too picky about added residences to the corridor. At this juncture in development, this area just needs decent rooftops.
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