The 100X proposal never made sense to me - the longer the route, the more likelihood of a delay on one end cascading down the line and affecting the entire service. The Durham Freeway is always a mess during rush hours and I have little doubt that headways on the Raleigh end of a 100X service would have suffered.
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Ask and it shall come to pass (eventually).
I don’t. They drive too slow and get in my way as I’m driving on the shoulder.
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I always wondered: when they do this, how do they handle crossing the on-ramps? Just yield for any incoming cars? Does it ever take a while to make a safe crossing?
I do hope FAST 2.0 comes to fruition – I’d like the full build-out with the median transit lanes, but even the “upgraded” BOSS looked pretty sweet.
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It really depends on your operator. Mine that day had a lot of confidence so would move with gusto through the start of a merging lane, slowing down or speeding up just enough to get through a gap in merging cars.
Not every operator has that kind of confidence and some will just merge back into general traffic whenever a merging lane appears. By the statute I believe they’re only supposed to be on the shoulder when general traffic drops below 35 mph but I’ve never really had a car fight to prevent a bus from merging in.
Bus on shoulder is great in that it’s cheap and relatively easy to implement but it really isn’t a great long term solution, due to merging and speed limitations. I’m a firm believer in organization, before electronics, before concrete, bus on shoulder I would consider an organizational change, so is a great start but I would enjoy seeing some signals or other indicator of bus only there at some point.
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That makes sense and I agree. I thought making them wider, painting them red, and implementing stoplights(?) at the on ramps for oncoming traffic when buses approach would be a great solution as proposed in FAST 2.0!
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Ramp metering (stop lights on the on ramp) is an awesome low cost intervention to decrease congestion. I’m not sure how Transit Signal Priority might factor into that. Most of the ramp metering I’ve seen that factors in transit, only factors in a bypass lane for HOV/Buses to merge regardless of signal but it might also be interesting to investigate a system that would hold the red in order for buses to pass on the shoulder before letting people merge.
Painting them red would be great but probably illegal under the Federal Highway Administration without a waiver. I’ve never seen an interstate with red lanes.
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For what it’s worth, the ramps into median bus stops along I-35W in Minneapolis are painted red:
And the latest revision of the MUTCD seems to have examples for painting shoulders red for bus-only operations:
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My understanding is that you can do partial red lanes, but not full, under MUTCD. I think that the lane mentioned in Minneapolis has a 35 MPH speed limit and operates under a waiver from FHWA. Google Gemini seems to believe that these operate under the Urban Partnership Agreement, cross checked to Wikipedia seems to collaborate that, but I can’t find the exact text that permits the color difference.
Ah you’re probably right, I don’t know much about this stuff to be honest but I thought it might have been relevant
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How much of the improvement from ramp metering comes from people who say to hell with it and just take the back roads instead of waiting to get on 540?
I don’t think that many. Most of the things I’ve heard about is that ramp metering encourages longer trips over shorter trips on the freeway, which to my mind is the point of the freeway. I don’t believe that there’s a big substitution affect with local streets.
I was boarding the 100 today and the reader said Media Expired, checking in the Umo website, it also said that my Umo Card has expired. I don’t see any expiration date on the card but is of the older GoTriangle logo big and GoDurham, GoRaleigh and GoCary logos on it too.
Are we migrating to a new version of Umo? I really don’t like breaking fare payment like this and if we have to do something like this we need to put a lot of effort into communicating it to riders. I’ve seen none.
So today I learned there’s something call an “Umo Card”…
Mine seems OK – I’d definitely contact GoTriangle and see what they have to say, I’ve always found them to be helpful.
But, generally speaking – I wish there was way more communication in general. Though I do think the technology plan they’re working on will help with things like alerts.
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They should just go to tap-2-pay for heaven’s sake!
Until then, I am just carrying cash on me when I need to ride.
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Well I stopped by the sales office and they didn’t really know what was going on either. Apparently the green Umo Cards have just stopped working for a lot of people and they’re migrating to the new GoPass Cards but you have to abandon any fare you already have.
The sales rep and I also had a good complain about how Umo doesn’t handle multiple agencies very well, so like if someone moves from Greensboro to the Triangle they have to abandon all of their fare and it’s not clear to the user that they can’t reuse the card either. The app is also pretty confusing during this maneuver.
Like some people who ride GoTriangle regularly, probably also ride PART Regularly. I don’t know if I think they should be fare integrated (cross honor transfers) but it shouldn’t be confusing with what you need to pay with and what happens to your money when you transfer between them.
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we’ll have to add this to the reasons I hope we drop Umo as a vendor
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