They made a direct connection from Fayetteville to S Wilmington in a couple places awhile back and then upgraded them to make them more open and inviting. My experience has been that people from the bus station wander around and congregate there, usually yelling and causing issues. The best thing the city could do for DTR is move the bus station to the DMV site and redevelop the whole actual DT area where it currently is. Hell, throw in a Gucci store to bring in rich people, since that’s how it works.
What’s the point of a bus terminal if it isn’t downtown? It’s how people get to and from work.
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No idea. I’ve never been in one. But guessing by the one by Moore Square, it’s to collect vagrants, drug dealers, and loitering ne’er-do-wells.
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Our public transportation ridership is because we have culturally made it be “perceived poorly” if you use it, thus it ends up being used only by those in extreme circumstance. If the mindset on public transit was similar to other places like Europe and Asia, you would probably not see the issues Raleigh buses face. Ideally, Raleigh starts making it’s transit hubs popular destinations, surrounding them with safety, sought after retail, and convenience so that people desire to end up there. There shouldn’t be places for nefarious activity to happen, it should be brightly lit up, and the area should hum with positive movement.
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Ever? That’s wild. When I lived in NYC and wanted to get to some neighborhoods and when I was young and broke and had a girlfriend in another city they were unavoidable.
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The people using the bus station are not going to or from work or dinner or symphony.
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Making blanket statements about an entire group of people <<
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Are u a 4chan subscriber?
I don’t personally know @rgmedd but I know they live downtown and have posted many positive things about inner City living
Sorry. I didn’t mean to categorize all who ride buses. I do think that the people who hang out in the blocks around the station do not appear to be going to work. I’m not against people hanging out either but that does seem to be where the trouble is.
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Let’s start a dedicated thread for GoRaleigh Station. This is NOT Moore Square, which is an urban park next door.
I’ll drop some survey results from 2023 here to show that most people that use the bus system are trying to go to work. However, it seems people feel that those hanging around GoRaleigh Station aren’t doing that or anything else. I’m thinking that once the fares kick in next week, the dynamics might change a bit. I’m eager to see how it plays out here as the weather gets nicer and people are out and about more.
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I’ll add that results like this can be misleading. Because the data is only coming from people answering the poll. I’d assume that the people being talked about in this thread about are likely not answering the poll. I’d love to see the discrepancy and changes in the ‘no response’ category and I’d love to know how the results were gathered.
I’m also looking forward to seeing how the fare turns out. I’ve actually got a colleague of mine that mentioned he took the bus for the first time the other week. The guy actually does pretty damn well for himself, but his car was in the shop and he figured he’d try it instead of going for an Uber. He mentioned that it was a pretty awful experience and he likely wouldn’t do it again.
The biggest reason was that it took him 50 minutes to go 6 miles. The secondary reason was how disgusting the bus stops was. No homeless people, but there was garbage everywhere. I mentioned he should try out SeeClickFix, but we really really REALLY shouldn’t need to send in a ticket every time there’s garbage all over a bus stop. These things should have ongoing and regular maintenance if we want people to use the bus system. Otherwise, we are not going to see any choice riders.
I’ll add that this is just as important for the GoRaleigh Station. The bus area is dimly lit. There’s usually trash all over the place. If we plan to keep the GoRaleigh Station downtown and if we want riders that aren’t just taking the bus because it’s a last resort, it needs to be sanitary and it needs to look good.
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Link to the survey result and methodology are in my post.
Thanks! I pulled it up and it mentioned that 52% of riders refused the survey outright. Can’t find it in this article, but do you know if the 2019 and 2018 studies have the same numbers for the amount of people that refused the survey outright? I’d love to see how that’s changed over time. Can’t make any definitive conclusion from that, but there are some assumptions that can be made.
Mostly I’d assume someone saying they’re going there for work would likely say ‘work’. Someone using it to buy drugs would refuse to respond. That’s not to say that a person using it for work wouldn’t refuse or a person using it to buy drugs at the bus station wouldn’t say they’re using it for recreation, but I’d assume there’d be a correlation there.
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They also don’t include options in their survey for people who ride the bus to stab or harass random people in Moore Square or to get their rocks off in the parking garages. I’d like to see a bit more inclusivity in the polling questions. I think we’ll get far more accurate results that way.
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Or like maybe some people are actually on their way to work but like to do a little stabby stabby on the way. Who knows?
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Well I didn’t live in NYC. And I didn’t say I’ve never ridden a bus or been at a bus stop, just that I haven’t been in a bus station. The times I’ve taken busses, it’s been from one stop to another. I haven’t lived anywhere that public transit has been preferable to driving myself. I’ve certainly been to cities where I don’t have a car and ridden a bus or a metro/train/light rail. I often use Lyft/Uber for the same reason I drive myself. No hassle or thinking, just a direct door-to-door option if I’m not looking/able to walk there.
This might be a shocker to some people on here who like to pretend our tiny downtown is a mini-Brooklyn or something, but the VAST majority of people in the Triangle (with the means to have a car) virtually never use public transit. I’m all for investing in it and making it better, though. That being said, I still maintain that the downtown bus station here is unwelcoming to say the least, and a blight for the whole area around it. I would never ride a bus that takes me there if I had a car, which fortunately I do. I get that this is unpopular with a niche group on here, and that’s fine. We don’t need to agree on this.
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Sheesh, most of the intercity bus stuff was when I was living in another city.
The people who ride the bus to work are often people who can’t afford day-to-day gas prices, or can’t get a drivers’ license - think janitors, cooks, mailroom staff, etc… That’s why you want the terminal near as many jobs as possible, aka downtown.
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Yeah I get why they put it there. Doesn’t really invalidate anything else I’ve pointed out, though.
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