Figured I would post one of the comments from WRAL. From the user “Christopher Rose”
“Maybe the go-triangle board could discuss its own competance? Everything from the planning of the route, to where the rail maintenance yard is planned, to the ridership, relations with Duke, and budget numbers. My ten year old kid could have planned this thing better. Issues with at grade crossings on 54, ridership numbers not adding up, a new law suit for illegal spot zoning of the maintenance railyard facility smack in the middle of a quiet durham residential neighborhood and right beside an elementary school, no connection to the Airport, or Raleigh, or RTP. And even bigger are the costs. We have recently been told yet again the price tag of this project is going up. My back of a napkin calculations show that for the total eventual cost of this project, we could give every single citizen of the cities of Chapel Hill, Carborro, and Durham a $5000 car. GIVE THIS TO THEM. This whole project is lunacy in its current form. And I’m glad to see the wheels are starting to fall off as the right questions get asked for once.”
Some of those criticisms are on target, others are red herrings.
If this falls through, as it seems it may, GoTriangle (formerly Triangle Transit, formerly TTA, formerly Research Triangle Regional Public Transit Authority) will be 0 for 2 so far on rail transit in the past 25 years, and we will need to start looking at whether the organization (particularly its governance structure and its enabling legislation) is set up correctly for success. They do a pretty good job at bus planning and operation, but maybe something different is needed for capital projects. What they are doing for BRT (giving it to the city transit agencies) seems to be working OK so far, as the lines of responsibility and accountability are much more clear.
This light rail project was a good one at the original budget and some escalations are understandable, but the recent ones are eye popping so at this point I really wonder anymore.
Giving people cars with the money is a dumb idea though and solves absolutely nothing. And the thing about not reaching the airport is a tired old canard. The maintenance facility will be in about the best spot I could think of for it: right next to I-40. And a coming phase (commuter rail) will reach Raleigh.
Can someone point me to some reading on why connecting to the airport is not feasible or why it’s a “tired old canard” (I looked up canard and it’s defined as a rumor, so I’m not sure I get this comment). I’ve seen this sentiment multiple other times that the rail shouldn’t or doesn’t need to connect to RDU, and while I’m sure there are significant challenges, I haven’t heard any specifics or references to the shortcomings or solutions. Seems to me connecting the rail to the airport would be a boon. Again, just looking to educate myself on why this couldn’t (or shouldn’t?) happen if we had rail.
The rumor behind the airport thing is that the reason it doesn’t connect there is that the airport board doesn’t want it, because they would lose parking revenue.
The real reason is that it would be extremely expensive, and would be infeasible to serve on a “through” route between Raleigh and Durham due to the layout of the runways, location of the terminal, and presence of Umstead immediately to its east, so it would have to be on a spur line. Being on a spur means you either needto run it as a shuttle connecting to the closest rail station (in which case, it almost might as well be a shuttle bus, which is definitely planned already) or else to get one seat rides from Raleigh or Durham, you would have to divert frequency from the infinitely more important Raleigh-Durham corridor.
Admittedly an airport station would have decent ridership (better than half of which would be employees, which is just fine) but it would have to go through miles of the least transit supportive development inthe region, with little chance of sprawl repair due to the proximity of the airport and all its noise, to get there. It should be on the agenda for some time in the future (25 years from now?) But its not a priority for phase 1. The airport isn’t going anywhere. We need to get some stations in place in the Raleigh-Durham corridor to start focusing development before all the prospective station sites get built out as sprawltastic sprawlburbia (which it will! Very soon!)
Hasn’t GoTriangle been buying spots for their stations? It seems like owning the station real estate could spur development around it, and help our proposal with whatever % of required property already being under control.
Or do they wait until full funding to start most of the acquisition?
Getting enough land for the stations will not be a problem no matter what, and yes they do already own some land for that purpose, but what I am concerned is the rest of the land within the half-mile walkshed of these stations. If we don’t get something in the ground, and quick, tract developers will snap those areas up and build single family or strip malls.
Regardless of whether you supported the project in its present state or not, it’s pretty depressing to be here at this point in the process, at square one, down north of a hundred million dollars. What a mess.
Does the entire project now go in the dustbin forever? Or do they salvage some elements and move forward on different terms? Do they put it on the shelf to possibly dust off again later?
Sounds like it’s dead in the water. I don’t know what, if anything, this means for the potential future of light rail in Raleigh, but I’m not optimistic.
Trustees used the word “mothballing” to describe the action, but also acknowledged that it would be nearly impossible to revive the project. The vote to end the project was unanimous.
While I am generally very supportive of building transit, even I was starting to have concerns about whether this project was worth it given what the cost had spiraled to. (The FTA rated it “low” for cost-effectiveness, which was not surprising.) I know there are folks who are very keen to bring light rail to Raleigh, but this whole experience with DOLRT has not been the best advertisement for this process. (And I also haven’t really seen a clear proposal for just where exactly Raleigh would put such a light rail line.)
If I may be just a little provincial here, my most pressing question is how this now affects the Raleigh to Durham (and points beyond) commuter rail. On one hand, money that isn’t spend on one thing can instead be spent on something else. OTOH, I know @Kevin and other have said that killing DOLRT makes it harder for the numbers to pencil out for the commuter rail. And I realize there’s probably some proprietary information backing that conclusion that can’t be shared in this forum, but I’m just really surprised that DOLRT would have such a profound impact on the commuter rail to Raleigh. I’ll be really, really disappointed if this ends up just further delaying a commuter rail project for which the wait has already been far too long.
All of the ridership projections for commuter rail assumed completion of DOLRT. It could be that the transfer rate is lower than expected and commuter rail is still viable, but we won’t know until a few model runs are completed. What I’d really like to see is Orange County taking their DOLRT contribution and putting it towards extending the Durham-Wake commuter rail into their county, at least to Hillsborough and maybe as far as the western edge next to Mebane. That would provide a lot more bang for the buck.
I agree with others here who’ve expressed mixed feelings about the LRT project. The scope had gotten crazy, and the project was mismanaged from the beginning (on all sides - not just GO Triangle). This was clear in most of the public meetings I attended.
However, I’m still incredibly disappointed by this loss. The value of transit speaks for itself, but I am also frustrated that such a powerful organizational tool for densifying our city is no more. In our office, we had already been brought on to master-plan a couple of enormous walkable communities outside the downtown core that were all hinging on planned light rail stations. I was optimistic that we’d see a corridor of density and were heading in the direction of managing sprawl in the Triangle. Not sure what’s going to happen to all of this now.
Something to keep in mind: GoTriangle didn’t even have a real project manager towards the end of the DOLRT clusterf(…)ary; all they had was John Tallmadge, who’s also juggling other roles in GoTriangle. Duke and the General Assembly were definitely the prime suspects, but you gotta admit GoTriangle embarrassed themselves with a series of rookie mistakes, too.
It also worries me a LOT about any attempts at a region-wide mass transit system that’s any better than frequent buses.
Saying it again for the people in the back:
If we want a real heavy-duty transit system that runs beyond just one of the cities in the Triangle, do we need to do something different? Is it possible to have an alternative to GoTriangle?
This comment you found just keeps giving and giving.
My back of a napkin calculations show that for the total eventual cost of this project, we could give every single citizen of the cities of Chapel Hill, Carborro, and Durham a $5000 car. GIVE THIS TO THEM.
I hope those are $5000 flying cars because there’s certainly no room for that many more cars on the roads.
I’m very disappointed to see the end of DOLRT at this stage. The effort it took to get this far can not be recovered. Transit expansion will continue in some other form. And even if the proposed commuter rail factored in transfers in Downtown Durham, there continues to a strong case for more frequent train service between Raleigh and Durham. This plan should move forward along with better bus service and focused land use planning,
The first phase of light rail should have always been something that connects the Atlantic/Capital/440 area to downtown Raleigh to NC State to downtown Cary. There is so much development and potential for development in those areas.
Excellent point. There’s so much more population and plenty of density in Wake county with several natural commuter corridors. It’s strange to me that the first leg for the region was to connect two college towns (with each a huge sport rivalry of the other), whereas the Raleigh area is so much larger (over 1M just the county), with the large capital district, a downtown with several 400+ towers, the largest college in the state, the largest suburb in the state, and the airport and on to RTP.
Much higher ridership possibilities. Maybe the project will become viable in the coming decade.
Duke blew it. I just copied/pasted this from their website.
Duke is the largest employer in Durham County and the second-largest private employer in North Carolina.
Duke University Health System has approximately 19,000 full-time employees. The academic Duke University Medical Center has about 11,00 full-time employees.
My wife is a nurse at Duke and in future could have taken commuter rail > light rail to work and gotten dropped off in front of her hospital. Currently she has to walk 15 mins from a remote lot to the hospital if she doesn’t pay for the deck. It would have been safer, more sustainable, and less expensive considering the depreciation on her vehicle from commuting.