Educating the public is an important part of all this transit stuff. Since such a low percentage actually use it now, it’s very important to educate people on those benefits as well as costs to adding an airport connection. Advocates and advocacy groups need to step up here.
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There are numerous reason that this commuter line will not, and should not (in the initial phase) stop at RDU. The number one reason is that it would likely double the cost. There is no current right of way between the NCRR rail line and the airport. The second is that it would decrease travel times, undermining the viability of a successful transport alternative. If you add an additional five minutes for the train to run to RDU and back to the main line, all of a sudden the time improvement is not as big. Maybe in a later phase a RDU extension would be great, but this is about commuting. Not many people commute to the airport every day.
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I agree.
Some sort of connector needs to be included. I realize the main issue of not having right of way. But maybe a short BRT or light rail that connects from the RTP station nonstop to RDU at least. With easy / scheduled transfers.
That way the commuter rail would not be impacted, those going to RDU from either Durham or Raleigh, can hop off at RDU, walk across the platform to a BRT waiting to go the airport.
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This.
Early studies about commuter rail pretty much exactly said what @Thomas said (I’m having a hard time finding it because it was hidden in the fine print, but it’s definitely there). If you want to overturn that, you’ll need to come up with a counterexample that answers:
Specifically, these are the physical obstacles you’ll need to work with between the NCRR line (orange) and RDU:
Basically, stopping directly at RDU means you have to:
- go out of your way to build new rail (rather than taking advantage of existing tracks, which saves hundreds of millions of dollars)
- figure out where the rail will go
- keep private business owners, residents, and/or the NCDOT (because of I-40 and NC-540) from getting mad at you for taking their land as a part of your right-of-way
- turn a train into the RDU spur, stop at the airport (even for people who aren’t stopping there), turn back around, and somehow still get to places faster than by car
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Actually looking at this map. It would make sense to have transfer station in Morrisville near Airport drive. Where RDU commuters transfer from the Cummerter rail to a waiting BRT spur going to the airport, right down airport blvd). That’s like 2 miles and could be just a few minutes on a BRT.
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I think that is the general plan. Have a shuttle similar to the rental car vans/buses run from the airport to a station adjacent to 54 between Airport Blvd and McCrimmon Pkwy.
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I thought that there was going to be a “shuttle” to RDU from a proposed RTP station?
That way you could ride from DTR, to RTP, then to RDU, DTD, etc.???
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I hate to rain on everyone’s parade… but until they do something to fix the interchange b/w Airport Blvd and I-40, this “connector” (bus, BRT,shuttle, etc, basically anything short of a helicopter) will never work. On a good day it takes nearly 20 mins for me to get from Perimeter Park Drive to I-40 in crawling traffic every afternoon. (That is less than a mile in distance) Reason number 1,040,309 that I hate working in Morrisville. 
On a side note… I am working from home today, and I LOVED my easy commute 
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I think there are plans in the works to redo this interchange, just like they are doing for Aviation parkway.
Any type of bus connection would need to be BRT, because I agree, that can be a real slog specifically during rush hour. And just having a regular bus on the current airport drive would not work.
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AaaaaaAAAaAAaaaaaAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh.
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The closest the existing rail line gets to the airport is 3.5 miles. So you are at an absolute minimum of 7 miles of greenfield alignment to get from the NCRR to RDU and back. I guess we could plant some money trees.
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If you consider other alignments like I-40 or Glenwood then the airport is less of a diversion but then you are talking about even more new right of way which will probably both slow trains down and raise costs into the multi-billion range.
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Even if cost is no object, there is a 2 mile radius around the airport where there is nothing other than empty undevelopable land and airport facilities (exception: the very closest parts of brier creek are 1.5 miles away.) So the best case scenario is 3.5 miles of rail with nothing on it but an airport stop.
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Regardless of route and money, Serving RDU on a through route from Raleigh to Durham involves either a massive detour adding miles and many minutes to the route, or forces you to bypass RTP. Go ahead and try to draw a sensible route that covers Cary, RDU, RTP, and Durham. I spend way too much time doodling maps of this sort of stuff. I am convinced that it is not possible.
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The runways are oriented exactly perpendicular to the straight line route between R and D. This is by design, so planes won’t overfly the densest parts of these cities at lower altitudes, but it doesn’t help.with transit. The terminals are poorly (for transit) sited right between them. To get there you have to either build an expensive tunnel under the whole shebang, have a slowness and tight curve so trains can turn around and get back out, or else travel parallel to the runways for upwards of 2 miles, exactly perpendicular to the direction you want to go, which is as straight as possible from Raleigh to Durham.
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Umstead. It is awesome to have such a huge park in the center of our metro area, but this makes it so a transit line along I-40 is dead letter, as half of the catchment area is populated only by squirrels, raccoons, deer, and other such wildlife. It also means that the land to the east of RDU is entirely off the table for building a rail connection due to impacts to the park.
In summation, AAAaaAaaaaaaAaAAAUgh! it is so frustrating at this point to still hear people demanding that transit is DOA unless the airport is connected in phase 1.
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I honestly wonder if an airport shuttle bus connection to the train would even be worth it. Commuter rail, as proposed, with its maximum of 48 trains per day, heavily focused on the am/PM peak, is very dependent on people building it into their daily routines for a traditional or near-traditional work schedule. Flying is at most a weekly thing, and even that is pretty uncommon, and flight schedules are much less consistent than daily worl hours. This makes just catching an uber or a cab a more reasonable proposition, and that is usually reimbursed for these frequent business traveler types anyway. Whereas, focusing on downtown service may yield a more focused benefit much more easily, where many downtown employees pay something out of pocket to park, and the alternative of catching an un-reimbursed Uber every day adds up very quickly.
Take all that, and add in a shuttle bus ride to connect the airport, and the proposition just won’t make sense for most folks.
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With GoTriangle routes in RTP going away, I’d love to see a Downtown Raleigh <-> RDU <-> Downtown Durham bus connection. I absolutely love Route 100 from DTR to RDU because of it’s simplicity if more priority could be given to this route to make it faster and they could run more buses on it to maintain “every 30 minutes” I think it would be a solid short-term route. (within the next few years)
The buses already go on the shoulder when there’s traffic. Just add more buses to increase frequency.
No need to complicate the airport connection to the commuter rail which becomes less attractive as you have to transfer in Morrisville. You might have to transfer in DTD or DTR but at least the transfer point has a ton of options, makes it easy to park and ride, and maybe, JUST MAYBE, riders will consider their options to be closer in the future. (like office travelers or visitors) 
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I think the proximity of the rail line to the airport warrants an exploration of some type of shuttle service, maybe once every 30 minutes or something like that. I think the Morrisville station would need to be part of a larger TOD that would include a park and ride for the train station as well as an off-site long term parking garage for the airport. In my pipe dream for the airport, I would place the consolidated rental car center where the failed outlet mall is on airport blvd, and have a shuttle that runs between the airport, rental car facility, and train station. I also think that the Charlotte airport will someday have its own train station as well. I could see the Piedmont train stopping at both and offering travelers another option when flights cancel due to weather or operational considerations.
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In the long run I think regional routes like the 100, 105, crx, and drx need to be moved off of Hillsborough Street and onto the Western Blvd BRT line once it is built. Those buses can really crawl along Hillsborough. In a couple of years GoRaleigh plans to start a new frequent route (route 9) which will ply Hillsborough Street from downtown to the Fairgrounds every 15 minutes all day. Once that is in place then IMO the regional routes have no need to be on Hillsborough anymore.
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This is why I’m more in favor of a regional rail solution at the end of the day. But that can’t happen without precedent (because America, amirite?), so it’s better to have something that works in a limited scope, first.
In the meantime…
I think this would be a nice transition state, especially if the 700 bus is extended by just a few miles (since it’s already a nonstop service from the Regional Transit Center). I feel like the frequency would have to be at most every 15-20 minutes, though, if you want it to be convenient enough for people to start paying attention.
…except it’s already being planned by RDU to be where the main parking deck is now (i.e. within walking distance of both terminals).
From RDU’s Vision 2040 plans:
I must have missed that. I thought it was going to be off of Pleasant Grove Road towards 540.
Even having Raleigh-Durham buses stop and serve the airport along the way is not ideal. When I am going from RTC to Raleigh I always roll my eyes when it’s a time the 105 is not running and I have to take the 100 instead: the 100 is about 15 minutes slower from RTC to Raleigh! For.bus riders, those 15 minutes are a really big deal! Going via RDU is a huge inconvenience for people not going to the airport.
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I think the failed outlet mall on Airport Blvd. that @CanesFan is referring to is another site, located across I-40:
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When I fly for work, I prefer to take rail into if I can. Sometimes its super convenient (I don’t use MARTA in ATL, but it is right there in the terminal, the Metro & Reagan-Nation is super easy) sometimes it isn’t - BWI-Marshell was a bus to the Amtrak into Baltimore, and both involved waits . . . and waits . . . . I didn’t use the streetcar in Dallas Love, I lucked into rides both ways, but it was also not directly at the terminal. The regional & express trains out of Rome’s (IT) airport are both easy to use, once you find them. They are on the airport, but tucked up amidst the parking decks. I understand that a rail line right to RDU is impractical for a number of reasons. I would use the train/bus connector IF they synced up well. That is probably the only practical solution involving the rails at this time. The priority, clearly, is to get the dang train up and running. We’ve been discussing this since the late 80s!!!
Only a slightly different note, I’ve thought for a long time that we need to be looking at short-haul rail to replace many of the puddle jumpers out there now. It would be ecologically sound and probably more reliable to take the train 100-150 miles right to the airports than to take those short hop flights. But again, for many airports such as RDU that would involve a massive investment in right of way and rail construction.
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orulz, thanks for the detail explanation.
Also someone else noted this is a commuter line, not for ‘fliers’ but for daily job workers.
I would note that RDU is a massive job site as well, employing over 5,000 workers. Also over 1,000,000 people fly through the airport each month.
But it’s interesting how much greefield work was to be done under the original light rail plan. A lot of that was all new track.
For such an important part of the region, there’s got to be a way to route new track from Hwy54 in Morrisville up along Airport Blvd into the RDU parking deck and out Airport Parkway and along Chin Page Rd to connect with the existing track. That makes for a fast access from DTD also.
The problem is that it cuts out a good port of Morrisville and the area south of RTP, but that’s light industrial and not nearly as many passenger potential compared to the RDU stop.
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