Raleigh is out of the running for Virgin Hyperloop One’s US debut.
Interestingly, Dallas/Ft. Worth got nixed too, just days after they made a crucial step forward in building a Dallas-Houston bullet train line.
But Tampa-St. Petersburg is going ahead, where the startup HyperloopTT is dreaming of shuttling over to Miami through the Everglades.
Does it have anything to do with the Brightline and its expansion thru the east coast of Florida and into Orlando?
It’s all going to be underwater in fifty to one hundred years. I don’t understand why so many people want to put out so much investment in Florida.
If half of the Netherlands aren’t underwater already, I’d say South Florida will probably have the financial resources to combat rising sea levels also.
Cary opened a short survey for an early-stage feasibility analysis of a new rail/bus station between the two tracks, just west of Harrison.
https://www.townofcary.org/projects-initiatives/project-updates/facilities-projects/downtown-cary-multi-modal-transit-facility
Moving the station would solve a few problems:
The survey also mentions open space and retail/office/residential; seems they’re thinking of a mixed-use component as well. The full block identified is about 10 acres, substantially larger than an entire DTR block (6.25 acres).
Did they ever explain why they don’t have multiple candidate locations (like this place)?
Unless I didn’t see where they mentioned it, I feel like they’re overdefining their problem. …especially for such an early-stage study (read: they’re screwing themselves over for the future, if they end up doing an Alternatives Analysis).
I was wondering the same thing. There’s a lot of private property on the selected parcel, including several SFHs. I can see that becoming a pretty big problem during the land acquisition phase (unless the Town has already worked out deals with these property owners, which I doubt).
Here is my comment.
I would like to see this project prioritize transit connections above all else. If the connections between GoCary local buses, GoTriangle regional buses, BRT, Commuter Rail, Amtrak, and High Speed Rail, and walk/bike access to downtown Cary are convenient, they will be well used. Convenient means: having the shortest distances and fewest barriers between modes should be the absolute driving force for this facility. EVERYTHING ELSE in the layout (aesthetics, parking, mixed-use development, open space) must be clearly subordinate to the central mission of transit! Design it as an awesome passenger facility that maximizes passenger convenience first, and then fit the other things around it.
We should not prioritize park-and-ride at downtown Cary. I am not saying there should be no parking, but it should not be thought of as the main way people get to the station. We should plan for people to access this station on foot, bike, bus, and failing that, via ride share. We don’t want to waste prime land on parking, and we don’t want the extra traffic jams that big parking facilities bring. If we want a large volume of park-and-ride access for commuter rail, then Cary should push for a second station within town limits. The area by NE Maynard Rd / E Chatham Street seems like it would be a good candidate.
It seems like this should be obvious, but surprisingly we get it wrong a LOT of the time.
Raleigh’s Union Station is stunning to look at but it shows a surprising amount of contempt for passenger convenience. Imagine a passenger riding the train to go to dinner at The Pit on Davie Street. From the passenger platform, you can literally see it- It’s about 300 feet away. However, you have to walk the length of the platform, to the tunnel, then all the way to the back of the station complex through a long concourse, then back through the waiting area of the station (which is often rented out as an event space and blocked off to passenger circulation!), finally under the tracks and up a stairway, then out onto the street, and over a few blocks to the restaurant.the station complex’s main entrance at the corner of W. Martin Street and S. West Street. All told it adds up to a half mile. You see what I mean by contempt for passenger experience.
If we want transit to be a real option here in Cary, we must not - under any circumstance - exhibit contempt for passengers like this.
The best example of a train station in the state that gets it right, and, the one that I think Cary should emulate, is High Point.
Right now, the tracks begin a long descent heading west from Academy Street. By beginning this descent right where the tracks cross over Durham Road on a bridge, this will leave enough space for the tracks to descend about 15’, level off for a platform within the footprint of the existing station and planned multimodal center, and then resume their descent and meet the existing grade of the tracks somewhere west of Harrison Avenue. With the rails about 15’ lower, raising the streets by about 10’ will allow for grade separations to carry Academy and Harrison over the tracks, while leaving the existing grade at Chatham Street untouched.
Interesting video on transportation in America, with an interesting map of the bus system in Charlotte. Thought y’all might like it:
Interesting watch. A couple years ago I was thinking about starting to take public transportation from my home in downtown to my office in a fairly dense area with some office buildings and entertainment venues nearby. I figured this should be easy, but my 13 minute drive would have been a 1 hour and 23 minute commute each way, assuming I left my house at the right time.
Yes, an inability or unwillingness to just run good service is indeed the main thing holding US transit back.
You’ll never get good ridership without good service, but we are afraid to spend the money needed to boost service for fear that new ridership won’t show up andthe effective cost-per-rider will increase.
The absolute worst is when cities spend millions or billions on capital projects like rail lines and wind up raiding operations to do so - resulting in less overall transit service.
If you can’t build rail without cutting service, then you have no business building rail.
To get to work (approx 13 miles away–maybe a 20 minute drive during rush hour) by 8am, the bus website told me I would have to leave the night before lol and I have a bus stop literally steps away from my front door! Now, I could have commuted on a bike about 1.5 miles away to take a different route, but honestly the route did not feel safe enough to ride in the early morning.
For cities like Chicago, it’s a matter of enacting the right services. This is a good comparison to Toronto in showing the inadequacy of the planning and funding.
However, for cities like Charlotte and Raleigh, it’s a 2 pronged problem. Developers were given carte blanche to build how they wanted, so our infrastructure is severely lacking in the form of pedestrian facilities to encourage bike/ped. To retrofit our layout for the correct type of public transportation is insanely experience. Add the fact there is always a vocal minority who strongly oppose densifying existing neighborhoods, and more often than not politicians tend to shape their approaches off this, then we will constantly be stuck in neutral on this.
Transit can only be expected to work if people make decisions on where to live based on transit. You can’t buy a house 2 miles from a transit line and expect transit to be convenient. That said, our transit network leaves plenty to be desired. The coverage is ok but there are some frustrating gaps, and notably things get sparse up near 540, and almost nothing goes past it - while the city certainly doesn’t stop there. For now, though, transit covers enough of the city, and there are enough housing options of all types and price points that are within a half-mile or so of transit, that I don’t think coverage is our biggest problem. I am OK with saying people who bought homes off of Leesville or Durant or wherever (eg because they wanted new construction, or wanted to be on a culdesac, or within a certain school district, or just weren’t thinking about transit) are accountable for that decision, and should have done so with the full understanding that transit wouldn’t be an option. Complaints from those areas about how our transit sucks ring a bit hollow (for me.)
The biggest problem, then, is frequency. Even after the transit sales tax, most bus routes outside the core will run only every 30 or 60 minutes. We gotta do better than that.
I was looking forward to how so many bus lines in Raleigh would run on 15min intervals by 2024 thanks to the transit sales tax (plus the county transit plan that helped inform how to use that new revenue). Obviously it’s not for the entire system like what we’re talking about now, but you have to start somewhere and drum up support somehow.
From one of the proposed goals in the 2016 transit plan:
I’m sure it’s not too hard to back-calculate how close our buses are to this goal today, and I would totally make visuals of that if I had the time…
As for having proper transit between 440 (and beyond 540) and beyond…
…doesn’t that put you in a catch-22? Much more of the developments around these parts are SFHs that are terrible for getting around without a car by design. If we want transit to realistically serve places like these, I feel like you have to either serve them or outright get rid of all the cul-de-sacs.
Our first townhouse was off of Durant/Capital. When we bought it in 2008 there was still discussion/possibility of a light rail line terminating in the vicinity of TTC with the possibility of extending up to Wake Forest. Our house was about a half mile east of this rail line, and I understand that TTA owned land where the rail line crossed Durant for a station. We bought our house with the idea that at some point in the future light rail would be very close. Now there are no plans for anything (except busses) going north from DTR. One of the heaviest travelled (non expressway) corridors in the region has no transit plans. After nearly 10 years, we moved to a more walkable part of town. There is bus service up Creedmoor Road, but not very frequent at this point.
I was also at NCSU when the late 90’s transit plan was to have a light rail line from Wake Forest, DTR, Cary, RTP, and Durham… 22 years later, was still have nothing. This has been very frustrating for someone who really wants some transit beyond busses. Like others have mentioned, I looked into taking the bus from our old home to my old office (~4 miles down Capital from our house). It would require a 20 minute walk to the bus stop on Perry Creek, 1.5 hours on the bus (transferring at TTC), then another 10 minute walk to my office. My commute (if I hit the lights right) was about 10 minutes each way. Transit in Raleigh is a complete joke IMO.
Unfortunately for transit, there’s a new development going in where your proposed the Cary station to go: Meridian East Chatham
Meridian East Chatham is a mixed-use project including a 5-story building with 220 apartments and 8,200 SF of retail space. The apartments include a leasing office, club/fitness area and pool with a parking structure.
That looks perfect. Exactly what Cary needs in exactly the right place. Looks like they will be punching Hunter Street through from Chatham to Cedar, which is definitely a nice touch. 220 units, and a retail space on Chatham to expand the downtown shopping district further east.
I like the transit map from the 2016 transit plan. Problem is I haven’t seen the connection proposed between Crabtree and North Hills. I’ve seen in the plans where they want to have a route that goes over North Hills Drive and then onto Lynn Rd. Eventually it connects to Triangle Town Center.
I’m looking forward to 15 minute service from Crabtree to downtown.
That was supposed to happen this year with the Glenwood package, then COVID hit…
