This is a really good point and something we should track. If the numbers bump up considerably, the city can adjust faster to that demand just like they did on the #1.
NOTE: When I say faster it still may be a year or two, let’s be honest, but change can happen when the numbers are there. 
This may somewhat be a backhanded bid by the university to get a bigger portion of the off-campus student population out of Avent Ferry and up to Hillsborough.
When I was a student (class of 2005) you either lived on campus and walked to class, lived on Avent Ferry and rode the Wolfline, or lived somewhere else and drove.
It’s a win-win for the University when students live off campus (because they don’t have to build, maintain and operate dorms) but close enough to walk (because they don’t have to build and maintain parking or operate buses).
It was my experience as a student that information about something being free efficiently makes its rounds within the university community, and that was before the days of social media.
Edit: I also suspect that GoRaleigh will/should set up a temporary information station at the Student Center and/or libraries prior to the transition, or at the start of the Fall Semester.
I don’t think they’re supposed to do that… 
Whoa! One of these F’ers almost hit me at the stoplight the other day at Cabarrus / turning from McDowell…..Legit concerning and the driver was just pointing / gesturing like it was my issue. 
i have my thoughts. what are yours?
the average goraleigh bus driver is:
One time I was on an inbound 7 bus that had had to stop at the sam’s club for around 15 minutes (I was waiting for it at Maywood and saw it stopped on the Transit app). When I finally got on, people were pretty vocally mad. One person asked if they would hold the other buses at the station since they were running late and the driver replied no, to which the person said “this is bullshit”. The driver responded by saying “this is public transit, what do you expect?”…
That is not an acceptable response, but I am not sure that a customer swearing is also acceptable toward a modestly/moderately paid public service employee.
I’m gonna sound like a broken record, but have pleaded with the city council about working in unsafe conditions. That’s going to create more turnover, which results in less experienced dirvers, which results in situations like this.
I haven’t ridden enough systems outside of Raleigh to understand what the “average” looks like (1 RIPTA bus, 1 CATS bus, and the rest are different modes that don’t count) but it definitely could be better. I’m sure their working conditions definitely aren’t helping either.
For what it’s worth, since my last contribution to this topic, I’ve seen an otherwise pleasant driver take a creative detour that skipped more stops than what’s advertised on the service alerts and I’ve had a friend complain to me that his already late bus was even more delayed because the driver took a smoke break (the only timepoint he would’ve passed he was supposed to depart about 4 minutes before I received the first text). Both of these were on the inbound 11 (with the first taking Boylan/Hargett/West/Martin for the curious).
Then again, when I found myself riding route 14 on its first day, the driver I had was pleasant and even tried to make some small talk which was an appreciated change of pace (even if that isn’t really my thing).
I don’t think GoTriangle has this same problem (at least to the same scale), but they also don’t seem to have the same problems with working conditions either. If I had to deal with some of the same stuff that the drivers do, I doubt I would be any better. That might be a good place to start…
I feel like with GoRaleigh, the bus drivers really depend on what routes you ride and what the passengers are like. My commute takes me on the buses in North and West Raleigh (including through NC State), and the drivers are pleasant and friendly 95% of the time. The drivers on the #1 bus often seem stressed out (can’t blame them, Capital Blvd is awful to drive on). And then the drivers on routes going through rough places like New Bern Avenue are more rude (again, this is probably because there tend to be more passengers out looking for trouble who make it crap for the drivers and, in turn, ruin the experience for people who need to take the bus). I tend to have good drivers on my routes, but that is the privilege of living on and using routes like these.
GoTriangle was surprisingly bad last year with its drivers; a lot of what people talk about on GoRaleigh, I was seeing on GoTriangle. But I have to give credit that, over the past few months, they’ve gotten much better.
It’s possible that I’ve just been lucky with how infrequently I ride GoTriangle, and to be honest most of the GoRaleigh drivers aren’t that bad either- but I’m also mainly taking routes in the north & west like you mentioned
This reminds me, I got to try one of the new fully electric buses the other day. I’m not gonna lie, those things can be pretty quick. I didn’t think the EV torque would really carry over to a big bus, but I was wrong. You can really feel it!
There is a small median just before for the entrance to that relatively new office/retail development. I can’t see how that bus would get thrown off the road by it. The driver probably hit the road curb and panicked.
Looks like State backed off from eliminating Wolfline Route 52, although they will now only run 2 buses for it. I assume they still want to use GoRaleigh to maintain the current frequency.
Still not great, but this isn’t the disaster they were proposing. The 50 bus could be eliminated, but I really think GoRaleigh would have to run buses every 10 minutes and use bendy buses (kind of like what they do for Route 1) to meet the demand. Eliminating the 52 bus was a horrible idea from the start.
The GoPass membership should be an instant access thing not something you have to request for. At UNC Charlotte, all students get access to CATS. They login to the CATS app using their school ID and the pass is available immediately.
NCSU student id cards should just be recognized by the readers as a GoPass.
