Yeah I was just messing with you 
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I mean, it could also be 3-man team of contracted consultants plus firm fees? I put that number just to give you an idea of how much $500k is and how that may not go as far as some people may think; the papers don’t have any breakdown of what goes into that $400k + $100k contingency.
That also tells you just how much governments today rely on external consultants. We could hire more experts in-house for these sorts of projects, but hiring outside specialists every project for a premium is kind of the norm now 
I thought DOLRT did do that -but they really got screwed over by poor stakeholder management (like Duke changing presidents, or not staying on the good sides of downtown Durham’s businesses)?
Still, yeah, I’m glad they’re doing the groundwork in the right order, this time.
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I was always against the DOLRT simply because Wake County didn’t get its own light rail line. So on the quiet tip, I was glad Raleigh lost the light rail.
DOLRT would have hemorrhaged and tied up local transit funds for decades leaving Wake County underserved and having to compete with TIGER grants with DOLRT. Durham/Orange should have gone Bus Rapid Transit from the start.
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I don’t keep up with Durham/Orange County but what have they been doing post-DOLRT with transit upgrades?
Selling their eminent domain properties from the fall out of DOLRT and working out a bus rapid transit system just like Raleigh’s plan.
DOLRT would have made a great expansion to an already matured rail transit system…not the first step. Durham to Garner commuter rail plan that hits most all major work and population centers is a great and logical first step.
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Then Wake County could’ve got the light rail from Downtown to I guess North Hills. Then BRT for Durham. The plan should’ve focused on the regional rail plan first.
I don’t think DOLRT failing later would’ve hurt Raleigh’s transit situation as badly, just because of how the funding system is structured.
They're for very technical reasons, though. Don't click me if you don't care.
That’s true for Orange and Durham counties’ transit tax revenues; each county has its own revenue stream that GoTriangle would’ve tapped from. DOLRT imploding later than it did would not have hurt Wake County’s ability to fund its own transit projects, even if it would’ve hurt GoTriangle’s street cred even more.
As for the TIGER grant situation, CAMPO and DCHC-MPO agreed (in like 2015 or 2016?) to submit DOLRT as the first project in that pipeline. At the time, they thought it’ll be easier to pull that off than commuter rail or any other big-ticket regional transit projects.
I think the idea was to start each project in CIG programs every few years. They did this so, for example, DOLRT’s favorability ratings would not affect the New Bern BRT’s ratings and would “compete” for funding in different years (and they won’t actually have fought for the same pot of grant money).
TL/DR: we’re dealing with a dumpster fire. The BRT Francisco and @Yimbyforlife mentioned is being thought about, but it’s nowhere near as mature as Raleigh’s plans.
Durham’s MPO funded a “Reimagining 15-501” study in 2019 since that was the original intent of DOLRT. It led to a “final” report last October that suggested turning 15-501 between I-40 and South Square into a mini-highway, and includes a single thin, yellow line in the median as a potential space for future BRT service.
DCHC-MPO’s board thought this was absolute bullshit, though, so a new consultant will be hired to redo the entire study this month. What this means for BRT along Tobacco Road is entirely unclear.
In the meantime, county transit plans are being re-done in both Orange and Durham counties, too, since their old versions both relied on DOLRT becoming a thing. Both rewrite efforts started late last year, though, and they’re still working on listening to residents’ priorities. It probably won’t be until late this year or early next year when this translates to any meaningful direction for a DOLRT replacement.
By the way, the DOLRT Alternatives Analysis did consider BRT. Poorly. (click me for more!)
That study’s data and results are useless because they assumed that the route through eastern Chapel Hill has to have this awkward, meandering route from Meadowmont to the planned Leigh Village TOD and Patterson Square:
This is because the light rail tries to minimize disruptions on 15-501, which is a heavily-used corridor with tons of malls and businesses, and not anger all the neighborhoods full of rich, NIMBY residents to its east. NC-54 from UNC to I-40 is another major commuting corridor, and this should be treated as a separate need.
“Should”, because DOLRT’s Alternatives Analysis had the brilliant idea of treating the two corridors as one, forcing the failed transit project to serve both markets, and not allow it any other way. This means the BRT alternative didn’t look into adding bus-only lanes on 15-501 seriously, and “had” to run a route that’s just as weird as the light rail alternative.
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Durham County’s transit tax funds were so over-leveraged in order to pay for DOLRT (whose cost had risen to what, north of 3 billion? by the time it was killed) that it did significantly diminish their ability to pay for the Wake-Durham commuter line, if I recall. At the time, everyone was so focused on trying to justify the ballooning costs and plugging the holes of that leaky dike, that nobody really wanted to talk about it.
Basically it seemed like they were in denial. But the truth was that if DOLRT had gone through as conceived, then Wake-Durham commuter rail would have been screwed.
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That’s true about Durham County versus commuter rail. I read Francisco’s question to be about Wake County’s fiscal impacts, so I just wanted to make that distinction clear.
A big fraction of the $2B was supposed to go towards greenfield transit-oriented developments. I didn’t think about it as deeply back when DOLRT was still alive, but that sort of handout for private developers was honestly ridiculous…
Bringing things back to the topic of this commuter rail thread, though: the Phase II feasibility study should hopefully give us more detailed cost estimates, so I’m really hoping it won’t become the disorganized trash heap that DOLRT died as.
EDIT: I misremembered pretty badly; the TOD portions of the project wasn’t $2B, which is what I originally wrote. A significant amount of the project cost was still supposed to go into that, though…
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Wait, so the rail itself was just $1.1b? Plus $2b for TOD? That project was a raging dumpster fire by the end, but even so, that doesn’t sound right.
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Doesn’t sound right to me either. Last I saw, the projected cost would’ve been $2.3 billion, plus $1 billion in financing/debt payment to reach the 3.3 billion figure.
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Right they were planning an extraordinarily long term for the financing, something like 40 or 50 years IIRC which made the financing costs high in spite of very low interest rates.
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Sorry, y’all were right; it was $2.3B for the whole project. GoTriangle wanted the FTA to pay for $1.2B of it, while the state paid $190M and local transit funds would’ve gone for the rest. I think I was thinking of the expected property tax increases of $1.4B-$1.9B as a result of the TODs.
GoTriangle has this archive of DOLRT documents, if y’all want to look into it deeper.
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Looks like Norfolk Southern has decided to cooperate, per the last page of upcoming Board of Trustees meeting agenda. The latest update is below in italics.
GoTriangle and NCRR resolved initial discussions regarding liability, indemnification, and insurance. As of May 17, all parties have signed the railroad capacity modeling agreement and Norfolk Southern is set to begin work. NCRR has requested that Norfolk Southern complete capacity modeling no later than December 1, 2021.
Also, the second-to-last sentence on that page indicates that GoTriangle is taking note of demands for more frequent off-peak service and level boarding.
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Man, I might be alive to see Raleigh having some form of mass transit that isn’t buses.
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Same here, I hope to see some other forms of transit in my life time, Raleigh and the triangle area keeps growing.
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Picture this: gondolas but since it’s Raleigh it’s actually buses dangling on ropes.
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Hah! Call it GoNdola
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That would make it a streetcar, wouldn’t it. ???