GoRaleigh Bus System, now and the future

Transit and Transportation
2507

I already sent this feedback via the Wake Transit Plan link sent the other day, but I figure I would share this here as well. I don’t think I’ve seen this discussed anywhere else before, but surely I can’t be the only one who has experienced this….

I don’t ride GoRaleigh as frequently as others, but over the last year and a half I do ride it sometimes (occasionally up to a couple of times per week). For a couple of the buses I’ve gotten on during that time, the drivers have ZERO clue what their route is. Like, we (the riders) have had to give them turn-by-turn directions just to stay on route to get to where we’re going.

The first few times that it happened to me, I was trying to ride the tragedy that is the WRX to go visit family. I can understand a little for that specific route, since while GoRaleigh operated it they only ran 5 trips a day at the most inconvenient times, and I only really ever saw a few other people onboard at most. One time the driver did know of an older alignment, but hadn’t been informed that at some point GoRaleigh realigned the route off of Atlantic and on to Capital (and from S Main St onto Capital & NC-98 in Wake Forest). I didn’t think much of it, but clearly the other people onboard did as they made a fair deal of it. To be fair, the realignment off of Atlantic wasn’t even shown in the last brochure GoRaleigh published for the route (dated July 2022), and GoTriangle has since restored this alignment when they took the route over, but still…

If this only happened on a disused express route that they don’t even operate anymore, I wouldn’t care. But I’ve had this happen to me twice while I’ve been riding route 11 as well, most recently TODAY. Both times I was trying to get from downtown to NC State’s campus, and the first time was during last year’s Dreamville Fest. I recall that the driver had asked us onboard if any of us was trying to get off on NC State, and on receiving a yes from all but one of us onboard (there were only a few to be fair), skipped all the stops on NCSU’s main campus and remained on Western until turning onto Avent Ferry and dropping us all off at the stop there. It especially sucked for me since it turned my 4 minute walk into a 20 minute walk, and I was already in a serious rush. But today I was riding, and the driver did not know the route at all!!! A few of us riders (myself included) had to give her turn-by-turn directions the entire way. I probably would’ve missed my stop in a similar style to last year had I not come up to the front of the bus and mentioned the deviation through NCSU, and I genuinely hope that someone else stepped up after I got off.

I’m a little more concerned about route 11 because NCSU’s Wolfline just announced today their changes for the Fall 2026 semester, and they’ve significantly restructured almost all of their routes with the stated goal of reducing service along corridors that GoRaleigh routes 11 & 12 already run on. You can see it clearly too when comparing their new route map to their current one. Almost all of the Wolfline trips I’ve taken during my time here so far will become impossible this fall without taking route 11, and if the driver doesn’t know where the stops are, how can myself and other students rely on it for trips that we could previously just step on a Wolfline bus for?

I realize this happens fairly rarely for the amount of times I take GoRaleigh, but the fact that it happens at all is absurd. I can understand new drivers not being completely familiar, but they shouldn’t be sent out driving routes that are new to them with zero guidance. I understand from my untrained eye that GoTriangle has a screen for their drivers that, among many other things, displays turn guidance for their route. Surely GoRaleigh can adopt something similar?

Has anyone else experienced anything similar, or am I just unlucky? I realize I just typed an essay, but I’m a bit concerned. There are of course other issues I have experienced with GoRaleigh as a whole, and I would love to see them overcome those issues, but one of the things I’m not trying to worry about when I step onboard a bus is if I have to help guide the driver to my stop.

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2508

if i recall right even with CAT, an operator who knew thre route would ride with a newer driver…they would just sit up front.

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2509

Honestly, I have no idea what Wolfline is doing either. Cutting routes and extending others means longer routes and one break down will have a massive impact on frequencies… especially when you consider those buses are 9 years old and you have 30/35 of them in service during peak hours.

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2510

Don’t they have a frigging GPS in the bus?

2511

I’ve only heard the vocal turn by turn while on GoTriangle. I don’t know if GoRaleigh has that.

2512

You might have been unlucky. Every time I’ve seen a new driver on my route, there is somebody out at front giving them directions. Granted, given a lot of things have been falling through the cracks at GoRaleigh recently, I’m not surprised this happened.

GoRaleigh quite often deviates away from NC State when there is a major event on campus like homecoming, and buses drop-off and pick-up passengers on Avent Ferry instead. I think that’s what happened to you during Dreamville.

Wow… Wolfline is really off-loading coverage to GoRaleigh, aren’t they? I really don’t want to think about how jammed the 11 bus is going to get now that there are no Wolfline routes going from Avent Ferry to Main Campus. GoRaleigh is going to need more XN60 buses running on the 11 if this goes through. Sadly, it looks like Wolfline has really gone downhill since I was there. It was a great bus system pre-COVID.

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2513

Thanks for sharing this here, and in the survey, and this is not the first time I’ve heard similar stories. Each month, the Transit Authority gets a report from the General Manager of the operator, RATPDev. In it, they always highlight the bus driver numbers. Here’s the chart from the March meeting.

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I always forget the number of drivers needed (somewhere around 260, maybe 280??) to reach 100% but over the last 2 years, I believe we have never had that. Turnover is high. New drivers stay weeks then quit. Experienced drivers are retiring. As a result, RATPdev struggles with training and getting that experience into the system which should reduce the frequency of those kinds of stories.

I appreciate you sharing though as it’s something the authority keeps an eye on and continues to bring up to the operator every month.

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2514

I haven’t experienced quite the same issues as you, but the March service changes seem to have confused a few drivers just in the last week. I live on the section of Wake Forest Road formerly served by Route 1 before it was realigned to stay on Capital Blvd and replaced by Route 14 last weekend. Not only have I seen the Route 1 bus still running on this route a time or two (not sure if they would actually stop or are just taking a shortcut) but I also saw a Route 2 (which was also realigned at the same time, but never served this area) bus that seemed totally lost. Maybe it was out of service or just training, but it showed up on my bus tracker.

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2515

I’m not a bus driver nor am I affiliated with GoRaleigh at all so I could be completely wrong here, but from what I observed while standing at the front of the bus they do have a unit that displays the upcoming stop name and timing. I didn’t see any turn-by-turn instructions though, like what GoTriangle seems to have & what core2idiot mentioned

2516

It’s possible that’s what happened, but I don’t recall seeing any service alerts about that nor did the driver say anything beyond that question. It was a year ago to be fair, so my memory could be wrong, but I vaguely remember walking past the next bus (that did actually serve campus) on my way back to my dorm.

I don’t know how that’s going to work if Wolfline is going to offload a good number of their routes to the 11…. especially since I’ve noticed during the system shutdowns this past winter that GoRaleigh’s own website will continue to show “live” ““real-time”” countdowns even when there’s a service alert that clearly says service is suspended. Seemed to affect the Transit app too by extension. :person_facepalming:

(And if how packed I see the Wolfline buses currently on that corridor are is any indication, I’m not sure if just swapping the current buses for the XN60s will be enough :grimacing: but maybe I’m wrong, I don’t have the numbers)

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2517
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Does GoTriangle deserve our trust?
2518

A post was merged into an existing topic: Show Off Things From Other Cities

2519

The bus system should switch to a grid design that would allow more riders to get to their destinations without having to ride downtown, only to transfer to a bus that will take them back out of the city’s center. Fewer passengers passing through the Moore Square station wouldn’t eliminate all the problems there, but it would ease pressure on the station, improve the rider experience and likely increase ridership.

https://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/article315232585.html

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2520

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Welp there was another one tonight. Not sure what happened here but I was able to watch the tow truck lash up and tow the little boi away. This one is a 2019 CNG Gillig Low Floor, #1906, a different year than the other one I posted. It’s never been a route I needed, so far but with how closely we’re timetabled, I wonder how many delays I’ve experienced due to bus failure.

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2521

Moving to a grid system would help. I don’t know if I love the framing of decreasing the emphasis on GoRaleigh Station, though. Like we should work to have mostly north-south and east-west routes, creating a frequent service grid where you can get most anywhere in 2 transfers, at worst 3. This would probably still want a lot of service to go Downtown and without a transit facility or mall Downtown, I think the rider experience would suffer.

This is what our current network looks like when you take out all the routes that go to GoRaleigh Station, I see some low hanging fruit, like connecting the 11L, to the 7L and the 18L. Extending the 15L to meet the 23L and 24L. That would make it possible to circumnavigate the city without going Downtown on transit.

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I think a few decisions need to be made first, are we doing a system remap project, or are we doing a series of small tweaks? Should any routes layover downtown? If so, where? What type of transit facility does best by our riders? A transit mall on surface streets or a transit center on a city block?

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2522

Took the 100 back to RDU yesterday afternoon. After a few pick-up/drop-offs on Hillsborough, I was the only passenger that rode all of the way to the transit center. Fortunately, there was a shuttle to RDU just leaving when I got there and they waited for me. Including walking from my condo and then waiting 15 minutes at the bus stop, the door to door to RTP was 75 minutes. Not too shabby at rush hour.

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2523

A circumferential routing around downtown would help with not having to go all the way into the city to get somewhere. I still stand by the principle that a frequent bus service is needed that goes from the fairgrounds via the art museum, Rex Hospital, Crabtree Valley, North Hills, Capital Blvd, to New Bern Avenue.

But the first step they need to do is up the frequencies and service span. Most of the L routes run hourly and stop service at 7 PM. Shameful for a city like Raleigh.

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2524

I think there is value in connections before reaching downtown but I don’t support turning them into a single circumferential route. Connecting the L routes, is a small intervention that would increase access for people for trips not going downtown, which I think has value.

I’m not sure how that route you’re talking about would work, without being really inefficient. That would require going east to go west, and all sorts of doubling back. I like the idea of routes continuing through downtown though.

Whole heartedly agree with this. The L routes, are really hard to build your life around and people that ride them, probably resent them. It’s like every new route at least runs until 11, but then all of the L routes stop at 7 but with the operator shortage, we’re struggling to operate the schedule we’ve written already.

2525

this video is a great insight into the expectations vs. reality with bus systems that you can definitely draw parallels to goraleigh. definintely worth a watch

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2526

I watched this video when it came out. It really is a good example of the challenges that suburban transit riders face.

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