I believe you’re correct on that.
A direct airport link may be the best way to get the broadest ridership base, but is definitely not the best way to generate the highest overall ridership per dollar spent.
What it amounts to is paying hundreds of millions of dollars so that relatively well off people don’t have to pay for parking or a cab/uber ride. It gets people out of cars, but it doesn’t improve the human environment very much.
Rail to downtown doesn’t directly reduce congestion on the highways. They will still be congested. But it does take cars off of downtown streets, making them safer and more pleasant for people. It adds more people on the street without the requisite 5000 pound steel boxes that currently come along with them. This make it possible to build office buildings without such monstrously huge parking structures which means cheaper, better looking buildings, less traffic, less noise, less pollution… shall I go on?
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Mebane, Hillsborough, and Selma are being added to the study since the D/O LRT tanked. The models generated at the last study was taking that failed system into consideration.
There’s supposed to be another report which should be coming soon according to GoTriangle’s website the last time I looked at it.
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Their “commuter rail transit” honestly doesn’t sound that great to me and certainly isn’t what I have in mind when I think of real city rail transit. Looks like much more focus on bus service which is highly disappointing
It’s a train. That goes on the train tracks. It’s exactly what Potential Raleigh had in the photo you commented on. “Real city transit” 
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My opinion… like it or leave it. Visit cities other than Raleigh… and tell me that this sounds like a great rail plan 
Yeah, I like to tell people that public transit is like magic because it does so many things at once: it’s good for the environment, it provides freedom of mobility to people for whom cars are difficult to afford, it allows for greater land use in the urban core because you don’t need to reserve so much space for parking lots, it enables transit-oriented development, and it makes cities more pleasant to bike and walk in because you have fewer cars in the urban core.
Interestingly, though, one of the things it doesn’t really do is reduce traffic congestion, at least not on highways and other main arteries, because the law of induced demand still applies. If you turn some car riders into transit riders, that freed-up space on the freeway is just going to be taken up by new cars. But people don’t really understand the law of induced demand, and if the NCDOT is going to keep exploiting this fallacy to widen highways, I’m absolutely not above exploiting it to get more transit built.
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So, you’re trying to say that a rail system isn’t worth investing in unless you have a perfect network all at once (practical or cost problems, be damned)? That it’s not even worth talking about if you can’t go all the way?
If you have the authority to buy the right-of-way and the resources to create/buy/maintain rolling stock/service/stations etc., then by all means, go for it. You do you, dude.
But if you want to move beyond a real-life Cities: Skylines and talk about something grounded in reality -warts and all- you have to realize that your biggest challenge here in 2019 Raleigh is something much more low-level: making the case that commuter/regional rail is worth having.
It means accepting that congestion is inevitable. It means conceding that you are not entitled to traffic-free roads. It means growing on the idea that there can be other ways to get around -and different ways to live in the Triangle, as a result. It means acting on the window to opportunity that @dtraleigh mentioned because you can’t have better options if you can’t even be good enough with your alternatives.
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I don’t think it’s been formally adopted. I’m plugged into the transit planning activities here in the region (sounds like a humblebrag, it really isn’t…trust me) and it is true that GoTriangle is formally studying the feasibility of adding Orange, Johnston, and Alamance counties onto the commuter rail corridor, but that would require all three counties contributing to the costs in some way. I’m led to believe Orange County’s transit plan is currently maxed out even without DOLRT (that’s what I’ve heard at least) and in my humble opinion gooooood effing luck getting the conservative counties of Alamance and Johnston to put major skin in the game for public transit. What’s more likely to happen is an initial operating segment of West Durham to Garner as promised in the Wake Transit Plan, then the other counties can jump on down the road if it proves to be a success. Of course, the NCRR bureaucracy, costs of double-tracking, environmental compliance, Federal anti-transit sentiment, and GoTriangle’s ongoing circus (I like the people who work there, don’t get me wrong, they’re just overmatched at times) are all impediments to even getting that initial segment done.
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At this point in the game, GoTriangle can do the modeling to see what works with the current traffic on the NCRR main. Then, the permutations and combinations can be added with the new additions to the plan as initially voted on.
From the Major Investment Report published in 05/19, it was a population feasibility study for the proposed stations. Nothing was said about where they’re going to put an operations center (My bet is on Garner or Southeast Raleigh) or rolling stock.
And, we’re still a ways out from being shovel-ready for the stations. Then, Orange, Alamance, and Johnston can start talking about what their share is going to be.
(Reminds me of how BART was viewed by Marin and Contra Costa counties at the time.)
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Again, its my opinion “dude”
The commuter rail is not perfection as proposed, but it is:
(1) in the right place, don’t @ me airport rail link fanbois 
(2) is the right mode (mainline rail) - assuming they decide on DMUs
(3) leverages existing infrastructure
(4) is expandable - new lines to Wake Forest and Apex, and the aforementioned extensions to Selma and Mebane
(5) can be incrementally upgraded to support more frequency. Would need more track but the ROW is 200 feet wide.
I cannot imagine a sanely phased rail plan for the Triangle where the NCRR is not the first phase.
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I wonder how much it would cost to ride from say Garner to Durham and back. From the bus plan it seems like they are planning on replacing the DRX with this. Currently the DRX is $6 round trip. I would be shocked if the commuter rail was that cheap.
Quick question, is there not a sort of commuter rail already? 2 Amtrak and I think 4 NC rail trains a day. I’m sure not great timing for going back and froth to work, but wonder now may people use these trains to get between Raleigh and Durham?
It would be super expensive if people were. It costs ~$8 to get from Raleigh to Durham each way (sometimes more since Amtrak uses demand pricing similar to airlines if there’s a busy travel day) so you’re looking at $16-20 round trip. I’ve done it once in a while for Durham Bulls games from downtown Raleigh but just on an occasional basis, by no means frequently.
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Still cheaper than uber but the times aren’t great.
Yeah I think you could work out a Raleigh to Durham commute (6 AM departure from Raleigh Union Station, 5:48 PM departure from Durham) but it doesn’t work out the other direction (it would be 9:27 AM from Durham, last train leaves RUS at 5:30 PM)
Schedule on page 3: Amtrak
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I’ve thought about it but it’s so much easier to drive. Maybe for a drinking day or something but x2 it’s easier to get an Uber
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A friend of mine commuted on the train from Cary to Greensboro for a while. They sell a 10 ride ticket that IIRC represents a pretty significant discount.
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The 10 ride ticket brings it down to $13/day round trip I think between Raleigh and Durham haha