Just as an example. If we get a rail transit system one day we should build out the best system possible and not just just any system. Charlotte’s Blue Line is not grade separated so its slow and there’s always accidents on the system–yesterday a car got stuck on both tracks in Uptown for an hour. Most cities build light rail to say they have light rail we need a practical system that focus on passenger convenience/experience.
So they’re still wrapping up the Greater Triangle Commuter Rail Phase 2 study, but I managed to find a story map of the findings. I expect they’ll be adding to it over the next few weeks/months, but here’s what I’ve learned so far:
- They’ve identified a few pain points on the corridor, but only one of them is considered high risk: Raleigh Union Station. There’s a few reasons mentioned as to why that’s the case, but most of them seem to be related to conflict points with freight and intercity rail traffic. Not really sure why this is surprising, considering that they supposedly built Union Station with the expectation that commuter rail would eventually share this space with these other modes, but what do I know.
- They’re recommending some curve corrections through Durham and south of downtown Raleigh. These corrections are not required, but will improve service (namely, I assume, in terms of speed).
- Pretty much everything else is info about the existing corridor: adjacent utilities, separate NCDOT projects impacting the corridor, at-grade crossing crash analysis… no surprises there, doesn’t really seem to have any effect one way or the other. Worth noting that nearly all high-incident crossings are already planned for grade separation within the next ten years through separate NCDOT projects.
Pretty sure that this site isn’t supposed to be visible to the public yet, but I found it, soooooooo sorry GoTriangle, my bad ¯_(ツ)_/¯
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Those other cities are thriving and receiving growth because of that if Raleigh had that mindset that would benefit us too. While at the same time I’m sure they focus on Passenger convenience/experience you’re displaying symptoms of the JKGES (James Goodknight Education Syndrome). That’s a nimby mindset.
I’m the least NIMBY person on this board. I would make sweeping changes to the entire metro if I had unchecked wealth and power. lol
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Hah, unlimited power and budget and this board would have the Triangle’s transit looking like Singapore. But alas…
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Join the club. 
…
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Not sure how you got your hands on this (unless you joined that Board of Trustees meeting?), but thanks for putting it up!
For everyone who didn’t read the page Colby linked to, here are the listed risk factors:
“High risk” in the context of engineering project management doesn’t necessarily mean “likely to fail”; it’s closer to saying “likely to get ugly if you don’t work around these problems in thoughtful ways”. I’m sure GoTriangle knew about these problems already, but it’s still important to know them so that architects and contractors know exactly how to solve them.
More about the whole thing about platform heights...
I think this might be because of policies by Amtrak and Norfolk Southern. Amtrak doesn’t like to share tracks and platforms with other rail operators. They probably didn’t know GoTriangle would want to run trains every hour (or even more frequently) back when they agreed to plans for RUS. I wouldn’t be too surprised if they play this card if they complain about this, especially since they have a track record of being divas about their station spaces.
I don’t think freight rail would have as much ground to complain, though. NCRR shouldn’t have to worry about freight rail on those particular tracks (assuming we’re following RUS’ plans for where to put the commuter rail platform and NCRR’s current guidelines) thanks to their own policy:
Another interesting point is that the cost estimates for GTCR in the Phase 1 study may have been inflated, and could be slightly reduced thanks to this study. This is because the earlier study did not consider rail infrastructure improvements that have already happened (or will happen by the time trains start running), including the bridge near Crabtree Creek in Morrisville. I could be wrong, though, because we’ve yet to see the plans for how to augment Durham and Cary’s stations, and those could cost a pretty penny.
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Listing “single track for station entry” as a high-risk issue probably boils down to the diamond crossing with Norfolk Southern. To add a second entry track, you’d have to add another track to that diamond crossing. It’s likely possible, but there’s a chance it might be dead letter.
I have always had an issue with the platform layout at Union Station today.
In order to accommodate current and future commuter and intercity trains, Union Station will probably need to have four platform tracks on the H line, in the long run.
There is clearly enough room for a platform and one track between the current platform and the building. This is what has always been shown on layout diagrams and such. But it would make so much more sense from an operations perspective if they could fit two new tracks and an island platform there instead. The current platform and its tracks occupy a width of 55 feet:
7.5ft edge oc clearance envelope-to-track center
5ft track center-to-platform edge
30ft platform
5ft platform edge-to-track center
7.5ft platform edge-to-edge of clearance envelope
However, there appears to be only 50ft from the edge of the clearance envelope for the current track, to the edge of the building.
While it would be possible to just reduce the platform width by 5’, to 25’ wide , and just shoehorn it in, 25’ would be considered “substandard” and make it harder (though far from impossible) to comfortably fit in the elevators, stairs, and full ADA accessibility. This is also not to mention the lack of a buffer between the building and the clearance envelope for the last track in this configuration. Which, I also don’t think this tight clearance is a showstopper for a platform track in a constrained area at a station, but would likely be considered “substandard”.
In addition I think they like to add a fence between the tracks to keep people from moving between platforms across the tracks. This is a major issue and would be absolutely required for low platforms, but perhaps less necessary for high platforms because basically nobody would even consider jumping down from a 4 foot high platform in the first place, and anyone who would, probably wouldn’t let a fence stop them from crossing the tracks. High platforms would be my overwhelming preference for our commuter rail system anyway.
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Click here, scroll to the bottom of the page, click News Release, then NewsRelease_DraftWorkPlan. Downloads a Word document that has a link at the bottom of page two. Somebody needs to clean up that site a bit.
Agreed -though I also want to give GoTriangle the benefit of the doubt. They only employs like half a dozen planners and public engagement managers (all of whom are asked to do way more than what their degrees have probably trained them to originally do), so I’m not surprised that they’re struggling to keep up with that website when private companies would hire dedicated staff for that.
And besides, I think all of us on this site are keeping a much closer eye on this project than maybe even some paid professionals in the transit and commercial development industries. Just because updates are publicly available doesn’t mean they’re 
ready for the general public to view, especially when they don’t have a systematic way to store and show public records like Raleigh, Wake County, or CAMPO do.
As a reminder for people without photographic memories, this was the schematic plan for Phase 1 of RUS. Notice that the blue platform and the dash-dot tracks at the bottom are now built, but we still need to build the platform to its northeast as well as the tracks in the dashed line.
An old image that @dtraleigh took also shows you how tight of a squeeze this would be; the concrete pad is where the platform is expected to be built. As Owen said, squeezing two tracks, a fence, and a platform wide enough for an elevator and safe wheelchair movement into this open space where the excavator is would be really hard:
I agree, too. But then the question becomes whether taxpayers and Norfolk Southern would be okay with the extra cost and logistical complications of passenger-only platforms (including constructing pullouts, switches, and signals) at every station. I guess we’ll know when NS finishes their rail capacity modeling this December (!?)…
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Gap fillers are the right answer to the problem of how to build high platforms.
FRA has supposedly been quite bullish on the technology, but agencies tend to be extremely conservative. They don’t want to be the first ones to move on an unproven technology.
Brightline is using them with great success, but there seems to be some reluctance on the part of commuter agencies to adopt them. Maybe they’re concerned that freight RR’s will reject them and continue to demand separate tracks or low platforms anyway. Brightline sidesteps this because they are owned by the same parent company as the company that runs freight on the line, Florida East Coast Industries.
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I don’t have the time to read it, but I found this report from NCDOT that specifically looked into using gap fillers for RUS. Can someone else summarize it?
The summary is that this type of gap filler, a static device mounted on the platform, is intended to deal with a different issue than the retractable train-mounted gap fillers that Brightline uses and that I am talking about. The static gap fillers from this report are meant to fill a very small gap between a platform and a train due to slight platform curvature.
The Brightline gap fillers automatically extend a foot, conceivably more, as the doors open, in order to form a bridge to the platform. This allows a platform to be intentionally set back from a mainline track to allow for increased freight clearance. This allows for high platforms, without gauntlet tracks or dedicated platform tracks, while maintaining the ability to accommodate oversized freight.
As an additional benefit, a gap filler could theoretically also be used to fill the gap between a train and a significantly curved platform as well. South Ferry station on the 5 train in NYC illustrates something similar, for a very tightly curved platform, only the retractable gap fillers are mounted on the platform instead of the train.
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Durham City Council say they want commuter rail in Durham, but first want to know what happened to DOLRT funding:
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I completely agree. Putting in light rail for many cities was a check-the-box action.
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We should’ve followed that same memo but the JGNES got the best of Wake County Commissioners. Light Rail would’ve worked well in Raleigh. Raleigh to North Hills to the Airport would be a very viable line. I don’t know what was in the commissioner’s heads to think light rail wasn’t suitable here.
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The US built a lot of light rail starting in the 1980s but many of these cases have been misapplications of the technology.
Seattle should have turned their gaze north to Vancouver instead and built an automated light metro system.
Charlotte was likely NOT a misapplication. The existence of the abandoned rail route through uptown and south end made at-grade light rail the best choice there.
Downtown-North Hills-Crabtree-RDU is a decent rail transit route in the long run, but nothing about the route says “I’m a great place for at-grade rail.” It’s torturously long and indirect for a mode that just isn’t very fast. So you’ll have to go elevated for most of the route. And at that point, elevated light metro like Vancouver is the right mode- not light rail.
Problem is, Downtown Raleigh’s streets are narrow, at only 66 feet wide, and there’s no space to spare inside the freight rail corridors- so this only makes sense in connection with a downtown subway. So it’s going to be another 15 or 20 years before we’re even ready to start talking about this.
The only route I can think of where actual light rail might make sense, is a route that goes from New Bern to South Saunders. It’s about four miles (a much more doable distance for at-grade LRT in a roadway right-of-way) from downtown to Garner Station Blvd, and downtown to WakeMed. At that point, light rail trains would leave the roadway and switch over to the train tracks out to Wake Tech/Fuquay-Varina, and Knightdale-Wendell-Zebulon.
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That would actually be a great place for a light rail, that area is very urban. Now Downtown Raleigh yes if we’re to have light rail it would be completely underground in fact Austin Project Connect has it completely underground going through Downtown.
Don’t know if there any more expansions for more light rail in NC, without state approval.
Radical Durham mayor Elaine O’Neal blamed losing light rail and made insane comparison to the 40 acres and a mule that black people were promised. Honestly they could use that lost money for this commuter rail, why not and boost up the construction of commuter rail.
Interesting new podcast (4 part miniseries) about the Denver area’s journey with public transit. I have just listened to 1 episode, but pretty good so far.
Ghost Train | Colorado Public Radio.
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