13 Likes
And does anyone know why “they” changed the name to “Union West”? 
Certainly not because of the street name? 
In that event you could call it “Union Hargett”. 
And this complex is not “west” of the Raleigh Union Station, it’s “North”. So, should it be called Union North" 
1 Like
Great photo. I love how it looks like you come right out of the wild countryside into DTR, lol.
2 Likes
Well it’s fronting West Street (and is actually on the west side of West), as well as being on the western side of downtown, and west of the current bus station.
11 Likes
Oh look, that’s Raleigh being livable before it was ruined by development. 
1 Like
I think it might be because Kane seems to have named this part of the Warehouse District the “WEST END” SMH in that this is so boring. At least let’s call it the WILD WEST END or WAREHOUSE WEST or something else more cool.
3 Likes
As someone who lives in the “West End” I fully support rebranding to the Wild West End and will only refer to it as such moving forward.
13 Likes
At this point… I’m not even sure they know which render is current and correct LMAO
2 Likes
It’s hard to keep track, anyways, since this is a design-build project; Hoffman and GoTriangle are designing parts of this project as they are building it. That’s the whole reason we went from the grant submission to groundbreaking in less than four years: a truly finalized design for this building does not currently exist in the first place, even now.
Yesterday’s GoTriangle board meeting agenda included updates on RUSbus, where they mentioned that they expect to reach 60% design completion next month, and a draft of next steps will be evaluated shortly after. It shouldn’t be their main objective to do this, but I have a feeling that they’ll release more pretty pictures in the coming months as a part of those discussions. Maybe that could help clear up some of this confusion?
8 Likes
Charlotte is deciding on their 3rd rail system this week and Raleigh/Durham can’t even see a viable commuter rail system until 2040. 
1 Like
For real. I really don’t get the hate for Charlotte… Raleigh folks like to clown on them for being “jealous” of Raleigh and yet… what exactly are they jealous of us for? They have: Bigger, denser buildings. Better public transportation. Three major league sports franchises. AND Eastbound and Down was partly filmed there. Charlotte does got a lot.
2 Likes
Disjointed leadership. You have to get Wake, Durham, Johnston, Orange, etc to all ‘agree’…charlotte annexed most of Meck County back in the 80’s so they don’t have to really seek ‘compromise’ with anyone…
11 Likes
Crazy how much cheaper rail projects are in the rest of the world.
The automation of Paris Line 4—being completed next year—cost €470 million. 8.6 miles, 29 stations. Included platform screen doors.
Automation of Lyon Line B—completed this year—cost €387 million. 4.8 miles, 10 stations. No screen doors.
Both projects required new trains.
Triangle commuter rail is basically running a couple of train sets on existing lines and will cost 6 times as much.
9 Likes
Good ol’ American excess! We won’t even consider it unless it costs 4 times as much as those other boring countries!!! 
1 Like
I watched this yesterday - I don’t know that I got any definitive answers from it, but it was interesting none the less.
3 Likes
Nah, that’s not why I clown on Charlotte. I clown on Charlotte because it is, as one YouTube commenter described it, “the Applebee’s of Cities.”
That said, it does often feel like they’re always a few paces ahead of us. And I think @UncleJesse is spot on with the leadership advantage that they have. But, like any city, Charlotte has its own problems, and choosing a city to live in often means deciding which problems you’re willing to put up with and which ones are deal-breakers. There are a good number of folks on this forum that are here because Charlotte just wasn’t for them, and that’s okay. There are probably a lot of folks in Charlotte who feel the same way about Raleigh.
14 Likes
This probably got buried in some of the wonkier posts, but NYU’s Transit Costs Project is expected to release a report on why this is, later this month. A lot of the reasons and underlying data overlap with the issues pointed out in the video @pBeez posted, too:
They key conclusion is that:
…keeping in mind that the “expanding role of consultants” is a symptom of local governments starved of expertise and resources:
The entire article is a gold mine of things we could be doing better; y’all should set aside like 15min to read the whole thing if you have some extra time to nurse a beer or coffee.
16 Likes
Jeez. Thinking back to the plans for the Durham light rail project, $150M on consulting for that route? I’m sure there’s a ton of red tape everywhere but I feel like I could have presented a more compelling plan for $1M.
1 Like
They didn’t pay $150M just to find a good route. GoTriangle released a whole investigation on this earlier this year:
It also included detailed engineering drawings, field surveys that included underground work, a 700-page Environmental Impact Statement (which is ridiculous but also a standard amount of work for all public infrastructure projects in America, including interstate highways), value engineering (finding ways to build things more cheaply), purchasing of land for what would’ve been a maintenance yard, construction/resource scheduling in preparation for the day shovels hit the ground, and so much more.
The ugly truth is that a LOT of things need to be figured out to build a transit project. And Americans don’t pay people enough to do that sort of work in-house locally, and they also don’t invest in a central government agency where people could make a respectable career out of doing that heavy lifting on behalf of local governments across the country. Because of that gap in needs, private industry fills the gap while milking out profits, and this happens.
We talked about this before in the light rail thread, if you want to know more or you’d like to talk about that some more.
5 Likes