Great explanation, thanks.
Helpful to know who Go Forward is. They don’t make it that clear on the website if they are a 3rd party like a trade association, consultants, or who, so thanks.
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I wasn’t sure about this at first, but I think I’m starting to buy that argument now.
How realistic do you think it’d be for NCRR to run their own rail service, directly? The 2015 Comprehensive State Rail Plan lists several ideas for future rail services:
Maybe it’ll be hard to justify these services to Amtrak or to make local transit agencies run them, but what if it’s state-run? The Piedmont and Carolinian services work well as state-funded services, so why can’t we go a step further with that via a state-operated rail service? Maybe a regional rail business model similar to France’s TER services could work for us in North Carolina, too.
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I would imagine politics would hold this up. Don’t know how letting a state-level agency run a service primarily benefitting the Triangle would get past the rural-heavy legislature putting the kibosh on it.
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I don’t think NCRR has any interest in doing more than managing the corridor and its ancillary real estate. They do have some engineering staff but NCDOT is the one who has the greatest capability.
(Let me preface this next part by saying that I really don’t know what I am talking about, but have been watching this for a long time and am very wary of repeating mistakes. I have also said this so many times that I’m probably making y’all crazy but please forgive my need to vent.)
If GoTriangle is planning to do the Commuter Rail the same way they handled previous efforts (2005 Regional Rail, and DOLRT) then we should just push the pause button. Sounds like, so far, they are - and they just won’t have the capacity to effectively manage it. Hiring consultants is useful but you have to have the capability to effectively manage them. 1.5 FTE working on Commuter Rail just isn’t enough, even where we are now, hypothetically 6 or 7 years before construction. They need a full court press right now, with all parties involved, negotiating for whatever they need in order to build and operate this thing.
Not sure quite what the issue has been in the past (Not enough bureaucratic leverage or authority? Understaffing? Lack of experience? Lack of oversight? Credibility? Transparency?) but GoTriangle does not have a solid track record of successfully negotiating with external stakeholders like railroads. While NCDOT is not batting .1000 on this either (eg when the negotiations for the CRISP CSX/NS grade separation in Charlotte fell through), they do have dozens of success stories under their belt including things like Raleigh Union Station and the rest of the Piedmont Corridor Improvement Project.
NCDOT Rail needs to somehow be on board, and on the hook, as a primary implementing agency for this project. Bringing NCDOT on board as the lead could launch this project from the (considerably advantageous) starting point of an agency that already runs passenger trains and has long-established relationships with FRA, NCRR, and freight RR’s. Building commuter rail competency at the state level could also jump start similar efforts in Charlotte and the Triad as well. GoTriangle does need to stay involved, since they are the channel through which the proceeds from the transit tax are distributed, and because this is a transit project and a liasion with the FTA is needed. But the FTA is quite possibly the least of the concerns. We need an agency with an established track record as a railroad - and NCDOT is it around here.
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Yeah, I guess that would make the most sense. I didn’t realize this until I looked at how NCDoT’s Rail Division actually works, but it does sound like the state government, not NCRR, has been running most of the show for passenger rail services in North Carolina.
This makes me worry about this policy detail, though. (click me for details!)
Are state agencies allowed to apply for/execute federal grants to fund transit projects? If not, I don’t think NCDoT can be the lead agency in a federal grant application. Texas’ bullet train project is delayed by a lawsuit right now from similar concerns, though that’s in the context of eminent domain rights.
Besides, to do this, GoTriangle needs to negotiate with the state DoT. But they’re still recovering from its funding crisis last year, they report to the General Assembly (which was already hostile to GoTriangle in the Durham light rail attempt), and they fought and just recently agreed on a MOU to do corridor capacity studies.
Basically, I’m worried that the optics would be like if GoTriangle went up to NCDoT and said:
…and I’m having a really hard time picturing that going well.
From what I found on Google while procrastinating, it sounds like their negotiation skills weren’t always bad, and politics is more of a common thread.
The 2005 attempt actually seemed to have gone pretty far. (click here for details)
GoTriangle went into the CIG New Starts pipeline, got a 5% rental vehicle tax specifically for this project, finished an EIS, and won formal cooperation agreements with NS and CSX on top of NCRR. The problem, according to a former congressional staffer and FTA administrator Peter Rogoff in this Indy article:
GoTriangle (then TTA), because of last-minute changes by the Bush administration on what counts as local contributions, got slapped with a “Low” rating, the lowest you could get. Remember that a “Medium” or higher rating is required for a project to keep moving in the CIG prioritization process.
Then-Raleigh councilmember Phillip Isley talked about pulling out the city’s share of investments in this project as a result. Isley eventually withdrew his motion, but the project got canceled that August anyways.
For DOLRT’s failure, on the other hand, I wrote about it in this post. Politics was ultimately what killed this project, too, though I think stakeholder (mis)management and a biased approach where “it’s not worth it” was not an option played a bigger role that time.
I’ve always wondered about this: they recommended doing just that in the DOLRT postmortem. I wonder what happened to that (or if that was simply done internally, and not as a part of public meetings)?
At least they’re doing the stakeholder engagement bit early, this time, since that’s what the MOUs GoTriangle is struggling with now is about?
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I don’t see why a state agency couldn’t apply directly to the FTA. NYC’s MTA is a state agency for example. Commuter trains in Maryland are also run by a state agency. Plenty of precedent exists for this…
However, this isn’t quite what I want to see. I would prefer to see GoTriangle remaining on as the FTA Liasion, and as the source of sales tax funding - and then hiring NCDOT Rail, as opposed to HNTB or some such, as the primary consultant on the project. I would hope and expect that NCDOT would provide some funding for this project as well, perhaps on the order of 10-25%, so they would have some skin in the game. (50% would come from FTA and the rest, 25-40%, would be from GoTriangle.)
DOT could then hire new full-time planning and engineering staff using GoTriangle’s money. Or even hire sub-contractors (and manage them directly) if they need. And of course they would hire construction companies to build it. But once this project winds up, those same staff could then shift to planning other passenger or commuter rail projects in the state, like the S-line in Raleigh or the NCRR or O-line (red line) in Charlotte. If we’re going to go about implementing SEHSR and the passenger rail lines to Asheville, Wilmington, Morehead City, Greenville, and Fayetteville shown in the state rail plan, NCDOT is going to need to staff up - and this is a way to get that ball rolling. I also don’t really mind the idea of the urban areas poised to benefit from passenger rail lines (commuter or intercity), having some skin in the game in terms of local investment.
Let’s put it this way. The state DOT contributed millions toward building Charlotte’s blue line, while CATS was responsible for implementing it. DOT basically gave the money to CATS (with some strings of oversight attached.) Why can’t that work in the opposite direction, with GoTriangle giving some of our tax money to NCDOT Rail to implement a commuter rail line here in return?
Could this work? No idea. Maybe so, or maybe there is some political or bureaucratic hurdle that would prevent it from happening. Or perhaps the reverse flow of money from GoTriangle to NCDOT would violate some law of quantum physics, opening a rift in the space-time continuum and causing the universe as we know to implode. We really can’t predict the outcome of these things.
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Whoops! Looks like you were right. From the FTA’s fact sheet about CIG:
I was thinking that the MTA or MARC could apply because they were still separate transit agencies rather than solely direct subunits of state governments. …though, in hindsight, I guess that still wouldn’t explain places like the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. 
In light of that…
I guess so?? FTA rules (that I know of) don’t seem to be a problem for this and I can’t think of any statutory red flags with this. So, politics permitting, maybe it’s actually doable?
It could be a good idea to bring this up to this Wednesday’s GoTriangle board meeting or to one of the MPOs. I feel like this passes the Average Joe’s sniff test, and could use some expert opinions.
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I’m not enthusiastic about lethargic unresponsive state government running 19th century technology of railroads in the 21st century. If there’s a business case for rail to be self sufficient or for it to operate with grants because someone deems rail in the Triangle is important enough for us to have by giving it OPM (other people’s money), then let a PRIVATE company like VRE build it and run it: VRE is Virginia Railway Express in NOVA. We do not need more state bureacracy, in my opinion.
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Ah yes, government subsidized roads: the free market solution to government subsidized rail.
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the thing is, roads aren’t an outdated mode of transportation that only a few will use. That’s why they get built and expanded, vs railroads that really can’t be shifted
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Roads are a vastly less efficient method of transit that have been propped up through monopolization and political pressure. They cost more to maintain, they cost more to use, in terms of $ per commuter mile.
The US investment in roads and sprawl is the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the human race. Many politically savvy people have noticed this and realized the biggest QOL any growing city can invest in is mass transit and targeting growth to the nodes around it. The problem is fighting the inertia of a dying system to get it started. A $1 billion road project has network benefits with the rest of the system. A $1 train line is starting from scratch, with the expectation of further investments and eventual payoffs.
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Single-occupancy vehicles are the lowest capacity option available to us (this video demonstrates this in just over a minute). It’s a matter of simple geometry: the more people you can get into a single vehicle, the less road (or rail) you need. Every time we widen a highway, it incentivizes individuals to drive solo, so the highway fills up with more drivers, and the cycle continues. This is called “induced demand.”
On the other hand, adding capacity to transit options, such as rail, is much easier and takes up a lot less space once the initial infrastructure is in place. If you look at examples like Houston’s Katy Freeway, endless highway expansion is nothing short of disastrous on so many levels (climate, land use, eminent domain, budgeting, maintenance, sustainability, etc.).
Very few modernized countries are following America’s example of endless highway expansion. In fact, most are seeking to incentivize folks to drive less. Cars are the outdated model, not rail. We’re the ones who are behind. The only reason Americans think that this isn’t the case is because we literally don’t know any better. Driving is so embedded in our culture that it’s virtually unavoidable. We need forward thinkers at the helm who see a better way forward.
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To sum up all the things people pointed out above: sure, roads work better for individuals and are very popular (though it’s actually even MORE subsidized by taxpayers than railroads, yet people aren’t up in arms about their fiscal neutrality)… but the fact is that mass transit works for more people, more of the time.
I wouldn’t necessarily go that far -but only because the US is still pretty sparsely populated as a whole, and we haven’t sequestered ourselves into dense settlements like Japan or Europe. Until that day comes and rural highways literally make no more sense, I think there’s still a place for cars and roads in American society.
The difference is that there’s a time and place for everything. It’s easy to see the trains-veresus-cars debate as an “either-or” fight, but what’s wrong with advocating for a better balance of the two?
To bring this back to the topic of specifically commuter rail, your first argument about the usefulness of private rail companies don’t hold water.
VRE is controlled by two intergovernmental agencies in NoVa; they’re just as much of a private company as NCRR is. It’s legally a company without publicly traded stocks, and they’re also subsidized quite a bit by taxpayers. VRE (though they do contract out to French transit operator Keolis) is effectively a public institution, and so are other relatively successful transit operators like Seattle’s Sound Transit or Brightline in Florida. In light of that, why should it matter whether a transit operator is public or private? If there’s a need for rail services that private companies don’t want to address, why would you be so quick to say it’s pointless?
Besides, more of VRE’s revenue comes from passenger fares than for the average American rail operator. The truth is that most passenger rail services don’t make money. After all, if they did, why would companies like Union Pacific or Penn Rail have sold off their passenger services to what’s now Amtrak? The successful ones today depend on infrastructure that already existed (e.g. Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor or British rail franchises), make up for extra expenditures through side hustles (see Japanese private rail companies or France’s SNCF), or actually rely on public subsidies.
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Sorry, fair point, I should say car dependency is outdated, namely in urban settings. All the research points to car-oriented development being exceedingly expensive and unsustainable in the long term. There certainly are rural communities that depend on highways to sustain them. But highways don’t belong in the middle of cities, and they shouldn’t be widened every time people start complaining about the morning commute. There are better, safer ways to commute, and we have to start pushing harder for those.
Not sure how many of y’all read this article from yesterday, but this particular paragraph really jumped out at me in terms of how outdated the idea of endless highway expansion is:
Today we are far removed from Eisenhower’s America. We no longer live in an America where 16-year-olds can pay for convertibles with their summer job money; we live in an America where families are saddled with debt, paying off seven-seater SUVs that are parked 95% of the time. Where many Americans spend as much time in traffic each year as they do on vacations. Where thousands of cyclists and pedestrians are killed each year by careless drivers and dangerous road design. Where more space in New York City is reserved for free parking (480 million square feet) than new apartments (36 million square feet per year).
There’s a better way, and Raleigh needs to either lead or suffer the fate of cities like Atlanta, Houston, Los Angeles, and other gridlock-plagued American metro areas.
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VRE “agencies” not the same as government
they groups that cooperate are the same as RDU Airport Authority, which pays its own way and is independent of taxpayers
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sorry, car dependency is here and you’re not gonna remake a city to be less dependent on it.
Ive said it before, but sometimes I get the feeling that there’s this undercurrent on here of trying to build utopia and get rid of cars, and it’s just not happening guys. Cars aren’t bad.
There’ll be changes coming with car sharing and uber aviation, but that’s going to be gradual increments. Just seems like so many people here are “ew automobiles. ew parking. ew roads”
it’s basic infrastructure, not everyone will live downtown and not everyone will ride public transportation, nor should they have to. We’re not NYC.
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You may find that you will be strongly outnumbered on urban planning forums you frequent. Cities don’t have to be New York to make transit work, and people don’t have to live directly downtown to enjoy the benefits of an urban environment. Towns have trains in other parts of the world.
Nobody is going to stop you from enjoying the car bubble you’ve grown to enjoy, but what we are advocates for–or many of us anyway in these parts–is freedom of choice. The ability to choose between modes of transit, and modes of lifestyle, is healthy for a city. Many US cities offer no choice, and we want to introduce that choice.
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Cars are not going away. And the roads we have now will not be torn out. But we can change future development, to avoid turning into Atlanta. implement rail and other methods now, and future development can be centered around those nodes, and maybe I-40 won’t have to expand to 6 lanes in each direction.
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I’m not anti-car, I’m anti-car dependency. I love my car and I’m not planning on giving it up, especially when I can skip town for a weekend. That said, I think it’s reasonable to want to re-make this region so that the vast majority of day to day tasks do not require access to a car. Right now, options like transit, bicycling, and pedestrian connectivity are given slightly better than lip service outside the confines of our pro-development blogs and forums (look at the Facebook comments on any WRAL story about development and you’ll see we’re still in the minority).
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The elephant in the room is that retroactive pedestrian infrastructure is extremely expensive and cumbersome in the US. From right of way disputes, to engineering and design fees, to construction costs, and all the other red tape that comes with it, it’s pretty obscene how much a simple sidewalk costs here.
Raleigh let developers build whatever they wanted without investing even the slightest in pedestrian infrastructure. We are now paying that price.
It’s now the chicken or the egg. They need riders to support these projects. But the infrastructure just isn’t even close to being adequate for people to comfortably walk or bike to use public transport. New development along the routes will provide this infrastructure, but without the riders, no developments and infrastructure improvements.
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