Nope, it was just us and the operator and there was no indication of it being a new route 
. We did have a single on mid route that connected close to the 1. It wasn’t (and still isn’t) reporting on Google Maps or GoRaleigh Live. We had maybe 4 ons mid route on the way back.
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I mean I’d even do it for a route going frequent
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And herein lies the problem that I can sympathize with. Many may want to ride the bus, but don’t because of this kind of behavior. I too choose to not ride the bus. At least not from the MS station. For this very reason. Last time I did it was not very pleasant. I am a fan of public transportation. Just not so much in Raleigh. Unfortunately.
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A little late to the comments, and I guess missed some drama, but the last time I went during first Friday, we only saw one officer standing at the entrance from Exchange Plaza. We ended up on Martin St. and didn’t see any there, but I also wasn’t actively looking.
I know there will be plenty of people that disagree, but having visual officers isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The first thing that comes to mind is the ferry building in NYC and near Rockefeller center. There’s officers posted within the ferry station. You typically see officers around the National Mall in DC. That doesn’t make me feel unsafe. The last time I went up to Fells Point in Baltimore for a night out, I felt safer with the police presence. Both the police in NYC and in Baltimore were pretty heavily armed. Here’s my post about it back in 2023: Future of Glenwood South - #1120 by wanderer .
When I went to Paris, there was a heavy police presence there as well at the train station (Gare de l’Est).
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perhaps a cultural issue…relocation in the works?
https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/article315125868.htm
Josh Schaffer gives his thoughts with a few quotes from locals.
Smoking is popular in Poland. So far, smoking is really only an issue in Raleigh at the GoRaleigh bus station and surrounding areas as we live nearby. I don’t know if people are aware but not only does GoRaleigh ban smoking at the station but there’s city law that bans smoking near the transportation network. No one is enforcing that.
You can’t smoke in the transporation systems in Poland. So the only cultural issue is that laws made to protect the general population from smoking are followed in Poland and not Raleigh?
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Your link didn’t work for me but assuming you mean this article: “Move Raleigh’s downtown bus station? Riders resent blame aimed at Black and poor”
https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/article315125868.html
I feel like it’s a rather balanced take that aligns with mine. I really like how it brings up the Greyhound Station and the developer pressure for that.
Living downtown I do often think about how downtown has kind of been kept up by marginalized groups and how wealthier people moving back downtown naturally creates conflict points when they expect it to be a certain way.
I think the argument I’m more sympathetic to is how we now run so many buses in and out of GRS that they have 2 minutes or less to get in and get out of there, with many ending up laying over on the street and many routes ending up delayed without time to catch up. The delays cascade through our system, since so many buses are changing routes there.
So, in a nutshell, I think that I find a compelling argument to expand GoRaleigh Station, which might necessitate moving it or changing it’s form.
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I’m going to try to break down John Shaffer’s assessment the best I can.
The opening is dishonest: Sip ‘n’ Stroll is a vendor program to boost local businesses. The guy in the opening got an open container citation, which would happen anywhere in Raleigh. Shaffer decided to frames it as class warfare to set the tone for everything that follows.
He never engaged with the actual arguments being. Not once did he mention that the police chief said he’d build a new station if he could. (“If I had the resources to build a new transit mall I would.”) Not once does he mention bus operators testifying to City Council about unsafe working conditions. Not once does he mention open-air design, the four uncontrolled access points, the road constraints that the police chief said is impossible to secure. He skips all of it because it’s harder to call infrastructure concerns racist.
He conflates the building with the riders. Nobody serious is blaming riders. The bus operators themselves are saying conditions are unsafe. Are they racist against their own passengers?
The Glenwood South comparison is absurd. This is a false equivalency. They’re completely different problems. And it’s not something that’s been said by the police as impossible to secure either.
He asks the wrong question. “How many bus riders committed those assaults?” The answer is probably very few, which is exactly the point. The building’s design attracts bad actors who aren’t riders. A controlled-access facility fixes that.
He never asks what riders would gain from a new facility. Faster transfers, safer conditions, a building that actually works. It would be a massive upgrade for everyone (except the bad actors). On this forum, we’ve discussed locations close by where a new facility could go.
I just assumed that everyone involved up to this point was in alignment that the GoRaleigh station issues were about infrastructure. The police, the DRA, the neighbors, and the businesses. Somehow, the columnist on the News and Observer didn’t get the memo.
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Are you saying this local “journalist” working for a dying newspaper is practicing sensationalism in attempt to get more views??? SAY IT AIN’T SO!!! (for the record I’m not clowning you nor your analysis, and I appreciate the closer look! I am purely clowning the state of local “journalism” these days)
I definitely felt like Raleigh Magazine was not in a alignment for that. I felt like Raleigh Magazine was often blaming the current ridership of GoRaleigh at points and had little concern for the plight of current riders. Spending most of their article saying that if BRT serves GoRaleigh Station, that “choice riders” won’t ride it and it will be a failure. The 15 is one of our busiest routes, it’s okay to add more capacity to it even if it doesn’t bring “choice riders”.
That’s not what I read in the Raleigh Magazine article at all. It even starts by saying:
While the station itself has no residents, its role as an unintended “hub” for nonriders is linked to rising crime and safety concerns that spill over into surrounding retail and restaurant corridors—prompting conversations around its future.
Choice Riders is a term used by the city to differentiate between people that have to ride the bus and people that can both ride the bus or drive somewhere. If you have a lot of choice riders, it means that people are choosing to ride the bus instead of driving, which indicates that you have a good bus program.
The whole point of the BRT is to incentivize routes for people that would otherwise drive. That’s why we’re building dedicated bus lanes. We want a trip on the BRT to get you somewhere faster than driving would. The article correctly points out that BRT won’t hit its ridership potential if the station it connects to can’t be secured.
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I agree. I feel the Raleigh Magazine take on this, by saying “it should be moved” is a bit tone-deaf. “Moving” something because it’s a “problem” was a poor way to word things. What if I wrote an article saying something like:
“GoRaleigh Station is overcrowded with buses. Let’s build a new one.”
And then go into the operational challenges of this facility FIRST and then talk about how the ongoing safety issues along with the current design are stretching our DRA/RPD resources. A new build station would give them the chance to weigh in and address those challenges. I feel this would have been a better take/angle on the topic while, kind of, saying the same thing.
Corey Branch is right though that, to my knowledge, no one is advocating to move/rebuild/whatever the station. I don’t think it’ll work politically and you can see the reaction already at suggesting it by this article.
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Yeah, I agree that that’s the approach that needs to be taken. I don’t think the Raleigh Magazine intended it to come across that way, but it’s clear that it did to some people reading the article.
The argument should be led with infrastructure. We’re spending $1 million a year on security and crime is increasing, not decreasing. We’re eventually going to be at a point where the cost of not doing something is greater than the cost of doing something, if we’re not there already.
Hahaha, I didn’t interpret it that way. I genuinely do not like how the entirety of that article was designed to manipulate the reader into thinking that those that have real, genuine concerns with what is happening at the station should somehow be labeled as racists and classists.
Labeling opponents as evil is something being perpetuated by a lot of those in politics these days (not just one side), and is going to have to be something that we overcome. Articles like this don’t help.
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Added to that: it has an outdated, inefficient design that hinders operations and makes it nearly impossible to secure.
Let’s also emphasize that the new one must be in a convenient, possibly better, downtown location.
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That’s the biggest problem. This crap could all disappear tomorrow if we wanted it to, but everyone is afraid of being labeled some “ism”. It would also require eating crow and admitting the soft on crime, criminal justice reform was a giant mistake.
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Or perhaps a central station is not needed at all? Transist still takes people all over the city. You just get rid of the single unnecessary hub.
people can get angry all they want. They can call anyone who wants to shut down the station a racist (octavia rainey) if they want but the facts stand alone. The downtown station is a detriment to the City…PERIOD.
The conversation should be about the economic growth getting rid of the station would ignite……….Is Ocatavia Rainey going to call you a racist because you want to create jobs in the city? Wouldn’t jobs help the homeless by providing potential jobs for them?
Imagine if First Citizens Bank finally decided to return to downtown with their new HQ. Something that won’t happen with the station the way it is.
Just look to Bank of America in charlotte if you don’t believe me. Research what they did with the bus station when Hugh McColl wanted to build their tower. They moved it ….away from the new HQ.
Tell me the subsequent job growth has not been good for their city center or would be great for Raleigh.
The station needs to go
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- Where is the bus hub in Charlotte? (Still very central, still uptown. A block and a half from Bank of America HQ. Right next to the light rail line.)
- What did Charlotte have before? (No proper transfer station. The buses just stopped on the street. It was not workable.)
I do not believe it is possible to effectively operate a bus system in Raleigh without a central station for transfers and layovers without a massive increase in frequency throughout the system.
For the forseeable future, most of our routes will not be running more often than every 30 minutes, and that is inadequate to restructure the entire network as a dispersed grid.
Is there potential for more crosstown service, absolutely. Could there be more secondary hubs? Sure. But a central pulse is necessary.
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We had a bus breakdown in the station last night, blocking the middle platform. I feel like this is somewhat a regular occurrence and is a disadvantage to the current station but isn’t featured at all in the discussions. Bus bays being blocked and shutting down so much of the station when a bus is disabled could be fixed with another design.
Could we at least include existing riders in these discussions? Instead I just hear from property owners, something that feels out of touch for a lot of transit riders. I think there are a lot of quality of life concerns regarding the existing station, that could be improved with renovations or a new station.
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