I hope they make the new bridge wide enough to add a BRT lane in the future.
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From NCDOT Website
Aviation Parkway Between I-40 and NC 54 (U-5811)
NCDOT is proposing to widen Aviation Parkway to a 4-lane median divided roadway with curb and gutter. Extra wide outside lanes will accommodate bicycles, street-side trails and sidewalks that will serve pedestrians. Right of way acquisition is scheduled to begin in 2020, and construction is anticipated to begin in 2023. The estimated project cost is $28,287,000.
This would be the most direct Route From DT Morrisville (Where I assume a Commuter stop would be located) to the Terminals.
My concern with a direct bus route is that the ROW width would grow because everywhere a bus goes you see sidewalks and bike lanes. If they had a people mover rails, elevated in some locations, you wouldn’t have that. I’m thinking a ROW for the mover would be smaller than for a bus, and might be added to the existing corridor.
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There that solved the connection of RDU to commuter rail. Almost all suitcases have wheels now so just let people walk. I will only be a few miles or so 
. On more serious note who does DOT expect to use the sidewalks out in that office desert and woods.
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That’s my first laugh of the work week.
I don’t know who they expect to use it as a bike/pedestrian route, but I can imagine someone asking for it. I think a dedicated bus corridor would be great and they could design it so that it could be made into a people mover in the future. From an approval matter an Aviation Parkway Route would pass through Morrisville, Cary, Wake County/Raleigh, over a Federal Watershed Lake, over an NCDOT corridor, and into FAA/RDU territory. That’s a design standards and approval nightmare.
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Something I have often thought could be useful would be to leverage the BOSS (Bus on Shoulder System) into BRT by putting stops at major interchanges. The idea would be that buses would use the travel lanes when there is no congestion, but use the BOSS when congestion is present. Basically, like the current situation.
For trumpet-style interchanges you could build a bus pad connecting the offramps to the onramps. Use ramp meters that turn red when a bus approaches to allow the bus to fit into traffic.
For diamond-style interchanges you could either have the buses get off at the offramp, proceed straight across to the onramp, where there is a platform, or else build a dedicated ROW for buses between the outer bridge bent and the abutment with a bus pad underneath the overpass, again with ramp meters to let buses have priority when merging back onto the freeway. The first option is cheaper but the second option would be less susceptible to traffic.
The tricky part is getting through major freeway-freeway interchanges like 40/147 and 40/540.
I particularly think that the Beltline would be perfect for this, but at least some of the interchanges on I-40 and Wade Avenue would be decent as well: Harrison Avenue, Airport Blvd, Page Road, Davis Drive (Park Center)…
It’s not perfectly ideal in that it drops passengers off at freeway interchanges. But North Hills is an example that, although interchanges do present a significant constraint, it is not impossible to put walkable pedestrian areas adjacent to high-traffic freeway interchanges.
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yeah, the BOSS System is something that all northerners were Shocked, Surprised, and truly terrified at the site of.
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I can see this working along most places in 440, and that would actually be pretty convenient and awesome!
Throwback to a suggestion I made in a different thread a while back: maybe a Crabtree-North Hills BRT segment could be made more easily if you build it like that:
To be fair, though, I feel like that would also be the exception rather than the norm -simply because most places around interstates don’t seem to be dense enough to support on-ramp transit access. For example, if you were to put bus stops along 540 at Brier Creek, you’d still have to walk like at least a third of a mile before you’d get to an appreciable cluster of shops? Plus this would feel even longer, because of how oversized all the buildings and interchanges are.
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Dang!! We are moving (somewhere) in May 2021. Oh well, another 23 months of craptatular afternoon traffic. 
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Brier Creek is a mess that will be impossible to serve with good transit. 540 on the whole is not a very promising transit route for anything other than nonstop express service, for the reasons you mention. The picture on Wade and 40 is a bit better with spots like Southpoint, Park Center, Page Rd, Wade Park/PNC.
440 is definitely the star of this show. The whole arc from WakeMed to Lake Boone is excellent. I would probably leave the beltline at Lake Boone, head up the hill to Rex, and then along Blue Ridge to the Fairgrounds (with dedicated bus lanes of course.)
None of this is especially relevant to the airport, however.
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I think Boulder/Denver tried to do something like this with the Flatiron Flyer along US 36. https://commutingsolutions.org/transit/flatiron-flyer/
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Speaking of Denver, I’ve found their airport connection directly to rail really appealing. So much so, I have made weekend trips from Raleigh because it was so easy getting to a hotel downtown. I have read most of this thread, and clearly people smarter than me are saying it’s impossible to bring rail to the airport.
I challenge that a bit. It seems to me if we wanted to, we could go right under the parking structure at RDU from 440. Am I not living in reality? Maybe. But if we get enough people on board, I believe anything is possible.
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There is a lot of things we could do but the supposed “experts” disagree. Thank God those people were not around when the rest of this country was being built or we would be living in a very, very different america.
I should edit “impossible” to “impracticable”. Again… maybe so. I value other people’s opinions–especially informed ones. I just wonder what a rail corridor running right through RDU would accrue to the entire Triangle over time?
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Good question. Obviously, in the hypothetical situation where direct rail access to RDU becomes a thing, it’d probably make airport commutes easier. It probably won’t mean too much for many locals (come on, this is America. We know like half the people will drive anyways), but visitors TO the Triangle will probably have an easier time accessing events and enjoying more of what our area has to offer. To be fair though, I’m not sure how you can quantify that or demonstrate causality; transit/urban developments tend to bring in more people, but unless you can pinpoint why that’s happening and which variables are responsible, it’s not gonna be a very productive conversation.
I say “hypothetical” because…
You’re not wrong, in that it’s not like it’s physically impossible to do that.
...but...
You just need to think about how tunneling is wayyyyyyyyyyy more expensive than ground/aerial-level paths. As well as what you’d get in the way of as you’re building a thing, and if it’s really even worth it at the end of the day once you jump through all the red tape you have to clear to legally build it. (please read me. My posts are full of hyperlinks for a reason.)
You CAN bore a 100-foot tunnel with a boring machine across airport property, and you can go wherever you’d like as long as groundwater doesn’t drown your expensive drill. You CAN build a network of bridges and AirTrains to connect both terminals and other amenities within a 20-mile radius. You CAN build a commuter/intercity rail branch line that bypasses RTP. It’s possible in an ideal world.
But blatant practical reasons and the fact that I never brought up what you’d do outside of airport grounds aside, it’s just gonna cost a hell of a lot of money. Do you really want to spend $300 million on a vanity project like that, or get away with it a decent $50 million solution, and spend the other $250 million to make our entire region’s transit system better?
I did think about what rail transit at RDU could look like, though, just to be thorough. But the slope looks too sleep for heavy rail, and light rail construction is not gonna be pretty.
I looked at RDU’s Vision 2040 plan sheet as approved by the FAA, and tried to see if I can make something work. I figured it would be cheaper to nudge a transit station between the main parking deck/future CONRAC and Terminal 1, since there’s an 80ish-feet-wide strip of empty grassland that may be useful for a transit stop.
Crap Option A: Terminal 1 approach
Crap Option B: Terminal 2 approach
Again. This is just for airport grounds, which you’d also need to get signed off by the Federal Aviation Administration for plan changes. RDU had to go through a multi-year planning project, the last time they got a major plan change cleared. My earlier suggestion for BRT ONLY works for bus rapid transit because of terrain/right-of-way limits, unless you can prove me wrong.
It sounds like you’re talking about some big conspiracy theory full of naysayers, but I really don’t think that’s what’s going on… reality is a lot more nuanced (and boring!?) than that.
The times when the US was first getting developed also had lots of problems on its own. Like when the transcontinental railroads were being built, rail companies basically had free rein to buy land for cheap, and build and define their own profit margins. That sounds pretty awesome and helpful for building transit, until you realize that:
- rail operators cut costs by exploiting (mainly Chinese) immigrants with an inhumane excuse of an hourly wage (only to screw them over further by federal law)
- bison were made nearly extinct
- American citizens were also often taken advantage of by un-reined corporations, leading to the rise of robber barons in the Gilded Age (and, eventually, a backlash filled with the birth of early-stage consumer protection agencies)
The steaming pile of laws and checklists you have to complete to build public infrastructure today’s not around because people want to be obstructionist jerks. They’re there because they’re the best compromises we’ve come up with so far, given the 200+ years of mistakes we’ve made. The “experts” are saying things for a reason; if you don’t like it, address those.
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@keita I missed some of your earlier comments. Thank you for mentioning those. I would only disagree with you on two points: a) calling it a “vanity project” and b) assuming only outsiders would gain from such a connection. BRT directly to the parking deck also makes sense, but I know less about BRT than I do railroad. What I don’t like is having to transfer 3 miles from the airport to a people mover. It feels unplanned. Modes of transportation should be integrated.
I’m curious if you explored a rail line that crosses the airport perpendicular from the diagrams you have presented? I assume it would have to be underground–in any scenario.
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Let’s remember though that the first light rail line was opened in Denver in 1994. That rail connection wasn’t made until 2016.
So by no means was the airport the first rail line built in Denver even though DIA opened in 1995.
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That’s actually a good point. We have to realize that even larger cities with more population are just getting their Rail systems, and that Raleigh to have a commuter rail at all by 2027, while not good, is normal. To have it attach to RDU by some methodology would be a good thing in the later future.
Be nice to have a good express bus service though
Yeah - do I wish we had a complete rail network in Raleigh? Heck yes! But to compare to other cities that have already been working on their network for years is silly.
Hopefully the Garner-Durham commuter rail line is a huge success and we are able to keep the momentum rolling into more high capacity transit options including connecting the airport!
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I wish we could transport like in Star Trek!
Even if we look at Charlotte or Austin, Their Rail “systems” are truly not used that much, and they are not THAT old. I mean they are just getting more popular now. The faster Raleigh gets Rail done the better, but 2027 isn’t a bad date. Less than 10 years? Hell yeah!