Since I was complaining about the 11L on another thread, I started thinking about what I would suggest as an alternative. One thing lead to another and I drew a crayon map proposal for bus routes in the West Raleigh-East Cary area.
Mostly based on the Wake Transit plan, with a few changes and a few additions.
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Part of the proposed GoCary 9A Trinity and all of GoRaleigh 26 Edwards Mill Crosstown are replaced with a GoCary route from DT Cary to Crabtree Valley via Edwards Mill. I am pretty proud of this idea. It would take the GoRaleigh 26, which I gather is not a stellar performer, and give it an actual reason to exist. In addition, the Trinity Road area, which is getting quite dense, has long suffered without a direct route downtown, and this fixes that.
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The BRT is turned into an “Open” BRT route, with several branches (Avent Ferry, Trinity, and Buck Jones) that join the BRT mid-route, and run all the way downtown from there. The BRT will operate with:
- Main BRT route (Raleigh to Cary): every 10-15 minutes
- Trinity and Buck Jones branches: every 20-30 minutes. I think these route adds (and the idea of channeling them onto the BRT) would be a big success.
- Schedules would interline and combine to result in a Western Blvd BRT bus every 5-7.5 minutes, from Blue Ridge Road to Downtown Raleigh.
- Avent Ferry would run every 10-15 minutes as well, and would use the busway from Avent Ferry to downtown, but schedules would not be substantially integrated with the above routes due to the shorter overlap.
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Several routes are extended to Crossroads (Buck Jones, Avent Ferry, a new Jones Franklin Crosstown, and a GoCary Walnut Street route). Cary wants to build a transfer center there, and I’m suspicious that may not be the right approach, but I’m also not really clear on how else to route them around within Crossroads. It’s a really big sprawly area with horrible walkability and very transit un-friendly right now. But I have a feeling that this area may eventually redevelop into our version of Tysons Corner or Perimeter Center, so getting it right may be important.
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GoRaleigh 11L is realigned to run directly from Plaza West to Centennial Campus via Athens Drive (with none of the obnoxious zigzags.) I honestly question whether this route is even necessary at all, or whether the Buck Jones and Jones Franklin routes make it redundant. Athens Drive isn’t really a density powerhouse.
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GoRaleigh 4 Rex Hospital is extended up Duraleigh Road and realigned to stay on Wade Avenue between Ridgewood and Capital Blvd. I think Wade Avenue is underrated as a potential transit route.
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Tryon Road gets a crosstown route, from Waverly Place to Garner Station. This passes by some density and some really sparse areas. It looks good on a map but I’m far from certain that it would work out in real life.
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Plaza West turns out to be a really important node in the network, and as such, it probably needs/deserves a commuter rail stop.