That consultancy was Ten Years Ago 
I read through this post and the comments and I think there’s a real concern about displacement from a lot of people in the Black community. And after reading what they had to say, they’re not wrong. The Salvation Army, the Greyhound station, the food distribution ban near Moore Square. There’s a pattern there and people remember it.
If we’re serious about this being a building issue and not a displacement issue, then the new station has to be downtown. Not Capital Boulevard, not the edge of town. Downtown. Close enough to where it is now. That’s how you show this is about giving riders a better facility and not about pushing people out.
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Then things will have to change or the impact will be displacement and so far things haven’t changed. Unfortunately the bad actors causing issues here for riders will effectively cause the City of Raleigh to move the station. Public safety is important and the measures taken thus far to increase security have provedn ineffective and extremely costly for a city that has an apparent shortfall in available funding.
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Can’t find who said it on here first, but having a bunch of police and security around actually makes it appear more dangerous rather than safer. Relocation with an open design that discourages vagrancy/hanging out is the best path forward.
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In order for us to address issues with the station and its surrounds, two things have to be true at the same time.
- We must effectively address the root cause of issues experienced by the most vulnerable and at risk among us in the community.
- We must assure order and safety for those who use the station and bus services, and for those within the greater downtown community.
We can’t just address one without the other.
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I agree both matter. But they’re separate problems that can be worked on at the same time. We should keep investing in mental health and homelessness resources regardless. But the building’s design makes all of those problems harder to manage. Open air, four access points, no sightlines for security. A better designed facility makes it easier for the police, easier for security, easier for the riders.
My concern with “we have to fix root causes first” is that it becomes the reason we never fix anything else. Mental health and homelessness are generational problems. They’re not getting solved in the next five years. Probably not the next twenty. So what happens to the station and the riders in the meantime? We just keep spending millions on security for a building that works against everyone that uses it and lives near it and tell them to wait?
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I never said that one had to be first. In fact, I said that we had to address both at the same time.
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GET RID OF THE STATION & watch what happens to the Moore Square area.
I think we’re mostly on the same page here. Where I push back a little is “we can’t address one without the other.” I think we can. A well designed station with controlled access and proper sightlines makes it really hard for bad actors to operate the way they do now, regardless of where we are on mental health funding. The building can solve the building problem on its own. We should absolutely keep working on the bigger stuff too, but the station doesn’t have to wait for that.
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The truth is new, transparent, state-run mental health institutions need to be established, along with drug addiction centers, to actually solve those issues. Unfortunately, politicians don’t care, are scared to lose voters, or have special interests that never want it solved. The most significant thing to happen so far has been Iryna’s Law, which only happened because the guy who mainstreamed the incident had his neck blown out in front of the whole country. Also, the Governor only signed it on the 10th day so the issue wouldn’t hurt him in the next election.
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…is not a plan. “Get rid of the station” and then… what? There needs to be a bus station to serve these routes. It needs to be close to the current (and long-standing) station. And the issues that constantly come up around this station will not simply disappear - as the root causes of said issues also need to be addressed, separately. “GET RID OF THE STATION” is not useful discussion in good faith, sorry.
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You did NOT need a station…period. All you need is a dop off/pick up just like all around the city.
nobody is denied transit access but you don’t have these areas in prime locations for people with nothing to do all day to just loiter, etc.
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The point is that currently they bus people from all over the city to this central point and then out to other locations. Obviously there should be buss access to downtown but the central point does not need to be.
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A lot of cities don’t have an off-street downtown station, they kind of turn downtown into the station. Portland’s TriMet has a transit mall that length of downtown on 5th and 6th Avenues, where they built enhanced stations, real-time departure boards and gave buses 2 lanes (originally 3 before Light Rail) so that they could overtake each other. San Antonio does something similar, but without the bus lanes and special stations.
I would not support us doing this to unless we’re willing to revisit operations and make an operations plan to match. I would want any transit mall to have at least the level of amenity present at the station right now (bathrooms, shelters, benches, etc). I would also strongly prefer that we give buses the lane like Portland does to ensure that delays downtown don’t cascade through the network and it’s a safer street to wait on.
Both Portland and San Antonio also have a lot more Transit Centers outside downtown than we do, which allows more transfers to happen outside downtown. We have a vary radial network and that is something worth revisiting but that can be difficult to talk about since naturally it means breaking the way people currently use GoRaleigh.
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This has really become an unserious topic for unserious people
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I disagree. What we are witnessing is growing frustration rooted in a public transit asset that has effectively been rendered inaccessible due to conditions that prioritize disruptive behavior over safe, reliable use. This undermines usability for the very individuals who depend on and are willing to utilize this service.
This is occurring in a critical downtown corridor with significant development potential, yet the current environment actively detracts from that opportunity. Instead of reinforcing a vibrant, functional urban core, the situation enables a small subset of individuals whose presence does not contribute to downtown vitality, economic activity, or the broader community.
More concerning, the current state is creating conditions that may invite organized criminal activity. For a city recognized as one of the fastest-growing and most desirable places to live, the inability to establish and maintain a functional, safe, and accessible bus station is unacceptable.
This issue reflects a fundamental breakdown in priorities and should be addressed as an immediate, top-tier concern by city leadership.
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It also makes the busses unsafe for the people who need to use them! I do not understand when people try to categorize safety complaints as some kind of rich mans concern. The rich do not care they will just avoid the area. The people who suffer from it are the people who are just trying to use the buses to get to work.
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The limited population who actually uses and operates the buses, especially at Moore Square, tend to have very different perspectives than those who haven’t used the system. Some recent comments have framed the idea of moving the bus station as discriminatory, but that overlooks the real, day-to-day experiences of riders and staff - (read the comments: https://www.facebook.com/reel/2214049242667921).
The concerns being raised are practical and serious: things like victimization, assault, and poor sanitary conditions. These are real issues that directly impact safety and usability.
The quiet part: The BRT will turn into and function the same if this doesn’t get resolved.
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Yup. Exactly. We need to start working on a plan for this yesterday.
First impressions last the longest. If the BRT kicks off and turns into an extension of what is currently happening at the Moore Square bus station, it’s going to take a long long time to earn that trust back from people that would be choice riders.
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The goals related to the bus station are:
- Enable and enhance current and future bus operations
- Make bus transfers as safe, convenient, and comfortable as possible for passengers
Anything beyond that needs to tie back to either or both of those two goals.
The levers we have to work with this are:
- Policy
- Enforcement
- Operations
- Infrastructure
Under the Policy line item, GoRaleigh Station is currently open to the public, but they could make it open to paying passengers only.
Handwaving away anything related to implementation for now (more on that below) would this address the problem? Well, I doubt it completely eliminates the issue but I think it would have an impact, because a big portion of the problem is evidently non-riders lingering in the facility on the platform. It gives an easily justifiable, objective criteria on which to boot those people out. It might partly just push the problem to the sidewalks outside the entrances, but even that pushes it completely away from people who are just at the station to change buses, reduces the number of people who these lingerers can potentially interact with to only people accessing the station on foot, and puts it in a spot that with better visibility that is easier to police.
As for implementation, there are two possibilities. First is with physical barriers like doors or turnstiles, which I would say is infeasible with the current station. There are too many points of entry, mostly shared with bus driveways, and therefore too large and numerous to gate off without creating big ops issues for the buses. This could be considered with a rebuilt or relocated station, but would probably increase the cost and negatively impact passenger convenience.
The second option would be to make the platforms a proof-of-payment zone, with offboard fare collection for people accessing the station on foot, and fare inspectors conducting random and possibly targeted (at lingerers) inspections.
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