I haven’t seen that done with Umo but I have seen that in other places, where student ids double as a fare card. I do think that we should be moving away from fare media that requires a human to read it to see if it’s valid. I believe our plan is to have BRT as Proof of Payment (ergo why the New Flyer’s didn’t have fareboxes) and so all fares need to be clearly validated to the rider before they board.
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For the NC State GoPass, you have to sign into a portal to get a benefit code you redeem in the Umo app. A little more involved than UNCC & CATS, but once you set it up, it’s set up for the remainder of the year. And it still only takes a couple of minutes, not something you have to “request” and wait a response for.
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I don’t go to NC State, so I was just basing it off what I was able to see here. Either way, a lot of students either don’t know they have the ability to access the GoPass or just don’t trust the public system (as they should). UNCC Students just use it for the light rail.
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Here’s what that form looks like to someone who is signed in:
It looks like they’ve changed the form since I last used it in the fall (specifically with the addition of that last question), but once you fill it out it immediately sends you an automated email with the benefit code that’s associated with your affiliation. That email looks like this, with additional instructions on how to activate the GoPass:
I don’t know of any differences between the different affiliations, but I do know they do categorize those numbers separately in the performance metrics that GoRaleigh publishes.
Since they ask you to sign up with your email anyways, it would be nice that was the only thing you had to do, but at least you only have to do it once a year.
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A couple of weeks ago, I had the chance to ride most of the 14 and while the route is well overdue and would’ve been great to have they missed the boat on two big things.
1: The setup of the stops at Atlantic & Six Forks isn’t good. Northbound isn’t too bad being near the Exxon/Bojangles but the southbound stop is on the side of Atlantic currently without a sidewalk. That doesn’t inspire any safety for one.
2: A diversion up Six Forks, Mellow Field, and Meadow Wood would be much better for generating ridership with five different apartment complexes and a condo complex along that route versus nothing on Atlantic. Convince me otherwise.
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The fact that this is the weekday level of service to the densest node of development outside of downtown is really dropping the ball IMO.
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Raleigh City Council had a work session this week and it was all about GoRaleigh. I really liked to hear that the council is all over trying to improve the situation at GoRaleigh Station, pushing back even on “need to study that in 12-18 to figure out what to do” comments from staff. This is a good watch.
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The City of Raleigh has just posted a RFP for new buses. 8 35-foot buses, 30 40-foot buses, and 15 60-foot buses. Arrival by year:
Year 1 - 20
Year 2 - 5
Year 3 - 14
Year 4 - 2
Year 5 - 12
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I will not be participating in this RFP. Find one that deals with their IT infrastructure and I’m in.
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I realize this is might be a bizarre ask, but is anyone here familiar enough with GoRaleigh practices & policies to tell me if I’m completely wrong & crazy or if my observations have some truth to them?
After I had yet another awful experience of trying to catch the #1 last Friday from TTC (My fault for finding myself up there honestly), I suspect that drivers who are running late to make a shift change at GRS will instead go out of service at TTC and drive directly to GRS to minimize overtime? At least the driver told us she was going out of service this time, even though the route sign on the bus has always shown otherwise every time this happens to me. The bus was parked at GRS by the time I got there, and it didn’t seem like a driver was present (though I ended up on #14 and didn’t get a good view when I arrived).
Admittedly I don’t know if drivers are paid by revenue hours only or if non-revenue hours count, I’m just trying to make sense of my experiences. And obviously there is a lot more that goes into delays and stuff, but this would help explain some of the shenanigans I’ve experienced waiting at that “P&R”… (I actually think the first bus I was waiting for actually broke down or had some sort of incident, because my app was showing it stopped for 10+ minutes before turning around mid-route, but this wasn’t ever communicated to us because why would we ever need to know about a service disruption 
)
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Any chance you can remember a timeframe and date of these incidents? You can DM directly and I may have a way to ask about this.
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Of course! The two times I can recall timeframes for are:
- November 28th, 2025 at about 6:30pm (when two buses skipped the stop without telling us anything after deviating to the loop that serves the Barnes & Noble)
- May 1st at about 3:45pm (the incident last Friday, would’ve been during the landfill fire to the north)
Both of these would’ve been at the Park & Ride stop by the old Orvis. Thanks!