The cost will be set closer to opening, but fares should be comparable to riding the bus. The current study will help determine the pricing structure that makes the most sense. Fares aren’t expected to cover the full capital and operating cost of the commuter rail, which is considered a public service. The majority of funding would come from federal and local sources, including the county transit plans that are paid for with the voter-approved half-cent transit sales tax and other dedicated transit revenue sources.
Also in the population growth section they show that Raleigh has a 2020 population of 510k. Don’t know if that’s some insider knowledge, or just some strange guessing game.
What part of the site are you talking about? I looked through this video that’s under the “View Projected Population Growth” link…
…but it doesn’t have that 510k number.
I have a feeling that number is extrapolated from Census projections. People interested in population stats have been getting hyped up about Raleigh breaking that 500k barrier soon (though recent data released just the other day suggests that it may take a while).
We have a whole thread to talk about how much Raleigh is really growing, by the way, if you want get into the weeds.
Just from this part of the video. I know that the census was just done, and that there is another thread, but it was just something that caught my eye and don’t really know where they got that number from.
The video shows Raleigh currently at 510K (2020) at the 1:37 mark. I agree that Raleigh is not at that number. I don’t expect the Census to break 480K, and I wouldn’t be surprised with a lower number.
Thanks for that (and @John for clarifying, too). Looks like the video is referring to the GTCR Phase I Feasibility Study; I found the main part of the report here, but it doesn’t seem to talk about projected population growth.
I personally didn’t get much from the article but nice to see it talked about!
Looking at the headline picture that’s definitely light rail in the foreground with the commuter rail over to the left haha where did they get this pic?
That was the initial plan when DOLRT was a thing that if you wanted to travel from Chapel Hill to Raleigh, you would take light rail from Chapel Hill to Durham and then transfer over to commuter rail for the Durham to Raleigh stretch.
This is from the old DOLRT marketing… I’m bummed we never got any actual eye candy from later on; one of my colleagues left to work on the design of the stations/canopies and told me they were super slick, but they never got to releasing the design to the public before the project went under.
It turns out the GoTriangle board’s meeting on Wednesday had one more interesting update we haven’t talked about: Norfolk Southern came to an agreement with GoTriangle and NCRR for rail capacity studies!
This study will hopefully reveal evidence for how the existing rail between Durham and Garner can support commuter rail (and how added tracks can help with that). On top of that, it’s also a sign that one of the GTCR’s most powerful but least cooperative stakeholders is willing to play nice for a bit.
The year-long study’s authorized for a cost of $500k (like 6 planners’ salaries) including contingencies. 2/3 of that will be funded by GoTriangle (which ultimately comes from Wake and Durham counties’ transit taxes, as we’ve discussed elsewhere), while the other 1/3 is from NCDOT/NCRR.
