Wake leaders break the ice on transit talk
(News & Observer – Feb. 27, 2014)
Transit will be on the agenda Friday when the Wake County commissioners gather for a retreat in Holly Springs, but they are not expected to dip into details of a moldering plan for buses and trains that the Republican-led board received in 2011 – and never discussed.
Democratic candidates and other transit advocates are impatient to see Wake catch up with Durham and Orange counties, where shoppers pay a voter-authorized sales tax for transit investments and the federal government has given the go-ahead for planning work on a 17-mile light-rail line.
But transportation planners say they’ll need at least a year to refresh the stale Wake plan and recirculate it throughout the county and its dozen municipalities. Under their most hopeful timetable, they figure they could develop a new consensus plan in time for a Wake County referendum in fall 2015.
The commissioners may give a signal Friday as to whether even that schedule is too optimistic. It’s not clear that they’re ready to make transit a priority this year.
They’ll have to be ready to figure out how to beef up bus service, which is anemic or nonexistent across much of the sprawling county, and how to pay for it. In Raleigh and Cary, the big-dollar questions center on whether Wake is ready to sink hundreds of millions of dollars into commuter trains or light-rail lines. And there is new enthusiasm for bus rapid transit service – a rubber-tire hybrid featuring buses that can act like trains and, in some cities, cost almost as much.
(County Commissioner) Paul Coble has voiced skepticism in the past about the cost and benefits of rail transit, and he has warmed recently toward the new talk about bus rapid transit – fostered by the visiting experts in November and by the Regional Transportation Alliance, a business group that advocates for road and other transportation improvements.