That was a rhetorical question… I thought it was a given that NS is a consistent pain? 
Good to have more data on that, though; thanks for that link.
For all the folks hymning and hawing about the ‘cost’ of commuter rail…
Just saw a report about NCDOT studying making Cap blvd from 540 north to WF a limited access highway. https://www.cbs17.com/news/local-news/wake-county-news/upgrades-coming-to-a-congested-stretch-of-northbound-capital-boulevard/
Cost $750MM for 10 miles - $75MM per mile
Complete 540 cost is $2.2 Billion (with a B) for 29 miles. $75MM per mile.
Cummuter rail Garner to Durham is $1.8 Billion (also with a B) for 37 miles. $49MM per mile.
Love how folks get all up in arms about the cost of commuter rail, while totally ignoring the cost of all the new highways getting built.
21 Likes
I don’t mind spending big bucks on rail. I’m just salty that what we’re going to get is going to have so little utility. 20 trips per day? Only two midday trains? And no weekend service at all? Come! On! If the infrastructure they’re planning can support more than that, and it’s just a matter of funding the service to make it happen, then come out and say it. But they haven’t been clear about this at all.
I think all those highway projects are wasteful too, TBH. But the amount of civil work being done for (eg) 540 seems like it would be like 2 or 3 orders of magnitude larger than what’s proposed for commuter rail.
Acquiring a 28 mile long, 300+ foot wide swath of land, clearing and building a 200+ foot wide highway within it, complete with interchanges, dozens of bridges, miles of ancillary road work, countless drainage structures, etc…
Vs:
Adding a second track along part of an existing railway, inside an existing 200 foot wide rail corridor, building a dozen or so 500 foot long platforms, putting in some signals, and building a yard somewhere along the line. OK, so the rail corridor is about twice as long as Complete 540, but the amount of work being done per mile is seemingly orders of magnitude smaller. I don’t get it.
20 trips per day would be great for an intercity corridor; that would be a train every hour from 5am to midnight. That’s about what we should be pursuing for the Piedmont from Raleigh to Charlotte. 20 trips per day for mobility within a region, though? Yeah, definitely not enough.
10 Likes
A comprehensive commuter rail project MUST come with plans to develop high density, walkable nodes at each stop along the route. This will create demand for more service by encouraging node to node travel for more than just commuting. If the service is intended for just commuting, then it’s not surprising that service won’t run on weekends and nights.
The train alone won’t solve our transportation issues as we grow.
11 Likes
How about 40 per day? Our region’s MPOs found a way to make that happen.
Raleigh’s MPO is finalizing its long-term project management plan, and it wants to adopt the most transit investment-heavy option out of 3 possible funding scenarios. That scenario includes running 40 commuter rail trains per day (the 12-8-12-8 plan) as soon as it has the means to do so. Durham’s MPO landed at the same conclusion regarding commuter rail, too, and found a way to possibly make that and the Hillsborough extension happen five years sooner.
Here’s the catch, though, as mentioned in a CAMPO meeting from last week: Wake County need to raise its transit sales tax from 0.5 cents to 1 cent to pull that off and make our ends meet. Can we really win at the ballot box when people who don’t follow transit issues haven’t seen benefits from our last tax referendum, yet?
Fun fact: if we do end up getting such a tax increase, CAMPO’s 2020-2050 local transit spending will finally be on par with road- and pedestrian/bike-related uses!
By the way, CAMPO’s still taking your comments about this draft plan, and could modify it further depending on your input. They’ll listen to your thoughts if you write to them by this Wednesday. Same deal for DCHC (Durham etc.'s MPO), though that request for emails ends tomorrow.
11 Likes
Is that round trips or one-way trips?
2 Likes
Round-trip, I think. The major investment study and phase 1 for the current study both defined a “trip” that way, so it’d be weird if they changed that all of a sudden.
2 Likes
That “All Together” scenario with the 12-8-12-8 service, service on the S-line, and a connection out to Apex does seem a lot better. I’m still not quite sure what 12-8-12-8 means, though. Also interested in how the Apex-Franklinton service will overlap with the Mebane-Selma service in the Cary-Raleigh corridor.
But.
That hook, though. I hate it.
If they’re going to spend that kind of money on a diversion from the rail corridor, they should spend it on a spur to the airport to make the naysayers shut up. They’ve been saying “It’s too expensive, too impractical to serve the airport” - and I agree! And yet, they’re plenty willing to pony up when it’s in the form of a subsidy to a developer.
If this were the first leg of an extension down to Fuquay - OK then! I’m on board. I’d even support converting Highway 55 to a freeway, if it meant we could get a rail line down the median. (You know where in the Triangle has bad traffic? Fuquay. It’s awful.) But that doesn’t seem to be the plan. This really does just seem to be a gift to the developer of Veridea.
And as always, I still don’t think they have enough stations planned on any of these lines, yet.
8 Likes
Put together a couple hypothetical schedules that assumes it’s round trips for both, just to help us understand how much better a 12-8-12-8 could be compared to an 8-2-8-2.
| Peak AM (8) | Midday (2) | Peak PM (8) | Evening (2) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5:30a | 11:00a | 3:00p | 8:30p |
| 6:00a | 1:00p | 4:00p | 10:00p |
| 6:30a | 4:30p | ||
| 7:00a | 5:00p | ||
| 7:30a | 5:30p | ||
| 8:00a | 6:00p | ||
| 8:30a | 6:30p | ||
| 9:00a | 7:00p |
| Peak AM (12) | Midday (8) | Peak PM (12) | Evening (8) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5:00a | 8:30a | 3:00p | 6:30p |
| 5:30a | 9:00a | 3:30p | 7:00p |
| 6:00a | 9:30a | 4:00p | 7:30p |
| 6:15a | 10:30a | 4:15p | 8:00p |
| 6:30a | 11:30a | 4:30p | 8:30p |
| 6:45a | 12:30p | 4:45p | 9:00p |
| 7:00a | 1:30p | 5:00p | 10:00p |
| 7:15a | 2:30p | 5:15p | 11:00p |
| 7:30a | 5:30p | ||
| 7:45a | 5:45p | ||
| 8:00a | 6:00p | ||
| 8:15a | 6:15p |
13 Likes
It looks like that now, yeah, but I don’t think it’s intended to be a shady developer handout so much as bureaucratic laziness.
Case in point: that route looks different from the right-of-way Veridea is setting aside, but it is a carbon copy of our region’s 2035 Long Range Transportation Plan from 2007. That plan has a light rail line that starts from that area, and Apex’s comprehensive plan implies that the commuter rail project blindly picked up the pieces of that plan when Wake County stopped pursuing light rail.
This draft plan just says what we vaguely want as a region and whether it’s financially feasible. It’s not an endorsement for that particular route. GoTriangle, NCRR, Norfolk Southern etc. will surely ask for a feasibility study when the Durham-Garner line’s a success. When that day comes, I’m sure we’ll give that hook more scrutiny. But until then, I don’t think it matters as much.
My thought on a 12-8-12-8 schedule. Let’s assume we’re talking about the westbound schedule from Raleigh Union Station. Let’s also say they implement the Apex-Wake Forest/Youngsville/Franklinton line as well, also as a 12-8-12-8.
That would mean each line runs every 20 minutes peak, and every 40 minutes off peak. Alternating them in downtown Raleigh yields 10 minute peak, 20 minute off-peak frequency between Raleigh and Cary.
Selma-Mebane
Franklinton-Apex
| Peak AM (12 12) |
Midday (8 8) |
Peak PM (12 12) |
Evening (8 8) |
|---|---|---|---|
|
5:00a |
9:40a |
3:00p |
7:00p |
|
5:30a |
10:00a |
3:10p |
7:20p |
|
6:00a |
10:20a |
3:20p |
7:40p |
|
6:10a |
10:40a |
3:30p |
8:00p |
|
6:20a |
11:00a |
3:40p |
8:20p |
|
6:30a |
11:20a |
3:50p |
8:40p |
|
6:40a |
11:40a |
4:00p |
9:00p |
|
6:50a |
12:00a |
4:10p |
9:20p |
|
7:00a |
12:20a |
4:20p |
9:40p |
|
7:10a |
12:40a |
4:30p |
10:00p |
|
7:20a |
1:00p |
4:40p |
10:20p |
|
7:30a |
1:20p |
4:50p |
10:40p |
|
7:40a |
1:40p |
5:00p |
11:00p |
|
7:50a |
2:00p |
5:10p |
11:30p |
|
8:00a |
2:20p |
5:20p |
12:00a |
|
8:10a |
2:40p |
5:30p |
12:30a |
|
8:20a |
5:40p |
||
|
8:30a |
5:50p |
||
|
8:40a |
6:00p |
||
|
8:50a |
6:10p |
||
|
9:00a |
6:20p |
||
|
9:10a |
6:30p |
||
|
9:20a |
6:40p |
||
|
9:30a |
6:50p |
Really if you look at it, I guess this schedule is more like 1-11-8-12-6-2, with:
1 (early morning)
11 (morning peak)
8 (midday)
12 (afternoon peak)
2 (late night)
But writing it as 12-8-12-8 certainly looks clearer and is possibly easier to understand.
17 Likes
Ah man, I love this. Excellent job.
Edit: it got better!
2 Likes
This is absolutely amazing! Thank you for coming up with this. Hopefully GoTriangle et al. are lurking on the forums.
2 Likes
I doubt it, sadly. When @dtraleigh and I helped GoTriangle’s senior staff set up that account for that AMA over Zoom, I got the vibe that it may not be their forte, and they also saw it as a one-off engagement.
As for younger individual GoTriangle planners who are on this project, though? I can’t comment on that, but some of them did seem to be aware of our community and called Leo a “minor celebrity”.
12 Likes
Will this affect any passenger rail projects if it goes through?
https://www.bizjournals.com/triangle/news/2021/12/15/csx-lee-county-land-buy.html
I doubt it. These type of rail yards are on every line.
1 Like
I don’t think it should be a problem for future rail, either. It sounds like the site CSX wants is this area between Sanford and Moncure, so it’s not even near any commuter rail projects that are seriously being planned.
But I wonder if this could fire up more demand for urban development and intercity transit, though? This project would obviously attract more people and jobs to Chatham and Lee counties, and make them a part of the greater Triangle economy.
2 Likes
I’m going to go the other way and suggest that it could be very important for the S-line buyout. CSX has a decent sized, underutilized yard on prime real estate in Raleigh that would sell for a killing. If they were to sell the S-line and the yard, they’d need to relocate that yard capacity somewhere else.
The fact that this is between Sanford and Moncure is significant; if they were to sell, they’d probably sell from Moncure to the Virginia state line. So this yard would give them a new base of operations near the end of the line that they own.
10 Likes