Well, not to nitpick, but we did have a comprehensive plan for the whole region . . . then the wheels fell off the wagon.
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I always had the impression that DOLRT got thrust to the front of the line, perhaps too early, because Durham and Orange were first to adopt a transit tax and it was not clear at the time if Wake would ever come on board.
Had Wake passed a transit tax referendum at the same time as Durham/Orange, then the Wake/Durham line may have come first and Durham/Orange would have followed. But it took Wake four extra years to come on board (2012-2016) so that was that.
Now it will be interesting to see how things shift around in terms of priorities. I agree with @Kevin that extending the Wake-Durham line to Hillsborough and Mebane would be a good start. Chapel Hill is already planning one BRT line, perhaps they will make that one better (more dedicated lanes) or add more routes… namely, 15-501 and NC54. I Don’t know Durham that well but I imagine there would be some promising BRT corridors there as well.
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Extending the line out to Orange County seems like a great idea. I’d heard the idea of extending it out to Hillsborough, especially with the new station being built there, but this is the first time I’ve heard anybody pitch Mebane as a stop. I would think that would make the most sense as a park-and-ride for the people commuting to Durham on 85/40?
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This is already being done with the GoTriangle ODX, Orange-Alamance Connector, and the PART 4 buses. I notice the PART buses being surprisingly full when I see them go through downtown Chapel Hill, and I assume many of those riders are coming in from Alamance County.
I should point out that Chapel Hill Transit thought about running their proposed BRT to Hillsborough, but the economics of doing that didn’t make sense as of late 2018 (see page 66). But maybe things will change in 10-15 years?
Sadly, the number-one route that would work for this is the light rail path that the General Assembly and Duke murdered.
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Maybe things will change and the Orange County BRT can be extended to Hillsborough (and a connection there with Commuter Rail and Amtrak) with money formerly earmarked for Light Rail.
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We’ll see. There’s a lot of money to work with now that wasn’t there before the DOLRT crashed (no pun intended). But anything they do needs to be worth the investment as far as ridership is concerned. The disappointing part of all of this is that we don’t have a corridor that really works for high-capacity transit right now. DOLRT was supposed to be the chicken (hen?) that laid the golden egg for density in that corridor. Land use plans need to be revised now, too. Personally, I think communities should focus on density around their commuter rail stations…this is already happening in Raleigh, Durham, Cary, and I think even Garner. Then again, NCRR has been just as difficult to deal with as Duke University so who the heck knows!?
One thing is for sure: from Duke to NCRR to the legislature, there’s a lot of powerful groups that want no part of a dense, transit-connected Triangle.
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Though NCRR is a tough negotiator, they do actually look for solutions. They did execute an agreement for the DMU project back in 2005 for example.
Really, I would love to see those 2005 plans dusted off for the Durham-Wake Commuter Rail Line. At least the part between Raleigh and Durham, anyway. This would effectively triple- and quad-track the NCRR between Durham and Raleigh. Plenty of capacity for all operations in the corridor, present and future.
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Agreed. This is where the foundation of Triangle rail service should naturally begin.
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(just my 2cents worth) Way back when, I lived in Greenbelt MD for a while, and took commuter rail into DC (before metro) were 6 trains a day inbound in morning and outbound evening rush, with I think every 2 hours during the rest of day. Being was heavy commuter rail cars could run on same tracks as freight. Line was triple, so commuter trains and freight could both run during rush hours with freight using center track. during non-rush hours fright could run along commuter track with passenger trains. Being the line between Raleigh and Durham has much lower freight traffic (this was main north/south line for freight) do not see any reason that would need more than a triple. Buy using heavy commuter cars do not seen the wide separation that light rail requires. The trains on the DC/Baltimore line (switch stopped in Greenbelt) where electric, there was also commuter service from Martinsburg, WV and south into VA that used trains made up of individual diesel/electric powered cars. Seems I recall something about service in Triangle was planing to use the individual diesel/electric powered cars.
Once the commuter service was up and running on current tracks, then could look at light rail in other areas in Wake, Durham counties and other areas. Would not happen next week, but over next 20 years or so.
As for RDU stop, I have flown in and out of a number of airports where need to take a bus or tram over to subway or train stop. As someone else mention to most likely users of RDU stop would be employees at RDU with no baggage to worry about. While not as convent as having at stop in between terminals could work.
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2005 plan allowed for high frequency: a train every 15 or 20 minutes all day.
To me the absolute minimum starting point for commuter rail frequency should be half-hourly peak and hourly off-peak. Really between Raleigh and Durham it should be double that. To integrate that schedule with freight and intercity trains would require more tracks. A few trains in the morning and a few more in the evening will not transform anything.
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Man, I wonder what happens to custom built boring machines like the Big Bertha? I wonder if those can get refurbished and sold. Imagine if we can underground just a mile or two of rail line that would help mitigate some of the at-grade issues with the propose northern line of the heavy commuter rail.
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The environmental studies and construction costs would be a nightmare, though…
Heavy rail tunnels are like, what, $200 million per mile, at least, just to construct (aka before you factor in mandatory studies about if it’s safe and worth it)? Plus unless we go straight into building electrified commuter rail, ventilation and grading will be an issue; if the tunnels are too stuffed with smoke from diesel engines to safely use them or the tracks are too steep for diesel locomotives to climb up, this would be a non-starter.
I’m not sure about the details, but I’d also wonder if the soil around here would also be accepting of a tunnel like that, too. It might not be smart to throw that idea around without looking at the science and the economics of it.
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Well Deutsche Bahn is currently on a testing period with the Bombardier electric battery train (62 mile range). I wonder what the outcome of that will be. That’s more than enough distance for a commuter train in Raleigh. We might not even need to electrify the system just some nodes.
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They bore a shaft off to side of tube and then are striped of reusable parts like motors and electronics. Then sealed up and abandon, seems not worth the effort to get them out.
I guess that I always assumed that these boring machines would be tuned up and sent to another project. If these are being built for each individual project, and a need exists for the immediate re-use, then not finding a way to re-use them is incredibly foolish and wasteful. On the other hand, if it’s not needed, who is going to pay for the storage of such a machine? These things are massive.
If we do commuter rail correctly, i.e. regional rail (think S-Bahn, RER, et al) then there would be no reason to change to light rail ever. We can start with European transit-style Diesel Multiple Unit trains which accelerate reasonably well and would allow for pretty fast service. Given sufficient triple tracking, all-day frequency of at least 30 min headway should be the starting point. Upgrade/increase from there. Mebane to Clayton is a 60+ mile journey - light rail would not the best mode for that anyway, it is a regional rail corridor. The BRT corridors are better candidates to be upgraded to light rail eventually.
Frequent regional rail combined with gold-level BRT is the model that the Triangle should pursue at this point.
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The key to all of this heavy rail/commuter train conversation is to create enough demand in both Raleigh’s and Durham’s core, both residential and commercial, to justify its existence. As it stands, both cities are on the right track with their trajectories, but both should keep pushing for more.
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I really think the key to any transit system (bus, rail, metro) is frequency. People won’t use transit if they are standing around waiting 30 mins or an hour for the next bus/train to come. Personally, I think 10-15 mins max, otherwise I’m hopping in the car. I recently watched a documentary on Netflix about the World’s Busiest Cities… in Deli India, they said their trains run every 2 mins 11 seconds. Granted they have a massive population to move around, but all their trains were packed to capacity.
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Totally agree. 2 trains or buses per hour (every 30 mins) is the absolute minimum to make a service viable. 6 tph (every 10 minutes) are imo the threshold for “frequent” service - meaning the average wait time is 5 mins (basically how long you would wait for an uber). Truly frequent service “walkup and get on” probably starts at 15 tph (every 4 minutes).
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People are willing to check schedules, and are more willing to do so for transit that reliably follow the schedules, which is one of the main advantages of rail transit. If the train comes every 30 minutes, very few people will obliviously show up 5 minutes after a train and then wait 25 minutes on the platform for the next one. Jarrett Walker claims that 15 minutes is the minimum for that kind of thing but others including Alon Levy have said that really you have to get frequency south of 10 minutes, maybe closer to 5 or 6, to make schedules completely unnecessary.
Also, longer waits and lower frequencies are tolerated for longer journeys.
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