The RDU shuttle sucks. It should never be a thing. It’s already hard enough to convince people to take the bus and now they have to go through a several extra steps, wait in a sketchy bus station, and 20+ added minutes to a trip. Might as well cancel bus service to the airport all together if the bus system isn’t taking airport service seriously.
Few people takes the bus to the airport and now you want to make sure no one takes the bus to the airport. You sure you’re not a RDU plant? lol
I take the 100 bus to RDU from downtown, but I really don’t like having to transfer. It adds complexity and time-uncertainly to the trip when time-certainty is of utmost importance for air travel. It makes no sense to me that travelers from the largest city in the Triangle, with the first city name on the airport, have to transfer buses to get to the airport from downtown. It’s not like I’m trying to take the bus from Clayton or somewhere like that.
Are we just going to mess around with the 100 route like happened to the RLine so that nobody takes it & it gets canned because nobody rides it anymore? I sure hope not.
There actually is nothing stopping GoRaleigh from running their own route to RDU. If there’s enough political will and the city wanted to fund it given other priorities, they could just go at it alone and make a Raleigh RDU connection. I imagine it might ruffle some GoTriangle feathers but if some serious stakeholders, like some big company with a tower downtown, wanted it, it could happen.
I do not think it would ruffle GoTriangle’s feathers at all, in fact I think GoTriangle would rather focus on their bread and butter which is Raleigh-Durham.
What we are all trying to solve is the exact same geographic problem that makes it impossible to reasonably RDU on a rail line between Raleigh and Durham. It’s really hard to work out even with buses and yet the general public insists that a Raleigh-Durham rail line must stop at RDU or it’s a failure.
All the key locations between Raleigh and Durham are just not co-linear, and Umstead Park is just squarely in the way.
There is no good answer to this problem, let alone a perfect one.
For me the geographic problem is RDU, RTP, Raleigh and Durham, with a desire to keep connections to Chapel Hill. In my mind you can only serve one of RDU and RTP on the way from Raleigh to Durham and the total addressable market at RTP is bigger. 55,000 Employees go into RTP every day, and RDU only has 5,000 employees. Airport patronage gets it closer, but airport travelers are a really hard market for public transit to capture.
Even heavy transit cities like New York City only reaches 19% public transit share to JFK airport and San Francisco with a direct BART connection only reaches 23%. It makes sense to serve the airport but we shouldn’t bend over backwards for it and we should worry about what destinations you can reach from there, which is why I like the idea of running a bus up International Drive to Brier Creek.
There’s a decently sized industrial park on International Drive that currently has no service at all and walking from and between the terminals sucks. If RDUAA were amenable, I would really want to improve that experience and build a shared RDU Terminals 1/2 GoTriangle station between the two terminals as part of CONRAC. Then add a stop at Business Street and just North of Cemetery Road before running up to provide transfers to the GoRaleigh and GoDurham meet in Brier Creek.
Run it from 4am-midnight, every 30 minutes from 7-7, hourly outside that every day. See how ridership does, I’m open to making it frequent. Put similar span on the 100 but keep it frequent. I would even be okay with every other the 100 turned into this route at Regional Transit Center. I just don’t want to serve RDU on the way to RTC, adding 15 minutes to the RTP commute, isn’t worth the 1-2 ons or offs at the RDU terminals.
This might not be practical but it is my ideal. I have heard that RDUAA isn’t willing to let GoTriangle run buses through that International Drive tunnel, even though they run their own buses through there. I’m not really sure why but the source is usually credible.
But serving RTP doesn’t just serve RTP. It also improves your connections to Morrisville and South Durham. Morrisville is the 77th fastest growing city in North Carolina, whereas Raleigh is 91st and the trend for New Development involves land use a lot more friendly to transit. It even could provide an alternate route to Apex via the 311, the 19th fastest growing city in North Carolina.
Just for reference these are all of the places you could get from the airport to in two seats with my proposal:
To label the routes:
You get a lot more freedom standing at the airport, and more freedom on navigating the whole triangle, just by extending the RDU Shuttle to Brier Creek.
Do you know if Durham has a bus that goes directly to RDU, or are they the same as Raleigh?
Only GoTriangle serves RDU currently with the RDU Shuttle (and 100 when that isnt in service), no GoDurham like Raleigh
Thanks for the reply! 
55,000 Employees go into RTP every day, and RDU only has 5,000 employees
Yes, but those 55,000 in RTP are scattered across 7,000 acres. The problem has always been distributing those employees to their worksites in the morning and collecting them in the evening.
build a shared RDU Terminals 1/2 GoTriangle station between the two terminals as part of CONRAC.
The Vision 2040 development plan for RDU calls for a “Ground Transportation Center” adjacent to the parking deck between Terminals 1 and 2. I have not seen any details of what the GTC will be on the inside; just a drawing at https://www.rdu.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/CONRAC-Rendering.jpg. RDU rejected an offsite CONRAC.
I believe, due to the projected cost, RDU has backed off of building the Ground Transportation Center between the terminals. Maybe they will change their minds when they get more completed in their current construction plans.
I don’t know if this is still true or if it would have affected GoTriangle but around 2008, a number of shopping centers banned city buses from entering their parking lots. One of those was Brier Creek Commons:
Upscale Stores in Raleigh are Banning Buses From Mall Parking Lots
I think I justify much more on the GoDurham/GoRaleigh meet in Brier Creek than just Brier Creek-RDU-RTC-RTP traffic. That way GoTriangle starts to work better for regional transit, than just Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill transit.
Interesting, I had not known that. I wonder if that was a factor then, although if that was the case I wonder why they couldn’t reroute like I’m sure the others would’ve done.
For what it’s worth, while I didn’t find a map, I do have the schedule for the one timepoint in Brier Creek (Brier Leaf Ln at Brier Creek Pkwy) dated September 2007. That stop still seems to be served by GoDurham 2 in the northbound direction & GoRaleigh 70L in the southbound direction today, but obviously that doesn’t indicate that other stops weren’t in parking lots either. Although considering it was only served hourly between 10:39am to 2:39pm, I can’t imagine that helped it at all…
One of those was Towne North at the north end of what’s now Route 36 (Creedmoor Rd and Strickland Rd). Nearby homeowners associations threatened a boycott of stores, and the shopping center manager backed down.
Back around COVID (2020-end of 2022), when both GoDurham and GoRaleigh were fare-free, there were issues with people being approached (sometimes aggressively) for money in the parking lots, usually while near/in their car. Brier Creek Commons has massive parking lots, so hiring any security would be a significant expense. Shopping centers keeping buses out is likely a tactic to mitigate/prevent this behavior, at the expense of those who use transit to get to their jobs.
Nobody who is going to and from the airport, carrying luggage, is going to change buses unless they really have to. If you want people to go to the airport by bus, you need to make it a one-seat ride. The RDU shuttle was terrible decision from the get-go that only worked during COVID.
Same goes for the CRX/DRX. Ditching those routes and forcing people to change buses at RTC is a no-go. There needs to be a one-seat ride for people commuting between Raleigh and Durham/Chapel Hill.
What really needs to happen is CRX/DRX need to be just that, express routes. RTP is the bigger destination than RDU, yes. So have the CRX/DRX make a stop at the RTP transit center for those going there (more viable once the new transit center is built, preferably keeping the deviation off I-40 to under 10 minutes). The CRX/DRX should be the core of the transit network, connecting Raleigh with Durham and Chapel Hill via RTP.
The 100/700/800 need to be just that, local routes. And that means the 100 should deviate to the airport, while the CRX/DRX can skip it. And extend the 700/800 to the airport as well. Now we have one-seat rides from the airport to all three of the Triangle nodes.
Make transit to the airport by bus viable before we start thinking about considering hijacking rail to make it serve the airport (this is to the “LiGhT rAiL mUsT gO tO tHe aIrPoRt!” crowd).
There also needs to be an RTP to Brier Creek bus connection. The fact it doesn’t exist is criminal (that article posted from 2007 where Brier Creek and other Raleigh shopping centers banned buses is so 2000s Triangle “ew, the poors are ruining the places middle-class White/Asian people go.”) Perhaps a route from RTP to Brier Creek… then the airport?
Mass transit of any kind to RDU is a red herring, except for airport employees. For all the reasons mentioned above, Triangle-based travelers aren’t likely to schlepp their bags onto mass transit when even most New Yorkers don’t. In the other direction, business visitors to the Triangle are almost all car-bound because of intentional sprawl in RTP and the dispersion of businesses across the rest of the area.
I will concede that RTP is a larger employee base than RDU. However, let’s talk about what sort of jobs and what salaries are associated with each location. While I don’t have the data, my gut tells me that the median salary for workers in RTP is a multiple of the median salary of people who work at the airport. This leads me to ask which workers are the target audience for ridership? Which job center is more likely to benefit from focused/direct service? For me, the answer seems obvious. I’ve worked in RTP, and while there are certainly folks who use transit, it’s nowhere close to the tens of thousands who work there. In fact, I’d guess that there are more people who bike to RTP than take a bus. Again, it’s just a gut feeling on my part.
As for travelers, and in response to @StuckovertheAtlantic , I agree that many people will not take bus service to RDU if they have to wrangle through a bus connection process: especially if that process includes a family and lots of luggage.
As a single person who only travels with carry-on, I can manage myself and luggage just fine.
I mostly see young travelers (college age) when I use the 100 service, but then again the route passes by or is at least somewhat convenient to Shaw, St. Mary’s, NC State, and Meredith. Only Peace and St. Augustine seem to be less convenient to a bus stop. Bus service to RDU is perfect for college students IMO.
I agree that bus service to RDU could be good for college students going home while on break, young/old adventurers, and urban backpackers. I’ve taken the bus to/from the airport when I travel, not just RDU. Which is part of why I think about accessibility from UNC and Duke, as well as NC State. They would still need to transfer, if we were to run the 100 through RDU on the way from RTC → Raleigh and it would actually make their transfer worse, since it’s more likely to be delayed coming from Raleigh on I-40.
I do think this is a minority of people who take flights out of RDU on a daily basis and probably a smaller number of people than RDU employees. GoTriangle needs to think regionally, and Raleigh is not the only city in the region. To increase connectivity between Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill, and RDU all at once is what my proposal does.
I feel like this wouldn’t be as bad if they were to extend route 100’s 15 minute frequency to the weekends and later in the day, or left an extra bus at the RTC to pick up trips in case of delays (funding allowing of course).
Maybe this is an unpopular take but I think it’s worth it to let route 100 detour to RDU if it means RDU gets more frequent bus service. As someone who also rides transit from airports, if I just landed at RDU I would rather Uber than wait more than 15 minutes for a bus, and realistically chances are I wouldn’t be waiting for a full 15 minutes if the bus came that often. Additionally, more frequent service makes it a better connection for people working at RDU. If we really don’t want to inconvenience travelers to RTP, it might be worth considering adding stops in RTP to the DRX (especially if we’re already going to be bumping it up to every 30 minutes anyways). Although that would add travel time to existing riders of the DRX, potentially to the point where it’s not even worth riding the DRX over 100 & 700/705.
Obviously it’s not worth it to discuss mass transit to RDU, but I don’t think extending routes 700 & 800 to RDU would necessarily help. At that point you might as well relocate the whole RTC to the airport, which would actually add stuff around the RTC that’s worth going to if they weren’t already planning to build the Triangle Mobility Hub. Hopefully there will be at least some developments around that one that one can go to…
