I’m on the 26 right now! Started a new job last week across from PNC and this was my first time taking it. Building ridership takes time… I’m hoping we ride it out.
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Congrats on the new job! and for the commitment to public transit.
There is always a sacrifice when you don’t have a car - in this country particularly. I am teaching a class on the 20s & 30s this semester, and I talk about a lot about cars, and how the US embraced them like no other. By 1929, there was 1 car for every 5 people in the US, 1 for 3 in California. By comparison it was 1 to 43 in the UK, and 1 to 343 in Italy. There are now more cars then people in the US.
The independence & freedom a car gives you is hard to give up, its both a lifestyle and mental commitment. Folks will all drive to class, dinner or a party separately simply so they can do what they want, when they want. Americans don’t like to be dependent on someone else’s time frame. I am guilty myself. Its a hard thing to give up when you are acculturated to it.
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This is a thoughtful connection between car usage and individual liberty or dependence tolerance. Please keep bringing these kinds of insights.
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That’s the sad thing 
…especially when this wasn’t always the case (according to this book by Alexis de Tocqueville that I had to read in undergrad)
This reminds me of another conversation we had on this site last year, too lol
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Another interesting finding from digging through public records! This time, it’s from the RTA’s revised request for proposals to sketch out concepts for a study (…so a study for a study lol) on a freeway and street-based transit (FAST) network.
I’ve posted about this before, but there’s apparently some important changes in the revision that’s much more major than I thought.
I’ve seen these park-and-ride ideas being on the list of things to be studied on the Wake Co. Transit Plan, but I had no idea it was developed enough to be mentioned on someplace like this?
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This makes sense for our region. Build dedicated bus lanes on 440 and 540 that stop at Park and Ride locations at a handful of the major interchanges to RTP. Let the buses zoom past the traffic every 10 mins
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Unless I’m missing something, Tocqueville was a chronicler of American individualism as it tied into our democracy. Being self-sufficient was always a big deal here, a car one of the ultimate expressions of it.
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Democracy in America did comment a lot on American individualism, but he also went into detail about the social fabric that ties people together.
That Frenchie often brought up churches (as a common place to meet people), civic gatherings (I think activists back then gave out free food if you went rallies for increasing voter turnout), intimate connections with neighbors compared to initial distrust against people who are from out of town etc. He pointed out a lot of individualism, but the goal of his book was to show how democracy impacted American society; you gotta talk about the non-individualist side of things, too, to make this case.
I read this as individualism being A Big Thing™ in early-1800s America, but that didn’t mean collectivism was put on the chopping blocks. In that light, going back to 2020 and what @pBeez said, I get the vibe that we (as a nation of people) don’t care to strike that balance the way we used to 
Let’s hope the new park-and-rides (and other proposed amenities) will help to swing back the pendulum a bit 
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He viewed morality as the counterbalance to rampant individualism, namely America’s fairly Puritanical self-denial reflex. Regardless though, I guess my point is I don’t think there was ever a time when brotherly bonds trumped freedom of movement. Safety, distance, or financial constraints yes, a spirit of collectivism no. But perhaps this isn’t the forum for that, sorry, my ears just perk up when history is mentioned.
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On a far different note, I wonder if this could work in Raleigh. Even possibly on the BRT routes. Hmmm.
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WAIT. If the state Farmer’s Market wants a better, low-cost public face as they’re implementing their master plan (in light of the whole Dix Park drama), this could be a good interim, low-cost thing they could try!?
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I worked in Southeast Raleigh for 10 years. If ever there was a food desert in this town, that would be it.
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I’m on record with the idea that actually building the frequent bus network as described in the 2016 Wake Transit Plan would immediately set Raleigh’s transit as one that other cities could look to for inspiration. To be able to cover that amount of area with frequent reliable transit would be amazing.
I wish we could somehow accelerate that part of the plan, let the commuter rail and BRT parts run their course, but implementing the frequent routes would immediately improve the lives of many many residents and give others the opportunity to realistically leave their car at home.
Once we have the frequent routes implemented, upgrading the infrastructure (dedicated bus lanes, better vehicles, better stops/stations) and frequency - are incremental improvements that could happen over time with priority going to the neediest spots.
And it is relatively cheap in the scheme of things. A bus costs about $500,000 and painting a lane is nominal in the long run. Just do it.
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I actually feel like having to get in a car to go somewhere is the opposite of freedom 
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Freedom is everybody lets you travel the way you want to travel.
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In a country with over 3 million square miles, freedom of movement is self-sufficiency.
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Freedom is having no attachments to the physical world, allowing oneself to travel the cosmos without tensing a muscle, but I digress…
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Exactly, and the way I want to travel is by foot or transit where I can do other things besides dodging other drivers that also think it’s their freedom to drive like idiots (also at the expense of others). But because so many people decided their “freedom” was driving their own car even at the expense of others then everything spread out and that took away from the freedom of others that didn’t want that. If the rest of you want to sit in traffic then continue to knock yourselves out, I’d rather walk everywhere, when I want, at what pace I want, which is much truer freedom to me
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FY 2021 actually starts on July 1
" We’ll be putting more than $37 million into bus transfer points, transfer centers, park-and-ride lots, bus stop improvements, bus maintenance facilities and sidewalks, not to mention moving to the next stage of our first BRT corridor. These improvements will allow us to keep expanding our transit network to reach the Wake Transit Plan goal ofproviding frequent and reliable urban mobility and access to transit across the county."
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West Street extension! West Street extension!! West Street extension!!!
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