Do you think it will ever improve if the service isn’t acceptable–and made even worse than 2019?. It’s a self-fulfilling porphecy. Bus service in the Triangle in unreliable therefore few people use it, low risership count.
Raleigh holds hundreds of events in downtown Raleigh a year why do 99.9% of visitors from the airport use Uber/car rental instead of the bus?
Before 2020 I would have had poor signage and lack of knowledge of a quick bus service to downtown. Now I mean if you’re really penny pinching you can take 1 to 2.3 hours to get from the airport to downtown depending if you just missed the bus.
At this point the airport ridership numbers will dip to basically airport employees only. Might as well cut the service at that point and ask RDU to provide an employee bus. Save GoTriangle money, they just threw away $160 million in the failed DOLRT project.
Unless it takes 20-30 minutes to/from DTR and RDU with service consistently every 15-30 minutes, it won’t work. Why would I ever buffer for 1.5-2 hrs of public commuting each way when I can drive/Uber in 15 minutes.
It was about 37 minute transit from the airport to GoRaleigh station before if you caught the bus on time. Now it’s about 1 hour 30+. That’s if the bus drivers feel like they want to drive on time.
Here’s the reality of the situation: GoTriangle has finite resources and needs to do what they can to maximize ridership. They won’t get the support they need if they can’t get riders (sadly, that’s how transit works in this country). They’re already in a hot spot with the public because of DOLRT, and the City of Durham is becoming increasingly inwardly-focused as a result (read: less interested in regional connections, like commuter rail). It doesn’t help that a significant portion of GoTriangle’s ridership pre-pandemic was 9-5 commuters.
Right now, they have more ridership opportunities among people moving within the Triangle than people going to and from the airport, so they’re going to prioritize that. Until they get the resources to run either rail or airport express buses to and from each downtown core every 15-30min from 5:00a to midnight, it’s just not going to be appealing to a majority of people. And if they did that now, while even their best-performing all-day routes are still running at thirty-minute intervals, that communicates to their existing riders and the municipalities that support them: “hey, we don’t care about you nearly as much as we care about tourism and business travelers.” Not a good look.
Even if Route 100 still ran through the airport, we wouldn’t even be able to use it for our upcoming trip in September because our departure is too early in the morning and our return trip arrives after service ends on Sunday evening. Even then, I’m not close enough to the route to use it, and there’s no overnight park-and-ride lot on that route other than RTC (and, at that point, I might as well use the new RDU Shuttle). GoTriangle needs to expand service across the system before they can have an airport connection that’s actually convenient for a majority of riders.
TL;DR: airport express routes get ridership when they’re competitive with both rideshare/taxis and long-term parking in terms of both cost and convenience. GoTriangle has the upper-hand on cost, but it’s so behind on convenience that it would have to make significant resource reallocations to become competitive, and that’s just not feasible for them right now.
I agree which is why I feel that GoTriangle should just be GoDurham and Raleigh shouldn’t depend on it for regional transportation. After all GoTriangle is Durham-based with the majority of the staff in Durham and as you said Durham is increasingly inwardly-focused. If Wake County is the largest county in North Carolina by population with the second largest city in North Carolina why is our regional public transit based in Durham? We can pretend GoTriangle is impartial but the DOLRT shows us that they aren’t. Heck the Commuter Rail Project is on shaky ground because Durham isn’t as committed to the project. I think once the City of Raleigh government becomes full time and the city realizes it’s a big city it will start taking a less laissez faire approach to regional and local issues–maybe then we have have better bus service, a minor league team/MLB, a real library, a better performance art center…the list goes on.
Getting my first looks at what actual “near normal” commute patterns look like in Raleigh.
The South line BRT can’t get here soon enough!
Other than some interstate delays, that’s our only real tough arterial spot in the city.
my folks took the old tta for dental work at a reduced rate in north Raleigh near spring forest because they were blind. they rode to chapel hill over 2 hours at the time…they rarely saw heavy ridership…albeit 15 years ago. dental work was 60 percent less though.
Maybe because my four preteen and teenagers have to be taken to several different places all day long. I can’t bike them or have them bike themselves across Raleigh everyday. If it’s just you then yes, you can bike yourself wherever you want to, god bless. It’s not realistic for a family unless your life is lived in a 1 or 2 square mile bubble.
decades ago…1980ish, my blind parents lived in longview gardens. they took the no. 10 longview into town to go to work downtown and bussed back home. often we walked to winn dixie a mile away for groceries or i biked to larrys supermarket on king charles for groceries for meat…nearly a mile away. we had pizza and beer ( my folks let me drink) at franks pizza when desired ( a mile away) and swains steaks on special occasions on milburnie (via cab). on weekends a seemingly easy bike ride into downtown for krispy kreme and pigeon feeding at the capitol didnt seem unsumountable…did it regularly. was it bubble-ish…maybe, not as varied as now i guess. can a suburban sfh area with a tennis court and field not allow kids to interact and have fun with other types of kids, i dont think so. in longview within feet of our house was a black wake tech board member, two other black fami;ies, a black wral reporter and sure, various other white folks. seemed ok.
When I was a kid in suburbia in both California and in north Raleigh, my family also had 4 kids but only one car that my dad took to work. My mom was a stay-at-home mom but she didn’t have a car, and we weren’t carted around all day by her to different events. We rode the school bus through our senior years, and when I was old enough to get a job, I walked a mile a half to my job at McDonald’s.
