I mean NJ Transit is an interesting agency, given it’s one of few statewide transit agencies. They operate a lot more service than people give them credit for and really a lot of the working class people who work in Manhattan come in via NJ Transit Bus, instead of PATH, which is why they were able to get the Exclusive Bus Lane (XBL) in the Lincoln Tunnel.
Suburb to Suburb travel is hard everywhere, but what often makes it uniquely hard in the United States is that these suburbs don’t really want to become destinations and there’s a lot of discomfort talking about the value, especially land, that transportation investment creates. I’ve heard multiple transportation agencies talk about how they’re not looking to make land more valuable, which is exactly what transportation investment does. So when transit enters the suburbs, as it often does in the United States since there’s a lot of people who live in them, it’s framed as decreasing traffic congestion.
On the margins, transit can decrease traffic congestion, but transit cannot compete with uncongested direct roads and for humans to experience congestion it really doesn’t take many cars on the road. At the same time people who choose transit can benefit from investment. Houston simultaneously has the Katy Freeway, and a very productive Light Rail system. Raleigh’s traffic is getting worse, but we also have the 2nd fastest growing transit authority in the country.
There is latent demand for transit in Raleigh but as some people who would have rather taken transit that would have walked, biked, driven or been driven, more people who would have otherwise stayed home, may choose to drive. The goal is transit growth, and creating more of a culture of transit use. We have transit riders and there’s becoming more of them. How do we support them to become the biggest fans of GoRaleigh or people who love to hate GoRaleigh and will support their friends taking GoRaleigh. Not just people who are waiting for the next opportunity to stay home, buy a car or get a ride.
I’ve seen a few threads on the NCSU and Raleigh subreddits recently about how next year Wolfline is planning to delete route 52 (Gorman/Avent Ferry) from their network. This is a very popular route that will now be served exclusively by the GoRaleigh #11 and #12. I assume they want to free up some resources for other routes and that they finally feel comfortable doing this now that the #11 has been running at 15-minute headways.
The primary concern seems to be that the current route 52 is often standing room only at ~13 minute headways, and the #12 is only every 30 minutes during the daytime. Without evidence I do feel like the #11 will naturally serve more of the former #52 riders than the #12, but I absolutely agree that for the many students living along Gorman St., the headways on the #12 are going to be.. suboptimal.
Then there’s the fares: Wolfline is free, and NCSU students can get a GoPass membership to ride GoRaleigh for free, which is great. But I do hope that process is well-known among students and relatively easy to do.
I’m really rooting for GoRaleigh here. Seems like a big test for the robustness of the system. There are going to be a lot of new riders on these two routes and their impression of it could make or break whether they choose to utilize transit in the future. I think that the #11 is solid but I’m worried about how the #12 is going to handle the demand.
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.
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.
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.
