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Transit Tangents
The Podcast where we discuss all things transit. Join us as we dive into transit systems across the US, bring you interviews with experts and advocates, and engage in some fun and exciting challenges along the way.
Transit Tangents
Transit in the Triangle - North Carolina
The Research Triangle area of North Carolina keeps trying—and failing—to develop effective transit solutions despite strong voter support for improvements. After a promising light rail project was derailed by Duke University in 2019, the region has pivoted to Bus Rapid Transit projects with mixed success.
• Voters approved a half-cent sales tax in 2011-2012 specifically for transit improvements including the 17.7-mile Durham Orange Light Rail
• Duke University refused to sign necessary agreements in 2019, effectively killing the light rail project that would have connected three universities
• Raleigh has developed plans for four BRT lines extending from downtown in all directions
• Despite a groundbreaking ceremony in 2023, Raleigh's BRT project has faced two failed contractor selection attempts and completion is now projected for 2030
• Durham is pursuing its own BRT plans but remains in earlier planning stages
• A proposed 43-mile commuter rail connecting West Durham through Raleigh to Clayton lost federal funding support in 2023
• The Triangle region already has Amtrak service with about five daily trains between towns, but frequency and reliability need improvement
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Doors are closing. Public transit that's my way to roll On the metro. I'm taking control. My stop's train tracks, it's my daily grind. Public transit, it's the rhythm of my life. This week we discuss three transit projects that have each had a hard time getting started in the Research Triangle area of North Carolina. After failed attempts at light rail and commuter rail, can the region finally pull off a long-awaited BRT project? All of this and more coming up on Transit Tangents. Hey everybody, and welcome to this episode of Transit Tangents. My name is Lewis and I'm Chris, and today we are going to be revisiting a state we haven't talked about in a while but we have in the past, which is the state of North Carolina, specifically the Triangle Research Area. So that encompasses the cities of Durham, raleigh and Chapel Hill, and this area has had a bit of a rocky past with transit in the last decade or two.
Speaker 2:I would call it a series of false starts on transit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so today we're going to be kind of talking about why this region seemingly continues to struggle getting different transit networks off the ground. They do have a bus system, kind of, in each of these cities as well as a regional system, but as far as doing any sort of light rail, commuter rail, brt, there's been a lot of starts and not a lot of groundbreaking.
Speaker 1:Well, there's been ground breakings, but not a lot of actual construction taking place, so today we'll specifically be, talking about the Durham Orange Line light rail, some BRT proposals in both Raleigh and Durham, as well as a commuter service that again almost got off the ground. It's not all negative. In North Carolina, though, I'll say we were just kind of, as we're getting ready here, looking into the kind of frequent rail service on the Piedmont service through North Carolina, which is pretty impressive.
Speaker 2:It is. Yeah, the Amtrak service that's in the state is actually not bad, and we may get into that a little bit more a little later in the episode, but it's like the bones are there for it being such a powerful transit state and they already are off to a good start. It's just how do you fully bring it home, how do you continue to expand on that system? And we'll talk about that through the episode.
Speaker 1:Before we jump into the specifics here, this was actually a recommendation from one of our Patreon subscribers. Thank you to all of our Patreon subscribers, but that was in our exclusive Discord channel, just for them. So if you want to get involved, request episodes and support the show, that is the best way to do so. So exclusive, I know right, it's a tight-knit community right now. Yeah, very tight, yes.
Speaker 2:All Right, it's a tight-knit community right now. Yeah, very tight. Yes, All right. But getting into sort of the meat of the episode, there is a will of the people in North Carolina to really create more transit in their state In 2011-2012, voters around Durham. They approved a half-cent sales tax to fund more transit initiatives. This included the Durham Orange.
Speaker 1:Light Rail Right and in this vote, basically, like the project spans two counties. One of the counties had their vote in 2011, one in 2012. In addition to the light rail, it also added to their bus network, increased frequencies, kind of updated some of the infrastructure and whatnot. But these votes passed overwhelmingly and the orange light rail was kind of like the shiny object involved in this that folks were really excited for. It was a 17.7 mile light rail. They're excited because light rail is sexy. It is.
Speaker 2:Buses aren't. Buses aren't, unfortunately.
Speaker 1:Although this is something we should do in the future. I'll link that article to this. But I read a recent article that kind of was talking about why don't we just make buses sexy, and I think it kind of goes against some things we've said in the past, but it'll be a future episode. I'll link the article for folks who want to get it. Unfortunately, I could not find this article anywhere. If anyone knows what I'm talking about, please link. But this 17.7 mile system was going to encompass 18 stations along the way. It bridges the gap between three universities. You would have had Duke University, you would have had UNC their kind of hospitals campus to the south, as well as the North Carolina Central University, which is just to the east of Durham.
Speaker 2:All of those have been connected together in this system, Yep and all of that connection would have served about. It was estimated about 26,000 riders per day. So pretty decent, you know, ridership for this sort of local service.
Speaker 1:Totally. And what was really encouraging with this is you know this area is if you've been to it before. I haven't been directly but I've spent a lot of time on Google Maps, just kind of looking from above. Chris has been to the area before. It is fairly suburban, fairly sprawly, mostly car-centric infrastructure to get around Sprawly Raleigh, that's what they call it.
Speaker 1:That's how I can say it right Sprawly Raleigh. I was having a hard time saying Raleigh before I was like I'm going to say it wrong. Sprawly Raleigh. I'll never get it wrong now. Okay, that was good.
Speaker 2:I have been to the area. It's beautiful, such a nice place. There's, like these sort of town centers everywhere. It's what you think of as sort of that East Coast region, but again, very, very suburban.
Speaker 1:What I was going to say, though, is it was really encouraging with this. They had a really well put together, transit-oriented development plan that was going to go along with the light rail proposal, talking about how they were going to include more housing around the stations, increasing connections to other buses and whatnot, so that the ridership, over time, would continue to grow and the system would really serve a major net benefit to the communities, both from a perspective of having folks be able to travel around the region easier without a car, but also from an economic perspective for all of the towns and cities and counties involved, from generating more property tax revenue and whatnot, which continues to help the system. Just for some additional context before we go any further, the transit agencies that serve this area are as follows Go Triangle for regional trips between cities, go Durham for trips within Durham, go Raleigh for trips within Raleigh and Go Chapel Hill for trips within Chapel Hill.
Speaker 2:And there's already some service that exists today. It's the 400 bus that's run by GoTriangle and it serves sort of that similar purpose of what the light rail would do. But, as we've talked about many, many times, light rails or light rail is just more efficient than generally, than a bus service is. Buses also get caught up in traffic. Highway 501, which kind of runs between Chapel Hill and Durham, highway 501, which kind of runs between Chapel Hill and Durham, it's going to be a heavily used corridor, so buses are going to get stuck in that traffic as well, which is where maybe something like a VRT could come in line.
Speaker 1:Right, and the hope was that by replacing this bus, which is a well-used route in the area, with a light rail, you encourage even more ridership, because again, more folks would be willing to take a train than would be willing to take a bus, and you can kind of help alleviate some traffic along the corridor and provide options for folks instead of basically being, you know, sitting traffic in your car or sitting traffic on the bus so the durham orange light rail as sexy as a light rail can be, uh, ultimately failed.
Speaker 2:Uh, and it was around March of 2019.
Speaker 1:Right, and it wasn't sexy enough for Duke university. Apparently, uh, Duke citing uh concerns over how it would affect the kind of precise surgical section of their medical institute or their medical facilities. Uh, they were worried about, I think, some of those construction and whatnot. They do, some surgeries that require precise instruments and whatnot. They would not sign a cooperative agreement to move it forward and the project kind of just fizzled out. Now there was a lot of speculation over whether that was actually the reason why Duke didn't move forward or not, but regardless, the project is dead as of now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm really hoping that's not the full reason. I mean you're not doing surgeries 24-7, probably at this place. I feel like there's ways to schedule around it. Also, I feel like a lot of those instruments should be calibrated for some ground vibration.
Speaker 1:Yeah, unfortunately, I feel like the real reason probably lands somewhere in the realm of Duke University. Doesn't want people from the city necessarily in the middle of their college campus as easily, which is not a good reason to not fund it. But yeah, we'll move on.
Speaker 2:We will allow you to come up with your own conclusions on why Duke did not move forward.
Speaker 1:Yes, so we'll fast forward a little bit here. You know 2019, that project goes away. 2020, obviously you've got COVID and everything happening with that and since then, essentially both Raleigh and Durham have moved forward with different options for BRT service in their areas and at this point they're at very different stages. Raleigh has moved forward quite a bit more and is in the process of putting together four BRT lines that would all terminate in the downtown core, with one line going north, one line going south, one line going east and one line going west. So pretty straightforward, and that's kind of what they've proposed so far.
Speaker 2:Cool, that's all the directions.
Speaker 1:That is all the directions.
Speaker 2:So as this BRT system sort of goes out from the city center, it kind of changes how the BRT operates. So in the middle of the cities the BRT is kind of common, what you would see in a really dense area. They have dedicated bus lanes. We see this pretty often, like in cities like Austin, where Cap Metro runs through downtown. As it gets sort of out a little past the downtown areas it turns into what I would call more true BRT, where it is separated lanes, completely separate from traffic. For the most part Buses are of free-flowing in this in the center.
Speaker 2:Basically, too, it's like center running brt yeah yeah, and then as you get out um past that into the, the sprawly parts of raleigh, uh, it turns into um more of like mixed traffic use.
Speaker 1:So the bus is now mixed in with with regular traffic when traffic is lighter right and some of these are still kind of in the design phase, but that's based on, like the designs we have so far, and specifically based on the kind of eastern line which is the one that is furthest along, so that would be running along New Bern Avenue, and it is essentially just awaiting construction. And, interestingly enough, this project actually broke ground in 2023. And you notice how I said it broke ground in 2023, but we're awaiting construction Kind of strange, huh.
Speaker 1:Did the ground break Well you know, the ground broke for whatever ribbon cutting event that they did in 2023. But unfortunately the project has had a series of kind of missteps here. I'm actually going to read a direct quote from Mass Transit Magazine here. Raleigh held a groundbreaking ceremony for the New Bern BRT line in late 2023 and hoped to begin construction the following spring. At the time, city officials said they expected the line would be completed by the end of 2025. But the two failed attempts to begin construction set that timetable back. In response to concerns from contractors, raleigh is also allowing more time to complete the work, pushing the likely completion back further, according to Het Patel, the city transit planner overseeing the project. So basically, there were two failed attempts that they're talking about. Don't mind the woodpecker that is.
Speaker 2:If you could hear knocking in the background. I have a woodpecker attacking my window um, so essentially what happens?
Speaker 1:there are two attempts to get a contractor to actually build this thing. In both attempts, uh, the city can't select a partner. Due to whether it be financial reasons, timeline reasons, all sorts of different things they couldn't agree to get this thing done. Right now we have, according to Axios, entered the third attempt at getting a contractor. Bids are now open until June 20th and if a contractor is selected, construction could start as early as this fall, so being 2025. Now, remember, they said that they thought this thing would be completed by the end of 2025. Now, the best case scenario is a groundbreaking at the end of 2025. The second groundbreaking, the second, maybe the third, I don't know? Yeah, so not great. The city is more optimistic this time, after kind of adjusting a few things, including the timeline for construction, unfortunately kind of slowing it down. Here's kind of one more quote, kind of covering that, from Mass Transit Magazine Based on the recent feedback received and construction timelines that contractors communicated were more achievable, we anticipate construction completion and operations by summer 2030.
Speaker 2:I feel like 2030 is kicking the can down the road for every transit agency. It seems like every project that we talk about it's somewhere between 2030 and 2033 is the finish date.
Speaker 1:Have you noticed this. Yeah, I feel like 2030 is the new 2020 yeah, a lot of things were 2020 before you know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Like there's a lot of big projects that starting the 2030 conspiracy it's never gonna happen, yeah, I mean, um, but at least it's, at least there's still a little bit of movement and the city is still actively, you know, seeking the contractors and trying to get this going. So I would call this one of the transit false starts, but at least, uh, it's still kind of progressing.
Speaker 1:We'll know in june. I we'll try to keep an eye on this and keep folks updated. We'll know in June if they at least select a contractor. But it kills me that in the United States it will potentially take five years just from the start of construction to finishing this thing. Like we should be able to build a freaking BRT line from like the day that the vote passes to having it operational in like two years, not five years after they've selected a partner, after it had already been planned for several years leading up to it. That had a groundbreaking 2023. Right.
Speaker 2:We would have built a highway in a much quicker time.
Speaker 1:Agreed. I literally like it's embarrassing. That's not like what a developed country, like other countries that are, frankly, not nearly as developed as us, can do this in half the time. Even if it's like just temporarily, like throw some freaking flex posts in the ground and paint and get it going while you upgrade the infrastructure over time, it's, it's not not great and this isn't just an octagon. I mean, this happens all across the country.
Speaker 2:Um, absolutely but on the durham side, their plans are definitely in the earlier stages. Um, to make the story brief, uh, they had plans to add brt or BRT light and they're looking for federal funds from the small starts program. That's if it's gonna happen right. There's a lot of things up in the air on the federal level and funding trend in funding transit, and so maybe this happens right, maybe it doesn't, but it's one that definitely it's a keep an eye on yep and small starts to is like it's similar to you maybe have heard us talk about the new starts program.
Speaker 1:That's for like bigger projects, projects like project connect here in Austin would fall into that. But again, yes, it requires federal and we won't talk about the federal government stuff today, cause we had a lot of people who were like you can't talk about politics and transit at the same time, blah, the same time, blah, blah, blah. A lot of complaints on our video from a couple weeks ago. Transit is political. I know, I know and and most of most of the, the hardcore fans were in there saying that as well, but we had some naysayers. But that's fine, go ahead and continue naysaying, that's all right, I'll all right. So up next on this journey of transit projects that never were is the Raleigh commuter line. This was planned to be a 43-mile line with 15 stations, connecting West Durham through Raleigh and onward to Clayton, which is on the east side of Raleigh. Yep.
Speaker 2:And a feasibility study came out for this in 2023, proposing doing it in three phases for a total cost of around $3 billion.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it was essentially this phased approach. The phased approach would start by connecting the eastern suburbs of Raleigh to downtown. Phase two would then connect from Raleigh to just east of Durham not quite making it all the way to a big research park that's out there and then phase three would finally connect to downtown durham as well as points further west of that kind of encompassing the full route and phase three is definitely going to be the most costly of the three phases, but it would actually link the cities with with the service, like the more of the service.
Speaker 2:So definitely the the part that is the key part and definitely be, you know, the one that's most worth it and part of the reason of that is a lot of the tracks.
Speaker 1:once you get to Durham and beyond, you end up on Norfolk Southern right away and it just makes it. You know, norfolk Southern is not necessarily wanting to work for frequent passenger service because they've got big freight trains moving through. A lot of this is single tracked and trying to schedule around. That is always a crapshoot, as the Amtrak system, especially the long distance Amtrak trains, know very well and unfortunately, after this feasibility study came out in 2023, the FTA, actually under the Biden administration, pulled the plug on any federal funding going to this project, citing ridership concerns, among other things along the way.
Speaker 2:So, mayor Pete, we have to have a talk. Got to figure out what happened.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's not great. And that leads us with not one, not two, but kind of three. The BRT stuff is actually. I won't say that that one hasn't happened, but they've had a rocky journey to get to where they are. Again, it's good to see the city optimistic about at least getting the construction partner chosen, but again, it's even just for one of the four sections. But you gotta hope that once they get the first one underway, they've, you know, have some lessons learned in you know, doing the.
Speaker 2:the remaining three yeah, you put out the plan, you get the first one done. People write it, you know. You see, the ridership is actually pretty good.
Speaker 1:People get used to the idea of brt and then it's easier to do the rest hopefully yeah and if you have a good partner on the first one and things go well, then you can use that same partner, for the others probably exactly, and I I would also like to think too that you know, let's say, raleigh gets, gets their first ones going that information could also be really helpful for folks in durham as they try to build out theirs. I read a brief proposal chapel hill was talking about doing their own little brt as well. So, uh, hopefully, you know, with these metros being so close to each other, especially Raleigh and Durham's only I think you said it was 10 miles away basically, with them being so close, the information sharing and everything should be there to kind of help usher these projects along.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's actually a really good point is that these cities are very close together. We talk a lot about city pairs like Austin, san Antonio or Dallas, fort Worth. These cities are much, much further apart. Totally, I mean, austin San Antonio is 73 miles downtown to downtown-ish, so the idea that this is only like 10 to 15 miles really apart from driving-wise is crazy. There should be a lot more service happening between these two cities and in fact there is some existing service. Amtrak does serve this central Carolina region. It goes from Charlotte all the way to Raleigh and the trains between Durham and Raleigh they come with like six times a day or so, yeah, I think it's five times a day on the Piedmont and then you get a couple more with some of the longer distance.
Speaker 1:So the longer distance ones are probably less reliable time wise, but the the Piedmont service, from what I can tell, is actually fairly reliable.
Speaker 2:So if you are dedicated to using train service, there is an existing service in this region. It can. Can it be better?
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and there there is also part of the the go triangle regional system.
Speaker 1:There are buses as well that go back and forth, but again, with the buses you end up with the traffic issue.
Speaker 1:So, you know, in the long term and this is now just us throwing some ideas out there when we talked about the BRT that's happening in St Paul and eventually will be kind of extended to Minneapolis, and that system in St Paul actually should be open now, which is pretty awesome. I actually don't know for sure, I'm curious to go and look, but that was a really interesting proposal where you're just like creating real dedicated BRT along a highway. And this is an area where, like, I could see that making a lot of sense. But, man, it feels so unnecessary that when you have tracks already that go between these two cities, the issue is like, just looking at it from Google Maps, I mean, you've got single track for a decent bit of it, so there would definitely need to be some track improvements to make sure that trains can run on time. You're not holding up other traffic on the tracks, but it feels like it shouldn't cost $3 billion plus to connect two cities that already have a rail line between them. I agree.
Speaker 2:And already have rail service.
Speaker 1:You're just trying to increase the service.
Speaker 2:I think there's definitely places where the rail can be aligned to make more sense, but there's also highway right-of-ways in this region that can be used to realign the rail.
Speaker 1:Or to put BRT infrastructure in Right.
Speaker 2:And if anybody showed us that you can utilize this highway right-of-way, it's Brightline. There's opportunities here to really connect these cities in a more meaningful way. You can get the line much closer to the airport. Doing it this way and, like I said, with this sort of being again a kind of a suburban area but with a lot of little town centers, all of the bones are there for it being such a good transit region and connecting all of these little towns.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think I lightly mentioned this at the beginning that, like you know, when they were initially going forward with the first project we talked about the light rail they put together this transit oriented development kind of guidebook and whatnot. You kind of lean more into that. I mean, I know Durham recently got rid of parking minimums when they were kind of working on this. So like there is a push to do this sort of stuff, yeah, but they're so close yet so far sort of thing on all of it. They're so close yet so far sort of thing on all of it. So, yeah, worth noting too. We did talk about some commuter service that was proposed in Charlotte in a previous episode.
Speaker 1:We'll make sure that's linked for folks. But otherwise, if you live in this area, definitely let us know what you think. If we missed anything, let us know. We'd love to kind of hear more about what is going on in the area.
Speaker 2:So anything else we need to. Anything else when you're done, call it, end it there. Cool, um. If you want to support the show, be sure to like and subscribe to videos and share those also. You can support us via our patreon, or buy me a coffee, or, if you would like some transit tangents, merch uh, we have our merch store as well. I think we're definitely going to add a shirt about make buses sexy again, or something like that. Maybe sprawly raleigh or sprawly raleigh.
Speaker 1:We'll have to go to raleigh before we do that. I think if you have ideas, for merchandise, let us know totally, uh. With all that being said, though, thank you all so much for watching and enjoy the rest of your transit. Tangents tuesday.