What would cost more: A region-wide BRT network when Durham’s plans seem to be nowhere near Wake’s or Commuter Rail? Also consider that in the lifespan of a train car you’ll have to deal with three generations of buses.
I swear that if Durham gets away with this because they have PTSD over Duke screwing them I swear I’ll avoid Durham as much as possible out of spite. Who’s with me?
I won’t be joining you - I love downtown Durham
I love Durham too but their decision making abilities vis a vis transit are very detrimental and insular.
Rail, if done right, would be way better. I’m pretty sure we aren’t going to get it all the way right in phase 1, but if we can make a decent installment without any big missteps, no way BRT can compare. The NCRR corridor is just too good.
It would do as long as it’s tightly integrated with Raleigh and other system. But regional commuter rail from Clayton to Hillsborough would be the backbone of any other local transit system that connects to it. It’s cliché, but it will be greater then the sum of it’s parts. Not sure why they would even consider going at it alone. Makes no sense.
That is the exact goal of Durham’s transit plan survey. The 3 alternatives are not supposed to be isolated options. Instead, they’re supposed to represent different ways to invest (local bus operations, local infrastructure, and regional infrastructure) that should be balanced.
…so there is nothing preventing Durham County from investing in local bus operations and commuter rail, for example. Last May, Durham County’s transportation manager Ellen Beckman clarified to a GoTriangle committee that about their study approach:
I’m not worried about the survey being an anti-commuter rail sign. But I guess there’s this:
I don’t think performance politics has to be a death sentence for long-term investments. You can break political headlocks like that with quick, visible, cheap, and effective upgrades like GoDurham Access improvements or sidewalk connections in neglected parts of Durham.
But GoTriangle Board chair Michael Parker pointed out something more damning: “[Durham’s] half cent sales tax is inadequate to meet the legitimate transit needs both counties have.” They need to invest in local and regional capital projects alike, but can’t do both without cutting corners. Unlike Wake, Durham County needs to fund critical transit connections to two counties -even though they had less than 1/3 of Wake’s expected transit tax revenue last fiscal year.
TL/DR: We’re expecting Durham County to do more for the Triangle with less resources. If Durhamites also see it that way, we’d be stuck in a surprised Pikachu situation.
Is Durham actually being asked to go halfsies?
-1/3 of the project’s length is in Durham (14mi vs 28mi in Wake)
-1/3 of the project’s stations are in Durham (4, vs 8 in Wake) (wow that’s inadequate)
Therefore, it seems Durham should be responsible for about 1/3 of the local portion of the cost?
It seems like Durham people do have some PTSD over the light rail fiasco: https://www.reddit.com/r/bullcity/comments/p6gpys/engagedurham_transit_survey/
Durham has 1/3rd of the population as Wake County so it’s not like they are underfunded compared to Wake County. Is Durham County really that much denser than Wake County that they have issues funding transit service at the same rate as Wake County?
1/3 the population, 1/3 the transit tax revenue, but they are home to half as much of the commuter rail line.
If the costs are spread evenly across the entire line, and responsibilities are divided at county lines, then each Durham resident will be asked to contribute 50% more toward commuter rail than each Wake resident.
With 14 miles in Durham, and 28 in Wake, that’s about 40k residents per mile in Wake, and more like 24k in Durham. So it’s actually in excess of 50% more per capita. More like 2/3 more. That’s actually quite a bit larger of a burden relative to Wake.
If Wake were simultaneously building its Garner-to-RTP commuter rail line, plus a 16 mile line from downtown to Wake Forest on the S-line, then Wake would be at about 26k residents per mile, which is more comparable to Durham’s 24k. Which, commuter rail on the S-line sounds fantastic! Until you realize the money has to come from somewhere. Do you cut back on BRT ambitions? Reduce the “frequent” network? Cut back on coverage expansions like Apex and Wake Forest? Do you find another revenue stream? (Property taxes? Value Capture?)
Anyway, that is the question that Durham is wrestling with.
@orulz beat me to the chase since I was going to write a similar post, but I was struggling with math 
What he said is much closer to what I meant: I wanted to talk about the infrastructure need per capita relative to revenue, not revenue by itself.
One more thing to add:
Not at all surprised. As someone living in that side of the Triangle, I’m still very salty and distrustful of GoTriangle’s project managing skills, too 
FWIW, our counterpart to CAMPO is doing a study to figure out how to upgrade the artery that light rail would’ve ran parallel to. That should’ve been finished last Fall, but they were forced to redo half of the study because they made shoddy plans for sidewalks and BRT corridors and they just chose a contractor last Spring. I imagine Durham’s MPO will grill their city-county planners hard about this topic and make it a priority, but I can’t tell if they’d press it even at the cost of commuter rail.
Thought about it some more, and as of the 2020 census, here is the real math.
Wake’s population is actually 3.5x that of Durham.
So if Durham were to build 14 miles of commuter rail, the Wake County equivalent would be 49 miles - which would basically cover the RTP-DTR trunk, plus branches from DTR-Garner, DTR-Wake Forest, and Cary-Apex. This actually does a great job of covering four corners of the county (missing only the Knightdale-Wendell-Zebulon axis, which also seems to be the least dense axis), but would also obviously be a big hit to the budgets for BRT and service expansion.
Sorry, I must be missing something here?
Two ( 2 ) counties?
What other county does Durham fund?
Orange? (don’t they also pay the 1/2 cent sales tax)
Durham is in the middle of the triangle and needs to fund their portion of high frequency links to both Wake and Orange. They need to fund frequent regional bus lines right up to the county line in both directions, while Wake only has to do this towards Durham.
Thank you!
And just to confirm, Orange has to provide funding for anything starting at their county line and them coming back to Durham up to the county line?
And this would be the same if Johnston County were to get involved?
Please and thank you! 
Yeah, the idea is that each county pays for its share of each project. The funding breakdown depends on the project, though. For example, Orange County was somehow on the hook for 100% of improvements on the GoTriangle CRX route until Wake started paying its share last fiscal year. Durham County still doesn’t pay into the CRX, though, since it doesn’t stop anywhere in it.
Johnston County would be in the same situation, but their citizens have to vote to enact the same transit taxes we have in our counties.
is that really fair considering Wake County is much larger than Durham County and we’re building both commuter rail and BRT between Raleigh and RTP?
Why should Durham County be on the hook for Wake’s sprawliness, though?
(This is the drawback of using a county-based revenue source rather than something else, such as a multi-county transit trust fund)
Besides, BRT between Raleigh and RTP hasn’t even started an MIS yet; it’s far from certain that it’ll actually happen. Remember that our community’s headcanon doesn’t really reflect what the power, money, and plans say (yet).
I’m not really sure the exact process that goes into making these decisions. County lines are probably pretty close to the idealized framework that could be used to start these discussions, although I do not believe a literal interpretation is codified into law as such.
For example CRX only stops in Wake and Orange. It inevitably has to traverse Durham along the way, but I doubt Durham would be very interested in paying for it.
At the end of the day, the counties served by a given route and contributing funds towards its operation make an arrangement that they both find to be equitable, and the service is operated under that agreement.
I know I would visit Durham much more often if there was frequent, reliable train service from DTR to there, especially with morning/evening options.
