IMO, all energy should be put into making the commuter rail line from Garner>Raleigh>Cary>RTP/Morrisville>Durham a thing first. Get that established so that dense nodes of development can happen at the various stops, and then let the more local and lightweight transit options be developed around them, whether that’s light rail, BRT, monorail, etc.
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How’s the Atlanta streetcar coming along? Last time I heard that was sort of a bust…with the exception of maybe Kansas City, the downtown streetcar idea hasn’t really taken off in the US from what I’m seeing.
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It’d be great. It connects a lot but it honestly became a homeless shelter on tracks.
I can’t see it being that bad in Raleigh.
With the setup of Raleigh and the outlying districts and State, I think we could really see success with it more-so than cities who have tried.
It looks like Wake County is aiming to update and reevaluate the transit plan every 5 years. Here’s their 2021-2030 version: https://nmcdn.io/e186d21f8c7946a19faed23c3da2f0da/8bfec28a290449a7b10eb1fee3a0e264/files/wake-county-transit-plan/Vision-Plan-Update/Final-Adopted-Wake-Transit-Plan-Update/Wake-County-Transit-Plan-Update---FINAL-ADOPTED.pdf
Extending BRT from Cary to RTP and from Garner to Clayton are some of the new ideas being proposed this time around that were not part of the initial 2016 transit plan.
Also saw this in there:
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Maybe you could learn useful things if you revisit light rail every once in a while as major investment studies. But I feel like you have to be very careful about the scope of each MIS. Otherwise, we could fool ourselves into thinking light rail is a good idea, pour millions of dollars into CIG submissions, run into “unforeseen” issues again, and risk losing even more confidence in our local transit agencies. Remember that the last GoTriangle CEO resigned in this way, last time.
I feel like that could become a slippery slope, though, since if your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. It could be nice to have better, specific ideas into what the Triangle needs, but I think we need to be more neutral about what transit modality is the “best”. By assuming light rail could happen and having a more headline-grabbing study to advocate it, you’d just hold onto a solution and constantly be looking for a problem -even if there could be better solutions that non-experts are less aware of.
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On a similar note: sexiness aside, what’s the benefit of using streetcars over BRT?
I thought the idea of BRT is that you can get light rail/streetcar-like transit experiences as long as you make solid investments in infrastructure. Perhaps your rolling stock would allow fewer people on board, but I’d think you can offset that with cheaper, more flexible rights-of-way.
One of the biggest problems with streetcars is that it runs with street traffic; if there’s a traffic jam, long stoplight cycles etc., then you have delays that make them more unreliable. But the ways you’d lower the risk of those issues being a headache can also be used to improve BRT.
In that way, isn’t a streetcar basically just a heavier BRT that also demands metallic tracks (rather than just new road paint and more reality-grounded citizens)?
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Buses have a stigma problem. Very few like the idea of riding a standard city bus because they can’t shake their perception of them over time through crappy service, and substandard experiences like being tattered, dirty, smelly, etc. Even if these things aren’t true, that’s a lot of folks’ perception of them.
Specialty buses like the RLine are different, as are the trolley type buses that look like old-school transportation. IMO, the more one can brand a bus as something different, the better.
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That’s true, but isn’t that a sign that BRT needs a better name and/or image, and to get the New Bern, Western, and Wilmington BRT lines perfect? I think the stigma against buses is something that could be tackled and minimized, rather than a reason to avoid the problem and shy away from buses entirely.
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My vision of streetcar is a more hop on / hop off, stations every block experience rather than a commuting experience / stations every mile with brt.
As far as benefits, I’m a believer that sometimes to get ahead you have to turn your head to the initial investment in dollars and cents and think about what it can bring in the future.
Obviously I’m not advocating for any of the planned BRT lines to be streetcar lines. Just some carefully selected segments bridging some downtown communities.
Additionally, the future benefits development wise, and even tourist wise would far out way the initial costs in my opinion and could even be a draw to our city.
Also, I wouldn’t even consider streetcar until we get our commuter rail and BRT going strong.
I think the best plan for a Raleigh 20+ years from now has a mix of transit modes and options for not just commuters from the suburbs to downtown and people transversing downtown, but for everyone in between!
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I think that BRT itself is a step in the right direction by minimizing the name of bus to just “b”.
In the end, it might even be better if the BRT had an actual transit name. The RLine has a system name and I think it works. Everyone says that they are going to take the RLine, not the bus. Maybe it’s as simple as saying BLine? 
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Someone posted (maybe in the other transit thread) that the BRT routes will be branded as “Go+” Routes (in keeping with the Go-system names in the area)
Edit: Yep found keita’s post in the BRT thread
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I get what you’re saying 100% I just feel like we have to keep all options on the table whenever we do any sort of study or evaluation, however often that may be.
Not saying light rail is perfect option whatsoever, just that it shouldn’t be discounted from past failures when throughout history we’ve seen that sometimes things take a few tries.
As I’ve done more and more research and read everything we’ve talked about there though, I’ve come to believe that a version of commuter rail on existing tracks is our best bet along with good local / regional BRT.
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yeah I don’t think the light rail discussion here is really directed at people like you who have thought out your reasons for wanting it or not and how that might happen. It’s more for the general public who sees as the ONLY viable tool for transit around here without thought of the pros/cons of each transit mode (and the existing/future conditions that might lead to one being more viable than the other)
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That’s all well and good, but people aren’t going to talk about the system that way. They aren’t going to say that they are taking the Go+Route, they are going to keep saying that they are taking the bus. I personally don’t think that’s good enough.
Let’s take Atlanta as an example, its heavy rail is named Marta (or MARTA). While it’s an acronym, it reads like a word. When someone says that they are taking Marta, everyone knows that they mean the rail. Even though Marta also runs buses, I doubt that anyone says that they are taking Marta and means the bus. @atl_transplant would be the better expert than me though on ATL transit jargon.
That’s the sort of thing/nuance that I’m trying to get at. Giving the system a name that people will latch onto without defaulting to saying that they are taking the bus is a good thing.
In Miami, I sometimes take the AirportFlyer to MIA (it’s just a bus), or the South Beach Trolley (again it’s really just a bus), but those things aren’t colloquially referred to as buses.
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To be fair, I don’t think the majority of Raleigh residents even know what the name of the transit system in Raleigh itself is - I still talk to people who still think it’s called CAT (Capital Area Transit). The Go name hasn’t really caught on around here to the level of MARTA haha
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This, exactly!
I agree that, if we’re investigating fancy transit service extensions to RTP, for example, light rail deserves to at least be seriously considered. After all, potential stations could probably be spaced farther apart than BRT or streetcar lines, which implies light rail having physics on its side.
But yeah, I think many of us on this site (or at least the people who regularly chime in on transit-related threads) are good at critically thinking through the issues. I’m worried that most people won’t do that.
What if the commuter rail also follows the Go_____ branding pattern?
(I think that’ll also be hard to answer, by the way, since it goes back to how we can’t compare apples to apples. San Diego, for example, runs light rail, BRT, and buses under the MTS brand, but I’m not sure how people there contrast those serivces.)
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That’s interesting. Actually the fact that people still call it CAT exactly bolsters my point. CAT may have meant Capital Area Transit, but CAT is also a word. It worked, and worked so well that folks are still using that name! GoRaleigh hasn’t caught on because it’s not catchy. Frankly, it sorta sucks.
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GO_Rail…! 
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Go-Raileigh 
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GO is the commuter rail brand in Toronto for what it’s worth haha
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