Maybe not that unpopular – I think the 100 deviating to the airport permanently is a good idea. Don’t get me wrong, it’s much better for Raleigh folks than Durham/CH – but nonetheless, now that it’s 15-minute all day service, it’s still more frequent than the current RDU shuttle, so delays shouldn’t matter as much.
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As a former Raleigh-RTP daily bus rider back when there was the 100 (via RDU) and the 105 (direct to RTC) having to catch the 100 at certain times of day when the 105 was not running was really awful.
Similarly a diversion to RTC, even the new RTC, would be very annoying to DRX/CRX riders.
Not on board with something that prioritizes high frequency bus service to the airport (that almost nobody will ever use) over daily commuters.
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GoTriangle’s plan is to upgrade Route 100 to 15-minute service with all trips operating through RDU. This would be done concurrently with upgrading midday DRX service to 30-minute headways. The June 4th Planning & Development Committee meeting documents noted that 40 percent of Route 100 and 700 passengers transfer to the other route at RTC.
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Yeah, or a GoRaleigh 70L extension via RDU that goes to the RTC. It’s pretty insulting that Wake County residents have to go past the airport on the 100, just to double back to the airport on a shuttle.
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Agreed. I also have a lot of coworkers at RTP who live in Brier Creek. In order for them to take transit to work, they have to take the 70L->6 → 100->Lyft (RTP Connect). Nobody’s going to do that.
The triangle has a lot of job sprawl, which is bad for transit but GoTriangle needs to work to serve the region as it is, not as we wish it to be. If they could take RDU Shuttle → Lyft (RTP Connect) we might get some usage and the new Triangle Mobility Hub is better situated for a lot of people at RTP, as well as move to a better strategy than Lyft for last mile we might be able to get some usage. (bike share and Via Microtransit?)
It’s also not just Wake County. People who live in Durham County around there have a similar problem. They need to trek back, to transfer to GoTriangle to get to RTC and getting from Chapel Hill to Brier Creek, means going to Durham first.
For buses to the airport, I wonder if the new DDI at Airport Blvd couldn’t be leveraged to create a (nearly) inline station where buses running along I-40 can get off at the exit, stop to exchange passengers, and get right back on. Since this would be a dedicated airport facility, RDU could spend airport money (rather than county sales tax money) to build it, and run a shuttle bus every 5 minutes or less such that there is always one on the platform.
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