Would they be additional lanes or converted lanes from the existing supply?
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Do you know anything about how the airport stop they alluded to is going to work? I.e., is this a new stop at/near an interchange with I-40 that will connect with the RDU shuttle? Or do they just intend for this to make it easier for, say, the 100X to reach the RTC?
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From what I’ve been told, they will be extended shoulder lanes so essentially an additional lane.
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I’m not quite sure about that and don’t want to say something wrong. As of right now, all of this is still preliminary but more likely to happen than commuter rail at this point.
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So if folks break down and get over to the ’ shoulder’ the bus lane will be blocked?
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That or if people feel like simply using it. I’m curious if there’d be any enforcement of the bus only lane.
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For some reason I feel like SHP would totally nab people for it unless there was some reason it isn’t/wouldn’t be made illegal.
I’m confused why the set up described above would only be a 10 minute improvement during rush hour?
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I disagreed with the BRT along I-40 plan. While a dedicated lane would be fantastic, I worry that stops along I-40, which will most likely be park and rides, will add a lot of time to the route. I mean, if the current DRX gets you from GoRaleigh to downtown Durham in 1hr 15min, this plan just doesn’t feel like much of an improvement when you consider their existing on-time performance.
Train to Durham or bust. 
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I work out at RTP and drive I-40 regularly. I hardly ever see Highway Patrol on this stretch. When it’s bumper to bumper, stop-and go for 4-lanes, with a nice clear lane to the side, I would not be surprised at all that people will use the bus lane. It’s too tempting.
They would need to put license plate scanners on it that will send people tickets, or some other enforcement / deterrent.
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This is not an “either-or” choice between BRT/freeway-based buses and rail, though.
Besides, even if we never invest in buses ever again for the rest of time and go all-in on upgrading current Amtrak services to something like New Jersey’s statewide system, it’ll take years to collect enough money to buy new land, build tracks and trains, and run trains frequently enough for it to be worth it; you’d need a stopgap solution while this happens, and you’d end up circling back to enhanced buses, anyways.
Also, the source of the ideas about I-40 bus lanes etc. is the FAST study conducted by the Regional Transportation Alliance (the Raleigh Chamber of Commerce’s transportation advocacy arm), plus the ongoing FAST 2.0 study run by the RTA (the transportation arm of Raleigh’s Chamber of Commerce). This matters because this - which NCDOT has supported and has been trying to incorporate into its own work!! - calls for I-40 bus lanes that are better integrated than just having park-and-rides nearby. The FAST 1.0 report explicitly recommends things like:
The fourth bullet point takes on your concern spot-on, if you ask me:
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Cool. I’ll look forward to utilizing this service in the year 2099.
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The funding is coming from previous commuter rail project funds so it’ll more than likely be active before 2050.
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Yeah, I’ll believe it when I see it. Which, if 2050 is the estimate, will be when I’m almost retirement age lmaooooo
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Yeah me too. Just in time for me to use it daily.
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Park 'n Rides are right up there with the WORST in city planning IMO. Along with ultra high density, non-walkable, SFH suburbia, I can’t imagine a bigger fail than having to drive to a transit station as part of a daily commute within your own county. That’s not taking your car off the roads!
Transit stations of any kind (including buses) should be accessed by foot from high density development around station locations. It should start with housing, and that should be the minimum requirement in order to get one. If you are lucky enough to already have a single family home near a station so that you can walk to the stations, then good for you. If parking decks or lots are built around the stations, it defeats the reason for a transit station in the first place!
That said, we have to start providing something soon, and a commuter rail is feeling less and less “soon” as the years pass by, and especially because we are entering 4 years that will be extremely hostile to rail transit planning at the Federal level.
Ideally we would plan BRT stations near/adjacent to where future rail stations would be. This would allow us to start developing the density around these locations that could launch us successfully into a future commuter rail system when that time comes.
In the end, I don’t think that a transit stop should be an entitlement; it should serve a purpose. That purpose should be to move people effectively around the city/metro, without a car, to places that are useful in people’s daily lives.
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I take the 100 & 800 to and from work everyday and the emergency lane is a life saver. When rush hour hits the 800 driver moves to the emergency lane to stay on schedule. Without the emergency lane i would, without a doubt, miss my connection.
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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.
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You bring up something about Hillsborough St. that I talk about constantly. What we have now is a street that:
- Is super congested and does not efficiently move traffic
- Severely slows down numerous (at least 8!) bus routes
- Is extremely uncomfortable and dangerous for biking in certain places, despite being near a college with a huge car-free population
But… it also provides a ton of street parking that surely benefits the businesses there, which already struggle as-is. My guess is any radical changes here would be way too difficult to overcome for this reason. But I think, Ideally, from Pullen to Dan Allen, Hillsborough St. would be a transit mall. I post about it almost yearly one place or another, but during Packapalooza this stretch is ped-only for the whole day, and the traffic in the surrounding neighborhoods is fine. Completely fine. 8 ish bus routes and a ton of (potential) bike commuters >>> cars moving very slowly down this stretch
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