I think you can also connect between GoRaleigh 26 and GoTriangle if you walk the short distance across the RR tracks between Chapel Hill Road and Hillsborough St at Nowell. But you’re right, GoRaleigh doesn’t suggest any of these connections – just like they have never suggested a connection with GoTriangle 201 and the GoRaleigh N-S routes along 201’s route.
Your point about Crabtree is well-taken. I think GoRaleigh or GoTriangle could do well with a route between Crabtree and the airport, for instance. But perhaps Crabtree mall management doesn’t want their parking lots turned into a de facto park-ride-and-fly for RDU.
As an aside, Crabtree is a lousy place to put a bus hub… but GoRaleigh seems to have no appetite to look elsewhere.
Crabtree to RTC would totally work for me. I am out near North Hills. Could easily bike to Crabtree, Bus to RTC and then bike the last mile in RTP. That would actually make a pretty nice commute.
A bus hub in the Crabtree Valley area is a must-have and while the current spot has its faults, I have a hard time thinking of a location that could be better.
Mostly the pedestrian infrastructure needs improvement. A better walkway from there to the mall would be a good place to start. Add a stoplight at the corner of Homewood Banks and Crabtree Valley. Add another one at that intersection of the mall’s internal roads where you currently have to cross catty-corner to get to the mall.
The current spot is within a quarter mile walk of like 1000 new apartments. Put in the long-planned pedestrian bridge across Glenwood and the bus hub becomes easily walkable from all the apartments planned and completed on the other side of Glenwood too.
If the City had been thinking ahead, they could have gotten the NW or SW corner of Glenwood/Creedmoor with a pedestrian overpass to the mall (no hope of an underpass there, because of flooding concerns). Or the tract adjacent to the Marriott that’s under redevelopment. Or even up the hill where Brendles was.
Now I think we’re stuck with the mall, although there might be hope that an outparcel like the Just Tires location is re-used.
Not sure why Just Tires is any better than the current spot. Access and egress for buses is literally the same. As for the other spots you mention that are closer to the main roads, all buses serving Crabtree terminate there, so being directly on-street is not desirable: buses have to turn around somewhere.
The current spot is not beautiful and as mentioned before the pedestrian facilities need improvement, but being under the parking deck means it is protected from the elements and being next to the mall means it is next to the biggest single destination.
Long term, if you look at what is happening at other malls that are actually working to stay relevant, you will see that places like Just Tires, and really all the outparcels facing Glenwood & Blue Ridge, are likely to get redeveloped as mixed use in the future. That makes the current spot for the bus station pretty close to ideal.
As for Crabtree-RTC, I would like to see the current Crabtree-Brier Creek route extended to the RTC.
And that’s the problem. Those of us who live in the NW tried repeatedly to change the minds of the City about terminating everything at Crabtree. It would be preferable to have a single route that combines 36 and 27, for example. LIkewise 26 and the new 32 when it comes into operation. And the problem will only get worse when the City truncates 6 at Crabtree and starts new routes 6L and 6La (I’m not kidding about the nomenclature!) that run Crabtree-Pleasant Valley and Crabtree-Brier Creek. They’re creating a mess under that parking deck. During weekday rush hours and during December it’s dysfunctional. Well, it might be functional if the City and NCDOT do something about Glenwood between Creedmoor and I-440, but we’ve been waiting on that for 25 years and could easily wait another 25.
Yeah, you do have a point that basically it’s a lot of buses converging in an area with very heavy traffic. Basically the whole area is dysfunctional for cars too in December and PM rush. While linking the routes and just having them mostly stick to the main roads would speed things along somewhat, I think that the idea behind terminating all the buses there is that a disturbance on one route won’t propagate to another route, whereas under your suggestion, congestion on 26 due to something at Carter Finley would also affect the schedule of the new 32. Likewise, getting from Creedmoor to Rex is harder and slower if the routes don’t interline, but having all the routes converge in one place on one platform makes transfers much easier and builds a network.
In the end I guess I can say that I think the way things are right now is not perfect but rather than rip it up and start over, build the infrastructure needed to make it work. The fix for Glenwood from 440 to Creedmoor was in the works until our friend with the horse farm on Ridge Road and the Council of No derailed it.
And the irony is, once upon a time Creedmoor bridged over Glenwood. In a classically insane decision, the City and NCDOT elected to tear down the single-lane bridge and replace it with a surface intersection. They could have simply replaced the bridge with another.
As for spillover of tardy bus schedules, it happens already. Buses rotate among 26, 27, and 36 at Crabtree. Late inbound → late outbound. No downside, really, to combining these routes end-on-end.
Would the buses’ performance (and also its attractiveness as an alternative to cars for people who aren’t out Black Friday shopping!) be better if there were exclusive bus lanes in/around the mall? I feel like this would be really helpful to make the most of interlining or combining routes.
(ignoring how drivers on Crabtree would raise holy hell for their road getting one lane narrower)
It’s an idea worth considering, but you’re right, citizens would raise holy hell unless the dedicated bus lanes were part of the overall plan to improve Glenwood at Crabtree. That said, I haven’t heard a peep from the City or NCDOT about including bus lanes in the Crabtree improvement plan.
hooray, looks like DOT is adding lanes to 40 between lake wheeler Rd and US 1 /64 and redoing the interchange, right after finishing fortify repaving project! Who needs light rail!!??
Just mind boggling that no one bats an eye about the continual building of more lanes and roads. Yet try to get funding for rail or BRT and it’s like pulling teeth.
This has been a bottleneck for long around Gorman St. I became a very early riser just because of that
Shortsighted to add a lane here and there in an area that will double in population before too long
BUT do you think in countries where public transit is the default that there are car advocates saying, “Great! Another train line? No one bats an eye at another route but try to widen our roads and it’s like pulling teeth!”
Actually I am not that opposed to freeways. Good freeway infrastructure is a necessary counterpart to road diets on surface streets and arterials.
However, I do think that our freeways should be entirely managed roads. Off peak, when congestion is low, have no or very low tolls; at peak, raise the tolls high enough that they flow freely (maintaining “LOS D”). Nobody wins when there is congestion, as capacity actually decreases in congested conditions.
Money spent to widen roads should come solely from these managed lanes as it is peak period congestion that drives the need to widen roads. Public transit peak service can be funded from this pot as well.
Gas tax and VMT fees should be for maintenance of existing roads and base frequency all-day public transit.
Any idea if they will add metered ramps through this section as part of the additional lane construction? I was skeptical about adding them on WB-540, but it really helps to keep traffic moving, where pre-metered ramps, it was stop and go at every entry ramp between Capital Blvd and Creedomoor/Leesville depending on the day. (Average was about 45 minutes to drive 22 miles every morning pre-metered ramps. UGH)
HOV 2+ lanes. They’ve been talking about them for decades. They’re great I recently drove from Los Angeles to San Diego during rush hour and managed to make really good time while commuters on the other lanes moved at a crawl. HOV2+ can also double as bus lanes.
You just need real enforcement with camera check. If we had HOV 2+ lanes in Raleigh people here will so abuse the system.
The N.C Department of Transportation is holding an open-house meeting to provide the public information about transportation projects that are under development or construction in the Raleigh area.
Monday, May 6, 2019 4-7 p.m.
McKimmon Center
1101 Gorman St.
Raleigh
The public may attend at any time during the public meeting hours, as no formal presentation will be made.
I went to the NCDOT public meeting last night concerning the I-440 / Glenwood Ave. Interchange Improvements project. This project has had some controversy concerning a connection from Ridge Road to Crabtree Valley Avenue. There are 7 concepts! You can see all of them here. I feel like the Ridge Road community is having an out-weighed voice in a project that will impact the entire region–kind of like what we see with the CACs. I encourage readers to check out the concepts and provide comments here.
