… if it stays on schedule, commuter rail could open in 2030.
https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/article255637551.html
It’s essentially regarding the infrastructure bill and talks about how projects will be sped up as a result of the bill being passed.
https://twitter.com/newsobserver/status/1457787703601160192?s=20
GoTriangle’s planners are holding a virtual meet-and-greet this Thursday to chat about where you could (or should?) get on commuter rail in the Triangle.
I assume parts of what they’ll talk about will be shaped by another meeting, though: GoTriangle’s board will (among other things) get updates about the commuter rail project on Wednesday. Here’s what stuck out to me in their meeting materials:
Norfolk Southern is being responsive in meetings about its railroad capacity modeling work, despite their stubbornness. They’ve been working with a consultant to help see if existing tracks can support commuter rail as well as what investments are needed to let it coexist with freight traffic. As a reminder, this work is supposed to be finished by Dec. 1.
Key design and economic details are being worked out. STV, the firm GoTriangle hired as its program management consultant (PMC), has been talking with “project partners” about where a train maintenance yard could be built. An “economic impact briefing book” is being prepared, too, and planners are ironing out a draft version of this document. I presume this will help make the economic case to justify building the commuter rail, but there’s no other details about this written.
Station design updates could be coming this December. Durham and Cary have been working with the commuter rail project’s consultants as “resource partners”, and “deliverables are being finalized […] for presentation to municipal staff” then. Both cities have been working on updating their Amtrak stations and nearby areas, and they both started talking about some of those changes this Fall; I think we can safely assume that’s what this is about.
Will Allen III, one of Raleigh’s representatives to the GoTriangle Board of Trustees, attended this year’s Rail~volution conference (where some transit experts and advocates talk about how to make better public transit happen in America) and wrote a summary on his experience. It sounds like the conference typically focuses on technical issues like engineering design or project management best practices, but it’s recently taken a sharper turn towards social equity-related causes -much to his chagrin.
What do y’all think of this?
I can see it both ways… land use, climate change, and similar topics are kind of intrinsically tied to the subject of transit and why it it still sucks in North America, so it makes sense that those concepts are leaking into the conference. On the flipside, as a transit conference, I would think that they would want to keep transit as the focal point when discussing those topics. I get his complaint, I get the shift, I guess I would have had to have been there to make my own decision.
On a different topic (and I think someone mentioned it before, so apologies if that is the case)… I’m currently poking around the ArcGIS map that CAMPO put together for the Draft 2050 MTP, and noticed that they do actually have the commuter rail line to Knightdale, Wendell, and Zebulon on there as a post-2050 project. I know we’ve discussed that as a long-term possibility before, but it’s interesting to see actually listed somewhere.
Also, for a region that claims to care about climate change and walkable neighborhoods, they sure do have a ton of widening projects scheduled for the next thirty years. Hate to see it.
I feel better about widening “existing” highways, vs. adding “new” roads. I especially prefer it if they can include “other” options. (bike access, walking access, bus access, etc.).
Strongly agree with that. It’s just so frustrating how much money this region (and the country as a whole) allocates toward increasing car ridership versus other modes.
It’s a growing region. You could have the best transit system in the world and would still need new and bigger roads here. You have to have a balance of both. It’s impossible, unrealistic and unfair to continue on our growth trajectory and expect no road projects.
It’s about finding the right balance. As someone who works with both roads and multimodal stuff I feel the CAMPO strikes a good balance between fixing roads that need fixing, adding new connections (which in my professional opinion is the most important) and transit.
If we built our full BRT and Commuter plan tomorrow there’s still so much of the triangle who would have no access to it. That’s where our land use patterns will become more important as well.
I’m just tired of the whole it’s either roads or transit angle. It’s going to have to be a mix of both to keep the livability here as high as it is.
I do feel like our transit plan in general deserves more teeth though. Here’s my trying to keep it somewhat realistic but have good coverage plan: Triangle Transit Plan – Phil Veasley
Will is SPOT ON!!!..
Random thought; as we (cities, planners, voters) create TOD overlays for new rail lines and new BRT routes to increase walkable live/work/play along transit lines, it sparks a question. At what point will Interstate corridors be converted into multimodal transit supporting corridors with TOD overlays to encourage density along already very heavily trafficked transportation routes?
Land is a finite resource, and for highways a lot of the environmental/social equity damage has long ago been done. At what point does it make sense to take the density to the transit instead of trying to route new transit corridors through car-centric cities.
I just read the comment about Knightdale having a commuter rail line by 2050+, but like c’mon how are we supposed to actually achieve these dire environmentally, socially, economically sustainable goals if we are still squeezing square pegs into round holes 30 years from now. Just trying to think outside the box. If for example 440 becomes a multimodal corridor in future for example, North Hills and DTS will be well positioned.
I get what you’re saying, and I know you know way more about this stuff than I do since it’s your profession. Widening is inevitable, especially along major arteries. My main concern is how much widening CAMPO has planned in comparison to funding for other modes. I’d prefer a more even funding distribution, but that’s just not how we do things here in the States.
The other question that comes to mind is, when do you stop? As demand continues to be fed, eventually you find yourself with more road than anything else. We can’t just keep widening Capital Blvd or Creedmoor Rd or even I-40 indefinitely. And I know that sounds dramatic, but we’ve seen what happens with infinite highway expansion in cities like Houston and Los Angeles. We are, of course, a long way from I-40 looking like the Katy Freeway, but I really don’t want to keep moving that direction either.
I guess I’m just asking for a little more balance. The scales are still very much tipped towards cars, and we see that with everything from these widening projects to the size of the parking pedestals under new towers in downtown. City council is working hard to level the playing field, and I love them for that, but NCDOT is actively working against them. It’s frustrating.
As a different type of systems engineer (medical signal processing, not traffic), I agree with @colbyjd3: the conversation about auto and transit investments doesn’t need to be an “either-or” situation, like you said, but we have a bias that we need to correct for.
I think this means there’s two kinds of “balances” missing here, both of which we need to hit. Click to expand:
1: Balance in Investments
Yonah Freemark’s Transport Politic blog posted these figures a while back:
This is the sort of imbalance in investments we’ve been talking about. But I think it’s important to look into the eyes of the elephant in the room. Aside for the times between the launch of Amtrak and airline deregulation, we’ve had a big difference in the amount of resources going into building new roads versus new transit.
To be fair, I get that North Carolina’s seriously falling behind in road repairs, both as a state and in state-owned Triangle roads. Still, wouldn’t more transit investments be better here since it could help lighten the load on existing traffic-heavy corridors?
2: Balance in Visions
As I’m writing this post, I’m realizing that our state and local governments are way too siloed.
I’d take that a step further and say game plans for more deliberate land uses are the most important thing for all transportation needs in the Triangle. If we have a huge chunk of our region that’s not living in walking distance to our core corridors, we need to:
Require new developments to be walkable. Residents, workers etc. should be able to safely and comfortably walk to nearby transit stops or landmarks.
Design multimodal corridors before developments. This ensures that new developments can still be connected to buses etc. in logical ways.
The Wake Transit Plan (and Durham and Orange counties’ counterparts) and Raleigh and Wake County’s future land use maps are good first steps towards that. But what if we got more creative?
For example, the above plans list out BRT and commuter rail as specific transit-oriented corridors to plan around, and some communities are carved out as “walkable communities”. What if we did the same thing for frequently-used buses and strengthened zoning laws to require those sorts of designs?
One big but meaningful way to do that? I think CAMPO and DCHCMPO need to get back together as one regional entity, and have a stronger presence in cities and counties’ land use planning exercises. Even business leaders in RTP are calling for better-integrated regional planning, so I feel like this could be politically possible if Raleigh could negotiate better with Durham’s politicians and show that this could benefit them, too.
26 lanes 
Everything’s bigger in Texas 
Thank you so very much for “ALL” of this information! Love it! 
In regards to the quote, do you mean “Design AND build”? or simply have it "architecturally designed ahead of time?
Aren’t there diminishing returns as you add lanes? I mean a single lane doesn’t have to deal with lane changes so it’s X efficient, where 2 lanes is slightly less efficient due to lane changes and vehicles in adjacent lanes. I’m totally making this up but isn’t that a thing? Seems logical.
No, I mean those corridors should be defined before developers do anything.
Developers don’t just plop a development anywhere they want; there’s a ton of questions they have to answer to evolve an idea into a proposal. One of those variables is cities’ comprehensive plans. In North Carolinian cities, the policies and design standards it has like complete streets cross-sections have legal power. Developers have to follow those guidelines whenever they want to rezone or get construction permits (or convince city staff to grant them an exemption).
My idea is to rearrange how that process works, and where transit is(n’t) in the grand scheme of things. From what I understand (and again, I’m not a transit or planning expert; I just like to be responsible and informed), this is how things work now versus what I’m proposing:
TL/DR: it seems to me like transit is still not baked into the city/regional planning pipeline. Roads are explicitly outlined in Raleigh’s future street plan, for example, and updated by default in the same cycle as other policies about land use. Transit doesn’t get the same treatment (with exception), though, so GoRaleigh and GoTriangle are left to do their own thing. That is what I’m suggesting we should change.
You could design the basic framework of how buildings should look, and make developers follow them in return for less red tape. That sort of policy’s called a “form-based code”; a part of Chapel Hill actually uses it but it can be abused to easily make ugly buildings.
All I can say is under Chapel Hill’s normal approval process, which most of the town must follow, they have produced plenty of ugly buildings. Over scrutinizing projects does not guarantee that you will get anything better.
A lot of NYC’s historic districts are full of inoffensively bland new buildings for the same reason.
The architect who is probably the best at working in some individuality within those constraints? None other than Morris Adjmi, who is responsible for the Creamery Tower design.
Who’s going to attend the Commuter Rail zoom meeting tonight? I have evening plans I can’t miss. Would be great to get a summery of what will be discussed.
Not looking so good for Durham’s participation in Commuter Rail
https://www.heraldsun.com/opinion/article255891106.html
Seems half of their concerns with CR could be addressed by making it a 7 day service with decent all-day frequency.
Well people don’t want Bus Rapid Transit in East Raleigh because it will gentrify the area but it’s still happening. Hopefully the TCR can move forward, Durham kicking and screaming.
