Most Swiss cities provide free local public transportation has long as you stay at a hotel or hostel. (Most will email you a digital pass before your arrival). Paid for by the normal daily tourist accommodation tax. Raleigh should look into it. Tourists are more likely to explore the use of public transportation if offered for ‘free’ (paid by tourist tax).
This in turn helps support public transportation availability and quality for locals.
Currently, there’s a Wake County Room Occupancy tax of 6%. Levy 1.5% extra for this feature. That will bring in an extra $1.50 per $100 per day of accommodations. That’s a little more than a one way bus ride on GoRaleigh system but with more people buying into the program, it pays for itself greatly. Just spitballing.
I think city should work with downtown employers to subsidize or reduced cost monthly bus cards. And work with developers to reduce parking requirements if their office tenants provide such bus passes to their employees.
Where I work at they provide free bus rides for all employees. But I only know one person who actually uses it (I am sure there are others). So any company could do that already if they wanted to.
They could. But aren’t this and that two geographically different situations?
Catering to tourists means having public transit for people who mainly move around in a centralized way between a dense cluster of hotels and popular destinations. But in contrast, workers may go to a specific workplace but employees’ homes may be too difficult to conveniently access without a car.
It would probably make tourism of the Triangle much more attractive, too, especially if you’re coming in a way where driving wouldn’t make much sense (e.g. overseas, West Coast red-eye).
Well I was replying to Kanatenah’s post specifically and not about the free bus rides for tourists. But they are clearly two different issues.
Do you mind sharing where, or what general location, you work in?
When I worked in RTP, they also subsidized bus passes and barely anyone used it. Now I work in downtown Raleigh and they subsidize parking, not bus passes. We’ve got it backwards here I think.
Honestly, I like the personal choice idea. Give every employee $50, $75, even $100 and let them do what they want with it.
My work pays 100% of public transit but only $60 for parking downtown. They also force me to get a GoTriangle pass when I only need the GoRaleigh. I don’t mind though since I don’t pay for it.
That’s not going to promote use of public transit.
I work for Wake County (work on the 5th floor of the 15th story Art Deco limestone clad Waverly F Akins building). They provide vans for car pooling and the free bus rides. I park in the Wake County parking deck and they only charge us $25 per month for parking there. I think they started the free bus rides about 5 years ago or so. The person I know using lives south of Fuquay Varina near the Harnett County Line and she drives up to Fayetteville Rd at Ten Ten Rd and catches the park and ride bus. One of my coworkers lives in Johnston County and about 10 of them used to car pool in a Wake County van to work (but she has retired now).
Equipment room and where the elevator machinery is housed. I am sure that is partly decorative too.
There’s actually a good amount of open empty space up there too and an area that could be a rooftop patio. Probably not up to code to be officially used though.
This sounds like the same kind of behavior I saw when working in RTP. The coworkers of mine lived the furthest away and they would rather carpool/vanpool then drive 1.5 hours to work one-way. There was an abundance of surface parking, free of course.
I’m sure if the county started to ratchet up the cost of parking, to the true cost, then you might have some folks think about a mode shift. I think alternatives to driving are impeded by govt keeping the true cost hidden.
Nooooooooooooo!!! I want my $25 parking fee to stay forever… haha
Does Wake County offer a similar benefit like is available in the District of Columbia?
https://www.wmata.com/business/smartbenefits/For-Employers.cfm
No. But to be honest the greater Raleigh area doesn’t currently have particularly good transit options available. Maybe one day we will get there…
NCDOT 2020-2029 Transportation Plan Approved including many rail grade-separation projects in Raleigh metro area.
https://ncdot.maps.arcgis.com/home/webmap/viewer.html?webmap=cb02f4f828974670ad01bb83be91b18c
I do not envy them one bit. Awaiting $300 M from the feds owed from repairs made from the last three (now four) hurricanes, staff layoffs, and still trying to knock these projects out. Oy!
