Critique is another blow for transit plan
(News and Observer – October 15, 2013)
As Wake County commissioners prepare to take up a 2-year-old proposed transit plan built around light rail and improved bus service, an influential business group is offering its own fresh view of the proposal - and throwing buckets of fresh, cold water on it.
The Regional Transportation Alliance has come out in favor of bus rapid transit, a hybrid that is gaining ground in U.S. cities as less expensive and more flexible than street cars and light rail - but faster and more enjoyable than regular buses. The buses have ways of moving faster than street traffic – sometimes with their own lanes, or with preferential treatment at stop lights - and riders often buy tickets before boarding at high-level platforms.
Linked to the Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce, the Regional Transportation Alliance has been successful at building support for big changes, such as the Triangle Expressway, and small ones, such as the Interstate 40 bus-on-shoulder program. The alliance began circulating a critique in August that endorses bus rapid transit for Wake "as a more effective and viable approach than the framework of the current plan."
The 13-page critique warns that proposed new standard bus service "will still be a system with infrequent routes along most corridors" and buses still stuck in traffic. It called the Durham-Raleigh-Garner commuter train line "very expensive for what it is projected to deliver."
Wake's planned light rail "is so expensive ... that by concentrating so many resources in a single corridor, it crowds out funding that could be used to increase the reach, frequency and reliability of travel options, as well as to create complementary corridor investments in more areas," the regional alliance critique says.
The critique is another blow to a plan that has gained little traction