Yeah. Also, I love how the news always gives a bunch of attention to a minority voice. If you ask most people who have to travel that nightmare stretch of Capital if they’d support this, it would be a resounding yes. Not that it matters. Even if it makes it out of committee and actually gets funded, it’s going to be like 20 years before it’s reasonably going to be completed.
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The other alternative for the capital north plan is to reduce lanes and just make it more Bikeable and ped friendly, rather than increase lanes and speed. I’m not sure how feasible that, but that’s what I’ve heard.
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80,000 vehicles per day. More than most freeways. It serves such a large area, it’s feasible if you want absolute gridlock.
I get it but it’s the whole north metro that has to use Capital. I know everyone has their dreams and movements but it’s just not feasible.
Upgrading capital will also make Atlantic, Six Forks, Falls of Neuse etc safer as vehicles who currently use those as an alternative to capital will use capital now.
End of the day, it’ll be much safer to cross an upgraded capital to her a bridge than crossing 8 lanes of traffic on foot.
Also, the upgrade plan actually reduces lanes from 3/4 to 2/3 in each direction since they won’t face lights.
And with the area still growing, Capital will get worse and worse as is which again, will force more people to use Atlantic etc really making all the roads worse.
I know we shouldn’t be talking about new urban highways in 2022 but this is the rare exception.
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Does the S-line/Wake Forest to Raleigh commuter rail factor into this at all? Right now we’re talking about a project that wouldn’t even get started until 2031, at the earliest. I do agree that freeways in certain cases are necessary - and as always, actually committing to something is way better than letting the status quo rule. Multi-way boulevards can be pretty nice. But in today’s armchair urban planning, removing, not adding, urban highways, is the fashionable thing to do, so I understand why ped/bike advocacy groups are against anything that seems to make driving easier. (Examples 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
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I get it, trust me but like I said this isn’t just a redundant underused corridor cutting through a historic neighborhood like most if not all freeway conversions.
The S line will help but it’s not the end all be all.
Edit to add a little more of my insight:
I too, (I guess you could say I’m a little more than an arm chair planner haha) have pitched several highway removals. I just think In this case the benefits outweigh the drawbacks to upgrade capital. And that’s for bike / ped too. Id recommend several improvements crossing wise compared to what’s planned now. For example, no more than 1/4 mile apart from crossing, full funding of dedicated BRT at the build, full separated bike lanes in each direction.
As for doing this corridor as a boulevard, the ROW just isn’t there. You’d have to basically take one side of everything South of New Hope to properly do it which would probably land you over a billion. Not worth it.
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Capital should be a freeways sure, I support it a lot of traffic light would come down they might have to be a lot of bridge to connect streets like Six Forks, Falls of Neuse, and Spring Forest. But WRAL, WNCN are NIMBY, channel 11 all the way!
Bridges are planned for every cross street.
Some mid block bike pre crossing are necessary too imo
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But I wish it could into downtown and end at South Saunders.
Yeah, as much as it goes against my usual tune, I agree that Capital needs to be converted to an expressway. It’s one of the most dangerous roads in the Triangle (perhaps the most dangerous), and it’s just too far gone to be anything else. It’s the peak definition of a stroad: too wide to function properly as a street, too many at-grade intersections to be a useful highway. Drivers are constantly slamming on their brakes at 60mph and causing car accidents. I used to live in Wake Forest and drive to Regency Park in Cary in my pre-transit days, and there was a serious wreck on Capital at least a few times a month during my commute.
So yeah, build the S-Line and the Capital Expressway with proper BRT (something like the Orange Line that just opened in Minneapolis). We’re many decades away from ending total car-dependency along this corridor (especially north of I-540), and lives are at stake in the meantime.
Edit: appears this post has earned an excited car emoji. I am a bad urbanist.
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Yeah the urban part is allowing specified bus lanes on the sides also.
I would qualify the S-line item by also saying the currently planned stops on that route are inadequate.
In addition, the third and fourth legs of this table, as far as I am concerned are:
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Do an end-to-end road diet with full protected bike facilities on Atlantic for its entire length. This would cancel it as a commuter route for through traffic and convert it into Norrh Raleigh’s “Main Street”.
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Better address the notion of safe crossings for bicycles and pedestrians with the understanding that we want not only better, safer crossings than today, but also more crossings than exist today as well.
And finally: we need reasonable assurances that all these things will happen, and will not get bait-and-switched and we wind up
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If there’s one saving grace about this project in general when in comes to listening about what the people want and need - it seems to be that it’ll be headed up by City of Raleigh instead of NCDOT.
I’d also say that Wake Forest Rd / Falls of Neuse could be altered from 3 to 2 with proper bike lanes and multi use path since a lot of that through traffic will now use Capital
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I can’t remember where but there was a topic where I was trying to explain why the grid system is very important and how it’s one of the things holding Raleigh back.
Here is a some more context and research from Strong Towns on that. Grids Are Good
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I don’t recall where we were posting discussions of the Capital bridge art project. What transportation department is responsible for this?
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DOT project but special things like that would’ve been Raleigh’s responsibility
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While we’re at it, who forgot to build the skyscraper behind that fence?
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If you ask people at the Peace Raleigh apartments, they’re going to break ground very soon. I’m pretty sure we haven’t seen an ASR for this yet so I’m not hopeful.
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Lighting has been messed up on both bridges. Forever gonna be incomplete project
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which is a shame because it looks awesome. Maybe Ral’s nickname should be, “half loaf”
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Not sure how I missed this but I personally don’t disagree with you in regards to the Capital Blvd North plan - I think many of the people that I serve with on BPAC just wanted to send a message in general to the city that they want more money spent on standalone bicycle/pedestrian projects, not just bike/ped projects that are tacked on to projects that maintain the status quo of car dependency.
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