Joe Milazzo with business leadership group RTA talks about the new Wake Transit process
(Bill LuMaye show, WPTF 680 AM Radio – Dec. 5, 2014)
Joe Milazzo is the Executive Director, Regional Transportation Alliance, and vice president, Transportation and Infrastructure, Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce.
"(The Wake County Transit kickoff) is on Monday evening at the Convention Center. It's going to be the beginning of the process that will engage the broader community. The Chamber of Commerce where I work, we're excited about it, because of the growth we're having you've got to have not just good transit, good travel options, but a good conversation among the community about what those options could look like.
The main key element for this conversation and all of our conversations on transit and transportation in travel, is to remember that we've got a good thing going in Wake County and the Triangle, we have got great quality of life, people are excited about moving here, they continue to do that, and the key element for us is to be smart about what we do, in making appropriate, scalable investments in infrastucture, and so that's going to include your freeway system, your bus system, and other things we might do as we grow, we've just got to make sure those things are in place.
So in terms of what we would want to see is that the pieces that are necessary to allow for the growth to occur and maintain the quality of life - that's more of a general statement - and for the transit process, that we have a good one and that everybody's a part of it.
Our mode share is not that high right now, we are just beginning the evolution of our process, but what you're going to see is that as the market grows over time, more and more people are going to rely on it, and frankly more people would use it today if we had better service and better network connections to be able to get from point A to point B. Some folks are using the Triangle Transit buses that you see on I-40, and I think you've seen the bus on shoulder system; if you want something that is fast, good, and cheap, it would be hard to do better than that service which is a partnership of North Carolina DOT and Triangle Transit, and they are able to use that to get through congested conditions.
The point is well-taken, do we need to have something that's cost-effective? Absolutely. Do we need to have something that makes sense for our community, and not just pick something from another area and try to impose it on here? We've got to have something that makes sense for the region as it exists and as we're growing. So yes the cost-effectiveness has got to be part of the conversation -- and I think it will be, that's what I'm excited about with this transit conversation, because if you go to the website, WakeTransit.com, you'll see that one of the main elements of this process is that there are tradeoffs, and one of the main elements of tradeoffs are costs. If you spend X amount of money on one corridor or on one line, it can't be spent somewhere else. So you've got to be really thoughtful and really purposeful about it. And what that means is that we've got to think through what are values, what are we trying to accomplish with transit, not just now, not just in the future, but both. So when people bring up questions about transit and cost, that's exactly the questions that need to be brought up; that can't be the only things we look at it, but it's got to be a part of it.
All of us are trying to get around the market at different times, so I think you're getting at a really key point here. A key phrase that we have looked at from the Regional Transportation Alliance, which is a program here at the Chamber, is the concept of a network, how does the network fit together? If we put in one line that looks great, regardless of the technology, whether we're talking light rail, whether we're talking enhanced bus rapid transit, but if we put just one line in or one or two, and if the rest of the service isn't really that good, you're really going to have something that's not going to really work for a whole lot of people a whole lot of time. So we're looking for what is the best way of creating a scalable network, and so we've got to be thinking about how that investment goes, and that's the conversation the public's going to have over the next several months.
I do want to mention something that's very exciting about this process, and I'm not sure if your listeners are aware of it. One of the outgrowths of the next several months of conversation - they are going to have some committee meetings, of course they are having the kickoff on Monday - what we're going to see is not some one plan and you say "yea" or "no", there are actually going to be two different scenarios created, that will look intentionally different. And the purpose of that is so that we can look and understand the tradeoffs associated with transit, because there really are, like there are in the other investments that one could make with the public. And look and allow the public to compare those and contrast, to see what they like and dislike, and the final tradeoff concept we have may not be either one of those. It may be a hybrid of that, it may be something new will come up. But the beauty of this process is tradeoffs are going to be heard, and you'll be able to compare different ways of seeing what that means in terms of how you would get around.
WakeTransit.com has the information.
Before I forget, the County has done a very nice job with this under the leadership of County Manager Jim Hartmann of putting this process together, collaborative, public engagement, and a great consulting team, including Kimley-Horn and Jarrett Walker and associates.
Look at the website, the kickoff meeting on Monday is important, they can even ask questions right now that they can have people address, they can go online. And then, as the process evolves, there is going to be, when those two scenarios are created, that is really going to be an important time for members of the public to look at them, to vet them, and offer their comments. That's going to be the time to do it. There's going to be a referendum, a vote at some point, it won't happen obviously in 2014, it won't happen in 2015, but I would suspect 2016 is a likely time we'll have a referendum vote, but 2016 isn't the time to ask questions, that needs to happen now, that needs to happen in 2015 to engage in the process.