Here is a link to the archived web page:
Here is the final New Starts application report.
In hindsight, this was a perfect match for the region. There were some things about it that were not perfect, but by and large it got all the important bits right, and to top it off, the projected costs were pretty reasonable considering what it was. The problems started happening when there were some cost escalations and GoTriangle (TTA at the time) couldn’t raise any additional local revenue, and they basically asked the feds to cover the overrun. It is my tinfoil-hat opinion that this request caused the feds to put the project under greater scrutiny, under which they forced the agency to revise the already very conservative ridership projections downward, which made the project’s rating drop from “medium” to “medium-low”, and basically sent the project into a tail spin from there.
If I recall correctly (Correct me if I’m wrong now folks), this put us in rarified company as one of Very Few transit projects to enter final engineering and not be awarded a FFGA.
Back then of course there was no transit sales tax, and the only revenue they had was rental car fees and vehicle registration fees. If we had a transit tax, it is my firm opinion that things would have transpired very differently and we would have been riding DMUs from North Raleigh to West Durham by 2009.