And here is the list of short term bike/ped improvements:
Also, the full proposed recommendations map has the wrong colors, it’s missing proposed separated bike lanes, lane reductions, etc. Here are the zoomed in maps that are correct:
Am I the only one concerned about the BRT line extending further east beyond Wake Med?
I’m not implying no bus service extend to those areas, but I fear this will jeopardize the consistent times of the whole BRT in general.
The difference between 10am crossing 440 and 5:15pm after work are very different traffic scenarios to navigate, and navigate within certain time frames to arrive on time at the remaining stops.
I may misunderstand your concern, but isn’t that why the BRT incorporates signal priority and dedicated lanes?
This area is my main concern, I was under the impression this thoroughfare over 440 was unable to get a dedicated lanes and signal priority due to space on the bridge.
I think it’s less “space on the bridge” and more “NCDOT refuses to take space away from cars,” but yeah, you’re correct, the route moves in mixed traffic east of Sunnybrook Rd, though I believe they’re still planning to work in some signal priority.
Unfortunately, this is probably the segment that would have needed dedicated lanes the most, but NCDOT was not going to let that fly, so the City is doing what they can with what they have. I expect there will be issues from time to time, but it is a short segment, and it’s still going to be an upgrade from the existing service, so I’m not too terribly worried.
If I’m not mistaken, they’re hoping that a future NCDOT might be more friendly to this sort of thing, and, if that day does come, they’ll try to add dedicated lanes to this segment as well.
with the red sign some of that seemed a bit splatter-gun to me. pedestrian first i think should be much more site/location specific. new bern is bordered by a lot of sfh areas. granted when i lived in longview in the 80s we walked alot and crossed new bern ave a lot on foot…fine, metered crosswalk would help here and there. maybe thats what they mean. i dont know how meaningful affordable housing schemes work. from years back i recall that asheville had comparitivley lax zoning plans from old timers there when i lived there years ago (90s…but the zoning scheme wednt back much further), whether it helped balance housig prices i dont know for sure.
shared use path if doable looks juicy
The Routes Committee of the board overseeing GoRaleigh met today, and heard updates from transit consultants at HDR who are figuring out whether it’s worth it to extend BRT into North Hills and/or Triangle Town Center, and how that could happen.
Since the consultants started working in March, they came up with these potential routes as starting points to dive into more rigorous design work:
I noticed some interesting things from this map... (click me!)
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The consultants wasted no time overturning one of the options from an older plan for BRT in Raleigh. The 2018 study led to an option to run BRT along West St., but that didn’t make it into this first draft of alternative alignments.
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But instead, an option to serve some interesting routes popped up that don’t seem intuitive to me, at first:
- Going through Glenwood South and Lassiter Mill Rd. to get to North Hills
- Building a new connection across 440 through Barrett Dr.
- Bypassing North Hills and making awkward turns through Dartmouth and Hardimont roads
- Using US-401 to bypass Triangle Town Center and other future key developments along Capital Blvd. to get to Wake Tech’s northern campus
Speaking of that Wake Tech connection…
Remember, though, that this is still month 1 or 2 in an 18-month process; a bunch of engineering simulations, market analyses, and investigations on land use need to happen before we know which of these routes, if any, can be useful for a meaningful number of residents and workers as BRT. For example:
Here’s the timeline they’ve proposed for this project:
Now - Summer 2022: find and eliminate alignments with fatal flaws. This seems to mean that, if any combination of lines drawn in red cannot support buses or frequent BRT services, this is when they’d get eliminated from further consideration.
Summer - Fall 2022: refine and compare (screen) alternatives without fatal flaws. The remaining potential BRT routes will be refined further (e.g. sketching out just what it takes to extend Six Forks Rd. towards Capital Blvd.), and compared against each other. This alternatives analysis will conclude this Fall, when the consultants will hopefully come up with a shorter list of a couple of potentially viable options for BRT to the north of downtown. We’ll get to chime in about which alternatives we (dis)like at the end of this phase of work.
Winter 2022 - Spring 2023: screen the most promising alternatives in more detail. Standardized ridership models, cost estimates, analyses on land use and opportunities for transit-friendly developments etc. will be used to predict how each of the remaining routes could score in the Federal Transit Administration’s priority ranking for funding transit projects. If the screening process feels weird or there are counterintuitive results from this work, the city will ask us to show 'em where it hurts at the end of this phase.
Spring - Summer 2023: figure out which route(s), if any, work the best, and how they should be developed in phases. The feds won’t even consider projects for funding unless it scores above a certain threshold, so this will be important so that we know how to put our best foot forward. The city knows this leg of the BRT system will be the most expensive and complex, so it’s pretty much assumed that this will happen in phases -but we won’t know how that’ll happen until we get to this point. Once the general public and leaders at GoRaleigh and city council approve of the results of this step, that will be the big game plan for the northern corridor(s?) of BRT in Raleigh.
Late 2023 - Mid/Late 2020s: develop a more detailed business case, engineering designs, and land use plans? If this study shows that it makes sense to build BRT to North Hills and Triangle Town Center, we’ll have a vision of such a service at this point. But a lot more still needs to happen before it can be shovel-ready -physically, socially, financially, and politically- so construction probably can’t happen until the late 2020s (some CAMPO documents say 2029, but we’ll see if we can actually meet that goal on time).
Thanks for the update Keita! Coming from a daily GoRaleigh commuter I will tell y’all the current route from dtr to triangle town center (route 1) which already runs frequently (15min) is a very VERY crowded route so in my opinion GoRaleigh should definitely focus on the most direct route between the two in order to alleviate bus congestion. (even with a bus coming every 15 min the seats still run out nearly every time leaving only limited standing room)
BRT to north hills sounds verry nice and I would love to see it but just from my own experience, ridership just doesn’t support it as of now. I’ve ridden the bus to north hills probably a half dozen times in the past year and every time I do there’s only like 5-6 people riding with me. compared to the route to triangle town center which is packed. I don’t have the direct link with me but there are current and working plans to increase the frequency of bus service to nh as well as build a new terminal which I’m sure will help add ridership but let’s do that first and see how people respond before diverting millions of dollars of transit investment from a route that could really use it (route 1)
The main problem I would have with the route to NH via Lassiter Mill is that it’s all (R-4). I would assume this route would not support frequent bus service. I will also add that it is in the plan to change the 16 bus route to run 15 minutes between NH and NC State.
With the NH route to East NH, that would at least add a stop for the apartments at East Six Forks and Atlantic. There’s already going to be 340 additional units added in (project link).
Going to TTC makes the most sense however I don’t believe the section to Wake Tech is a high performing route. I’ve only ridden it at night for a night class. I had to get picked up after. The 24L also isn’t one of the best performing routes by Riders Per Hour. March 22 it sat at 9.5/hr; That puts it in the bottom 4 non-subsidized routes. The 25L was the lowest at 5.3 riders per hour (Non subsidized routes). Numbers
To which proposed route? Manor and the new building would be within walking distance to the future 8/14 routes.
A diversion or loop up Meadowfield Dr and Meadow Wood Dr would hit the apartments there as well and link them to the network which could be well needed.
I hope they nix the Glenwood/Lassiter Mill option. There’s almost no TOD opportunity along that route. Assuming they’re planning to split this into two routes, and basing this solely on TOD opportunities, here’s what I’d do:
- Straight shot up Capital to TTC, with possible future extension to Wake Tech (not a priority initially, though).
- Split off at Atlantic to get to North Hills, then Six Forks to Wake Forest to St. Albans. This flops if you don’t get bus lanes for the entirety of Wake Forest, though. Probably the most critical stretch of that service.
It’ll be interesting to see how this develops, for sure.
I think, as the St. Albans corridor continues to urbanize, this route becomes a no-brainer. Downtown and “Midtown” are the only two urbanized, walkable hubs in the whole city. It makes sense to connect them with fast, frequent service. GoRaleigh 8, as it currently exists, is incredibly slow and primarily runs past expensive single-family housing between the two hubs. The existing transfer center at North Hills is not very conveniently located and is easily to forget about. I used to live near the end of that route, and I think I generally saw more ridership north of North Hills than between North Hills and downtown (don’t quote me on that, though).
The beautiful thing about TOD is that, when you do it well, it attracts the type of people who would want to utilize good transit. But it has to be good service for that to work. I’m bullish on BRT in Raleigh — based on what we’ve seen so far with New Bern, I really think they’re doing a better job than a majority of American cities. If we can follow that same pattern for this corridor and pair it with good TOD, we’ll end up with an urbanized corridor connecting downtown to North Hills within the decade (we’re already on our way to that without any commitment to routing).
Some of the best transit projects are ones that prompt development instead of following it. This route is somewhere in between the two: we’re already seeing development along St. Albans and Atlantic, but there’s still plenty of opportunity for more, and those opportunities could turn this into a really viable project.
That Wake Tech extension is an underrated option, IMO. Not only for the school, but for the huge 5401 North development going in there.
perhaps but i bet those urbanizes have nice cars in their driveways or garages.
There are some surveys up around public art for the BRT. Check em out here:
I don’t know if this has already been posted on this forum, but there was a great article in Governing earlier this month about Bus Rapid Transit.
In short, BRT gets you almost all the benefit of light rail at a much lower cost. Voters are still willing to pay for tax increases to support public transit, but they’re much more likely to support BRT projects than light rail projects. But you need to do BRT right by giving them dedicated lanes and avoiding BRT creep.
I think proper BRT is the absolute best option for most cities trying to get their first rapid transit line off the ground. It’s flexible, affordable, and quicker to implement. Plus, in many cases, you can convert it to light rail later on down the line (Los Angeles is planning to do this with the G Line). Every single mid-sized city in the US should be pursuing BRT projects right now.
Edit: in hindsight, this is probably what DOLRT should have been as well. It may not have failed in that case.