Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) in Raleigh

You’re not lying…looking east 1954…WakeMed under construction at the top center

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I am an Orange county (Chapel Hill) resident that is stalking the BRT lines here. We have our own NS line that is being planned, that will connect Southern Village to the new development Carraway Village. I am really really nervous about BRT creep. I feel like BRT could start eventual Tram lines (If you have ever been to Melbourne Australia their rail runs on roads and is more dense than a BRT could handle). The Tram lines are also fully electric so there is no exhaust fumes which makes it more attractive. So I think BRT “could” lead to trams if they ever take off in the USA. I just really really worry that BRT will continue to have BRT creep (linked above) and turn into slightly better bus lines that won’t get used at the same capacity LRT would. I also keep hearing the argument against LRT because of density, but I feel like car only transportation causes sprawl, where you see in Japan and Australia their train stations are the most dense areas and turn into basically office parks, shopping malls, etc for each neighborhood they represent. I am worried from the designs b/c the BRT has like 4-6 90 degree turns, which requires a light, which kind of honestly starts contradicting BRT designs as I know them. How will you get priority on a 90 degree turn every time? Do these old busses have acceleration times that will be similar to LRT? Will electric busses be part of the plan, I know Durham and Chapel Hill are each getting some busses, which negate some of my fears. I feel like creep is going to continue to happen and how will you measure success. I feel like ridership could potentially reflect low, so people then hate on transit again. Just some random thoughts spilling out after we lost our DOLRT to Duke… and how many people just want to fight any/all public transit options b/c they magically want jetsons cars to fix all problems in the next 3-5 years.

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Welcome to the community!

Interesting link you’ve provided. Some of these BRT creep examples are quite horrendous.

Maybe the local tech community can jump start some new options. From RTP (Cisco, IBM, etc) to Cary (SAS, etc) to Raleigh (Citrix, Redhat…)… maybe something will emerge as a new transit mode with some leadership by the local tech community.

I am interested in the reason for the right turn on South St to Salisbury in the Mid-term and Full build out scenarios. Why wouldn’t the bus just continue down Blount to MLK? It seems the speed would be greatly impacted by the 2 additional 90-degree turns…

Turns out that converting Blount at MLK to accomodate two-way BRT traffic with dedicated lanes would not work cause this intersection is pretty congested already. (rush hour is very slow at this point) So for now, they have the lanes going around it.

That was what they told us and I guess no improvements to the intersection to begin with aren’t feasible. It’s just too small.

Wouldn’t the BRT only be running one-way on Blount? Just southbound, with the northbound on Wilmington? It seems a right-hand turn onto MLK is minimally disruptive, but I’m just a internet forum nerd…

oh for sure. I’m just the messenger. To be honest, I think I agree with you and have to see it to believe it.

Oh right, so when looking at the outbound route, I think it gets hairy when you consider the possible south routes. What if they choose Wilmington outbound? Then I think going down Salisbury could make it easy rather than down Blount, right on MLK, left on Wilmington.

I also think a right turn on to MLK from Salisbury is easier if the bus has to get to Dawson or Saunders.

It also gets closer to the convention center and memorial auditorium, so :man_shrugging:

True. With all these BRT lines, we’ll likely get one stop on the downtown fringes before they go straight into GoRaleigh or RUSbus. In this example, it could be a more valuable stop.

So I am confused with what happens to the current GoRaleigh station when RUSbus comes on line. Is the plan not to merge them and have one central bus station? That would make sense to me. (Sorry if that has been covered in another thread. I don’t know too much about what each station would be used for.)

This year is 2223 and the Downtown Raleigh Transit Tunnel is delayed again for another 2 years.

Here’s Seattle’s Transit Tunnel

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GoRaleigh station isn’t going anywhere, especially with it’s direct BRT connection. My understanding is that RUSbus will be used for connections to regional routes from the commuter rail, with some local routes facilitating trips back to GoRaleigh to connect into the greater GoRaleigh network. The big thing is that RUSbus will be a pretty barren facility if commuter rail drags its heels, and given what we’ve seen with other regional transit projects, it’s always in the back of my mind.

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Exactly. So I hope there is a way for there to be a fluid transit network with two, dominant bus stations in downtown. RUSbus basically helps connect to RUS while GoRaleigh is a more favorable transfer point for the BRT.

Of course, there’s the scenario where you need to get off one and get to the other which is awkward (I think) with some kind of circulator but unfortunately that’s a very real possibility. I’m hoping this use case is very low and transfers can still be pretty seamless depending on where a majority of people are coming and going but we’ll see what happens.

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I was just there over Thanksgiving and was really impressed by the Seattle transit system bikes bus trains but no scooters. We didn’t have to rent a car to get from the airport or around the city. I was so envious.
Not the cleanest facilities but that’s a story for another day.

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Ahem. A downtown BRT loop that allows all BRT buses to access both stations would be a great solution to this problem.

Has any decision been made about what the roles of each station will be? Will GoRaleigh buses use Moore Square while GoTriangle and possibly intercity buses use Union Station? Will some of the buses from each agency terminate at each station? How will they decide?

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Good point!
But don’t we already have the “free” R-Line for that very point?
Let’s just look at expanding/altering it to include the two bus stations. And with actcually not being BRT we can still take it anywhere in DTR?

I think the R-Line in its current form is too infrequent and circuitous to effectively serve as a transfer between GoRaleigh and RUSBus. Maybe if the route were altered (at the expense of Glenwood South) and the frequency increased, it could work.

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I mean I hope they would, Cisco used to have a bike share at one point years ago that you could use between buildings, but it failed miserably, I think I was the only user… out of 6000+ people. Even if there was a BRT stop the buildings are so spread out it’s really hard to make transit easy… even if you had a stop along Davis drive, or kit creek road in RTP it’s over a quarter mile or more between the road and the building. The only way to make it work is to have the buses go to each and every building and it would be so slow and practically useless. I think if RTP is included we need to encourage density where the frontier building is where they are trying to eventually compete with DTR and DTD. Cisco, IBM, NetApp, Credit Suisse, etc are not dense enough or setup easily for BRT or trains.

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Tangent, but I used that Cisco bikeshare a couple times. The third time I tried the only bike at building 10 had a flat tire. I also bike/bus commuted there for years, first from Chapel Hill, then from Raleigh, then from Cary. Of all the spots in RTP, Cisco has had pretty good bus service all along and I remember a good few of the buses being full in the summer when summer coops and internships were in session.

RTP actually has a pretty good network of bike trails so E bike bikeshare for last mile would not be a bad idea. Don’t think it could break even but RTP could subsidize it.

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I mean I would use it but I just get the feeling it would be severely under used. I saw max like 10 people using the trail on a 65 degree day. Maybe if cisco ran a shuttle from denser areas in RTP to connect them all.

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