Currently there’s already a park and ride near Carter Finley (it’s possible this is on the north side now?). It could make the route faster if the bus stops on Wade Avenue instead of needing to navigate through the stadium parking lot or getting off Wade Ave.
An advantage would be that it would avoid fair traffic. The unfortunate thing is that it would probably miss the fair, but the fair was pretty much avoided by bus service this past year anyway (Click here for my post about this). Maybe it’s possible it actually helps as a way to get to the fair? It might be a half mile walk from Wade.
I’m not sure what the plans would be, but I’m also assuming this may replace the 100/700 routes. If this is the case, then I’m guessing this will improve those route travel times.
While it does take a bit to go from Raleigh to Durham, I would think a big amount of time comes from DRX is going down Hillsborough St. Hillsborough St. gets busy with traffic during peak times. Time could be improved if they avoided Hillsborough St by the college, however I wouldn’t recommend this as quite a few people would get off by Hillsborough St when I rode the 100/105.
A lot of commuter rail and metro stations are built the same way. In a lot of them, it tends to be park and ride. This of course depends on the station. Urban stations would be a bit less park and ride-ish.
When I lived our in a suburb of San Francisco, I used to take the BART to San Francisco to work. The distance was about 33-35 miles from the station to my stop. Once at my stop, I had about a 1/4 mile walk to my work. I had to drive to the station from my house since there was no bus at the time to the station.
The park and rides would pull people out of their cars if it was more convenient than driving. Yes people would drive to them, but it does cut down the miles of car travel. Instead of driving 33 miles in my instance, I only drove about 2 with the rest being transit. Unfortunately in the RTP area, the jobs are spread apart which kills the transit use for work commutes there.
The park and rides could still be developed in the future. They don’t have to remain a parking lot. https://maps.app.goo.gl/oaLWV44DGk3gNXtEA is an example of a station where it was a parking lot back in 2011. If you change the date to the most recent (2022), you will see that there’s housing here now. It’s still not fully developed.
The park and rides would also be more for regional transit. This is how I’m looking at the BRT along I-40. It would be more for regional travel instead of local routes.