Agree that 2 mid-day trips is completely inadequate. There should at least be hourly service mid-day.
They literally just ran the model that says the only service scenario that meets FTA requirements for ridership potential is the 2-midday trains option. Until both downtown Raleigh and Durham gain further density, that’s all that is feasible economically. I don’t think people on this forum appreciate the difficulty that these projects encounter. It’s basically a PhD dissertation: you need to defend every aspect of what you’re planning to do, using hard data, and prove that it’s worth the expense, or you’re not going to get the money.
Transit in this region (and probably every region, but I’m only working here right now) gets shot at from both sides: you have the libertarian/conservative mindset where anything that doesn’t turn a profit is a waste of government resources, we’ll never use transit here, we have too much sprawl and that’s how we like it, etc. and then on the other side you have people who think you can just go out there and build 200 miles of light rail tracks in 18 months and anything less just means we transit professionals are all stupid. Don’t forget, we are a polycentric region and each center has different priorities. It makes pulling this stuff off very difficult even before you go to FTA with your hat-in-hand begging for money.