Probably managed lanes on 40 will be part of the picture. While I don’t think transit taxes should fund these lanes directly I do think that paying for stations, passenger facilities, and bus-only access ramps would be appropriate.
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Another thing to note: the $3 billion or so we would’ve spent… a majority of it’s not a floating pile of cash we have/can use for whatever the NCGA wants.
The $1.2B in federal grant money never came in, GoTriangle never took on the hundreds of millions in debt to make DOLRT, and the sales tax passed by the Durham/Orange counties’ transit referenda are specifically supposed to be used for mass transit. That means you can only say that the $100 million or so that the General Assembly would’ve grudgingly given actually “came from light rail being killed”.
You can just say Republican? And you know their districts aren’t going to support that…
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This article comes straight from the Charlotte, USA handbook.
“If the Triangle had transit, Harris said, companies like Amazon — which had shortlisted Raleigh in its headquarters search last year — would be moving to that region even faster and more frequently.”
-I don’t believe that for 1 second.
https://www.bizjournals.com/triangle/news/2019/04/03/charlotte-leader-blasts-triangle-for-lack-of-light.html?iana=hpmvp_trig_news_headline
But I can agree with this statement.
““There would not be a better place to locate anything technology-related in the U.S.,” Harris said, citing the Triangle region’s universities and the impact that light rail had in Charlotte.”
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Wait, what makes you think that? If you believe that the Triangle’s universities and light rail’s economic impact are attractive perks for central North Carolina (that’s basically the entire 2nd quote you had, paraphrased), then it sounds like you just contradicted yourself?
I don’t think one of Amazon’s factors to building a second location here was based off having light rail. One of the locations they chose was Nashville, and they even voted against light rail in 2018. There are more moving parts to their decision then whether or not we had a light rail system.
And I do think there would not be a better place to locate anything technology related, even now where we sit without light rail. I think we can all agree the Durham-Orange County proposal was like trying to stick a square peg in a round hole. I encourage light rail, but it needs to originate in Raleigh.
Kind of sort of…sorry, I am soooooooooo irritated at Duke right now, I can hardly contain myself!
The collective we/Triangle can’t even agree if light-rail or heavy-rail is the way too go or to start with, sad considering it’s 2019 and how long has the Triangle been trying to decide what we should start with?
Hang on, folks. Proposals for light rail in Raleigh go back way (1990s) before Republicans took over the Wake County Commission. When a Democrat-led WCC did put a mass transit sales tax to a referendum, they were careful to characterize it as a bus system not a light rail system. A bus system passed county-wide, although not by a huge margin. I am convinced that a light rail system would have failed in a county-wide referendum. Only 13% of the county population lives ITB, and a light rail system would have been of primary benefit to DTR. A bus system serves OTB as well as the majority of Wake County that doesn’t even live in the city limits of Raleigh. This is political reality, folks. Light rail in Raleigh is dead. Make a bus system work because that’s what you’re going to get. If you’re lucky, you might get commuter trains to augment it.
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Commuter rail from Garner to Durham was clearly stated on the Wake County transportation referendum. It’s why I voted for it.
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This needs to be the focus now. Along with the build out of BRT to supplement the commuter rail.
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The difficulty with commuter rail is the sheer number of players: the municipalities, the Research Triangle Foundation, two counties (three if the trains serve Clayton), NCDOT, the North Carolina Railroad (owned by NCDOT but operated at arm’s length), the General Assembly, and Norfolk Southern that operates the trackage leased from NCRR. Add in the utilities that will have to be relocated, the architects and general contractors for stations, stakeholders in terms of property owners adjacent to station sites, etc and you’ve got a mammoth project on your hands.
This isn’t rocket science, but it takes time, persistent intentionality, consensus-building, and leadership.
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I’m afraid the region is lacking in these things. Much easier to just spend millions to add more lanes to I-40, then the spend millions and implement commuter rail. Sad but true.
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I’m afraid something like this will probably happen, but what does it solve. Like, actually solve? I know it encourages sprawl.
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It solves the issue of congestion the same way a band-aid solves the issue of an expanding bullet wound:
It doesn’t.
…but it’s a quick and dirty patch you can apply that makes you feel like you accomplished something while you never really put any thought into why you did what you did. It’s a product of democracy and compromise (with the two extremes being “let’s build transit! even if it might hurt us!” and “build nothing, save money, and keep the government’s hands off everything”) that pretty much does no one any favors.
Oh, I didn’t realize you were only talking about Amazon, specifically. In that case, yeah that’s probably true. But bigger trends also suggest it could’ve helped.
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Rail is one. There was a number of reason Austin and Nashville and DMV area won out.
If Johnston County doesn’t want to engage in the commuter rail project constructively, though, it would be extremely easy to just forget about extending it to Clayton, since that’s not at all a high priority, especially since the eastern terminus in Garner would be a park-and-ride that would serve a lot of Johnston County residents.
But, yeah, either way, a lot of consensus-building to do.
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And it is only going to get worse as the years go by. Kind of makes you think that one should start building now before it’s too late! It seems easier to build a city around this system than it does the other way.
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I do think JoCo should go ahead and get involved. The county is growing at a rapid rate and should go ahead and get involved!
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I think they should get involved too! But knowing the political predisposition of Johnston County, I can’t imagine that they would feel like contributing any money to this project.
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I believe that the same legislation that authorized Durham, Orange, and Wake to hold referenda for a 1/2 cent transit sales tax, allows other counties to do the same for a 1/4 cent tax. If Johnston wants in, that is what they would have to do.
A park-and-ride in Garner might suffice, but bear in mind that NCRR is basically 79 mph (except for curves) all the way from Garner to Selma. It might also be that a trainset storage facility will have to be built on the east end somewhere, and such a facility is likely to cost less in JoCo than Wake. In fact the cheapest place to put such a facility would be Selma next to the existing NCRR freight yard.
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