Can someone summarize/translate what changed in the latest submission? Referring to the wire service’s last post for 200 S West st. It mentions “maintaining the feasibility of the crucial project.” But I don’t get many details from those documents and/or don’t know how to interpret them. They don’t open well on a phone either. City’s development portal also sucks on your phone. I would benefit from a crash course on how to leverage the city’s public tools to deep dive these changes.
Would like to think this means that, yes, it’s still moving forward and yes, they can do construction after pouring a sidewalk and putting up a sign. If they can build a building on top of a transit station, I bet they can put scaffolding over a sidewalk. The pessimism is bizarre to me—they literally just resubmitted documents so it feels like something is happening, I just don’t know how to interpret it.
The “Go” branding exactly as-is, is an absolute center field home run. Transit branding is an abject cesspool of forced, too-clever, double meaning portmanteaus and mediocre unprorounouncable acronyms drawn from agency charters or enabling legislation.
The attractive but simple tesselated triangle graphics, the crisp message that Go_____ effortlessly communicates, the ability for towns to buy in, show some local pride and differentiate themselves through different colors and names (GoCary, GoDurham, etc), and yet still seamlessly be part of the regional brand, clearly showing that the services coordinate and cooperate to be a cohesive whole. It’s an absolute master class. Don’t touch it! (Please!)
Chapel Hill Transit declined to join the Go____ branding 10 years ago back when it started, which is definitely their loss. So fix that, for sure.
If you want to go all the way, rename Wolfline to GoState (GoPack?), Duke Transit to GoDuke (GoDevils?), and any university circulators in Chapel Hill to GoCarolina (GoHeels?). Now you know I love the Go____ branding but somehow that seems like too much even to me.
GoCanes is brilliant. I do recall a document somewhere that indicated a BRT branch (I assume off Western) will be studied for Lenovo Center access.
It’ll only work if it’s nearly 100% dedicated lanes, though. The WolfLine GameDay shuttles are often practically unusable because of the traffic. I’ve waited with a bunch of drunk, angry college students for the bus to take us back to campus for about 90 minutes after the game ended. For a single bus. That couldn’t handle but a fifth of the crowd that was there. It about started a riot.
Definitely agree that the GoTransit brand is one of the best in the country, none of those lame or confusing acronyms one sees elsewhere (though I am a bit nostalgic for the CAT, GoRaleigh I like better).
Personally, I’m perfectly okay with Wolfline, Duke Transit, and Chapel Hill Transit retaining their names and not switching to the Go brand; CHT was supposed to become GoChapelHill, but that never happened. Wolfline is a good brand and an NC State classic, and DT and CHT are fairly explainable. Also, the university buses are free, so is CHT, as opposed to the Go buses (I know GoCary and GoDurham are free right now, but I think they’ll return fares at some point). I think it might help residents and visitors to distinguish the buses.
Fun fact: I recently stumbled upon a transit planning study in the Pittsburgh region that cites the Triangle’s “Go” brand as a prime example of regional transit agency coordination and cooperation. There’s a five-page dive that you can view here.
So yeah, I’m with you and @orulz. Keep the branding and unified fare systems and such, but have the agencies remain separate. Each agency can continue adjust their priorities based on the needs of their coverage area instead of having one agency that’s having to make decisions based on whoever makes the most noise (we already see this from time-to-time with GoTriangle). And someone please convince CHT and OCPT to get on board with the branding, good gracious.
TY but what exactly is going before the planning commission? The document has basically no details. Apparently some type of zoning change? Does this mean it’s moving forward or should we place no weight on this?
It’s likely for a change to the zoning conditions. The conditions being reviewed can be found from here. I don’t know exactly what’s changed from before but I suspect it has to do with the affordable housing component. It mentions an option of paying what amounts to $4000 per unit constructed to the city for AH rather than building AH on site. I believe the previous conditions may have required on-site AH.
Usually there is a presentation where the specific changes are highlighted when it is being reviewed by PC.
I thought they just swapped out the tile, like they had two GoRaleighs someplace.
Unrelated, this is one of the few angles that makes the high rise in the back - is that the Bloomsbury? - look really good.
