The R-Line gained ridership during a month where you had to pay to use it:
- Riders in Aug: 1463
- Riders in Sep: 1722
Still small numbers but it’s going in the right direction.
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Festivals matter…char/s
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We just noticed the new R Line route this morning and it looks great. It includes convenient stops for all the residential properties along West and Harrington and that should help ridership. We will be more inclined to use it for sure. The previous route stops were far enough from our condo that we’d just as soon walk where we were going but now the R Line is a viable option.
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I use it pretty frequently. I think it just needs a 3rd bus to get the headways below 15mins, and I still think it should be fare-free.
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When it stopped being free, I stopped riding it. Anywhere it goes, I can reasonably walk it. Maybe I’d ride it if i was out somewhere and got caught in a rain storm.
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Can any of you that use the R-Line mention the best use cases you have found for it? Like @John, I find most of the stops it takes can be reasonably walked.
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We’re at the Wuorum so easy walk everywhere but we used R line to Seaboard and that was nice. Also took it to Memorial Auditorium
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Haha Quorum I meant to write
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I’d usually take it to the train station w/ luggage or to go to a haircut or something near Fayetteville St. Sometimes if it’s really hot I also like taking it if convenient just to get up that hill on West St., else I’ll be sweaty and gross by the time I’m done walking it.
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Toting luggage is a good use case. That said, when I come into RDU and take the 100 bus into the city, I get off of it on Hillsborough @Alpaca and cut through Forest Park on my way to Glenwood South while dragging my wheeled carry-on.
If the RLine ventured out of the official boundary to places where I carry things a longer distance, it would be worth my time and money to take it. As it stands, I walk to Harris Teeter and Target on Hillsborough and carry or roll things home. I’m just a little more limited on what I can buy. I can imagine using the RLine if I were attending a show at the Duke Energy Center, especially if the weather was bad. As it stands, that’s about it because I am not likely to pay for bus ride that replaces a 4 or 5 block walk.
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This will also go into the Survey topic but…
I want to use my time on the Raleigh Transit Authority to make some solid recommendations with respect to the R-Line. I have my own thoughts on what could improve it but I want to host some kind of community swarm on the R-Line. I need your thoughts on what you think could make it better and what it should aspire to be.
Let me know with a few open-ended questions here: https://forms.gle/Gh8emeZ6tvKHD6Vr9
The hope is to aggregate these ideas and then see what bubbles up, creating an R-Line recommendation that I can work on through the RTA and finally recommend to council.
Let me know what you got. 
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I mean I loved the Miami Metromover and it’s probably the only downtown circulator I genuinely liked but I don’t think that Raleigh should copy that 
Edit: Denver’s free mall ride might be an interesting example for Raleigh though.
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NOTE: This is a rant with lots of sarcasm.
I had a wonderful experience using the R-Line yesterday. We walked up to the bus stop on Wilmington Street, in front of Cooper’s. It was easy to find as they clearly label the stop with some big signage.
You can even see where the stop is from all angles.
We only had to wait a few minutes (this is true) and we could track the bus through goraleighlive.org (worked well) Then as the bus approached, we gave it a wave. Unfortunately, another bus thought we were waving at them and they pulled over to get us. The R-Line decided all is good and went ahead carrying zero passengers north up Wilmington Street.
So instead of riding over to La Mala to check out the new place, we went to Foundation and drank that Dix Park whiskey. See, the R-Line knew that we’d probably want whiskey instead of tequila. The R-Line is so generous!
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I once got passed by three R-Line signed buses within 5 minutes at this stop before one of them (which had passed in the far left lane when a different GoRaleigh bus was stopped) looped back around the block and picked us up. This was after 20 minutes of waiting when the Transit app said that a bus would arrive in 5. I was beside myself.
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It’s not entirely the bus drivers fault. This stop is set up for confusion with so many routes stopping here. As we walked back down Wilmington, you can see the issue here. Do you think a new visitor trying to ride the R-Line is going to know which one is for them?
(it’s the farthest bus in the photo that is the R-Line)
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This is somewhat related… the city should focus on buildings bus shelters or placing seating for all of the downtown stations. Mainly the stations that aren’t expected to change in the next few years.
One, maybe two shelters (GoRaleigh and GoTriangle) should be in this location with additional information regarding the lines that stop there and a service area map.
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I have found that the Transit app often severely underestimates the time it takes for the R-Line to arrive; seems like they tend to stop extra long at their time points when Transit expects them to follow the schedule or be on their way. Not sure what the explanation is, but due to this I’ve found the actual wait time for the R-Line to be closer to 18-22 minutes.
However, if the timing works out, it’s a nice service (that still should be free, IMO)
Eeek. I forgot about this point when I filled out the survey above. A good one to add: Go back to when the R-Line was painted differently.
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Just to play devil’s advocate (or to cosplay as @orulz?) here, but.. does it really need to be painted differently, though?
@dtraleigh and @jope’s experiences sounded like they happened because:
- Buses that ran nearby were backed up;
- Bus stops are hard to find and feel comfortable in;
- The Transit app underestimates bus arrival times (despite how it corrects schedule deviations in a smarter way than other apps), and;
- Bus drivers had a hard time picking out the “correct” passengers that they needed to pick up.
None of these are problems that would be solved by painting the buses a different color.
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I rode the R-Line twice today and it went exactly as it should have. I took it from the Capitol to RUS and then did the reverse. I waited 6 minutes on the first trip and 2 minutes on the second. It was pretty flawless. Note, that this was more to re-acquaint myself with the service as I would have easily ridden the e-bike everywhere or even walked.
There are some things I was thinking about though and I’d like to ask the group a main question.
“Who is the R-Line for?”
Basically, I think the R-Line has lost its identity. Why is it doing what it’s doing? Who are we targetting, who are we serving? I think it’s trying to do lots of things for lots of people and therefore it’s doing an average job serving them all.
Right now, I believe the R-Line primarily serves the current ridership of GoRaleigh. See above, the branding on the buses, the signage, even the pamphlets, they all look the same under the GoRaleigh umbrella. Therefore, it’s NOT serving choice riders or at least those with a choice subconsciously look at the R-Line and think, “This is not for me.” (which is probably just an extension of why people don’t ride GoRaleigh anyway, among other reasons) And forget about visitors, they are probably noticing a “city bus” and more likely are thinking that it’s not for them.
It may be time to just ask what is the point of this route and create a new mission statement for the R-Line.
(In case you haven’t noticed, I have thoughts)
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