Catch all thread. Saw this article which eliminates several freeway projects in favor of mass transit projects. I can’t say I’m too thrilled with this but Raleigh isn’t my area. I’m curious what the thoughts are from people who live here about this are.
The organization that does transportation planning for Durham and much of Orange County wants the state to spend less on building new freeways and widening existing ones. The Durham-Chapel Hill-Carrboro Metropolitan Planning Organization or MPO recently approved a 30-year plan that eliminates some long-anticipated projects, such as widening the Durham Freeway near Research Triangle Park and converting sections of U.S. 70 and U.S. 15-501 into expressways. In their place, the plan calls for spending more on transit, including increased bus service and new bus rapid transit lines. It also places more emphasis on bike lanes, crosswalks and sidewalks used by cyclists and pedestrians.
Read more at: https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/article258643028.html#storylink=cpy
I support increased investment in public transit, but I'm still always dismayed to see the boot given to road projects. I've been incredibly impressed with all the new roads and road improvements that have come lately in the Triangle region, and with how fast they've been getting done (the new, tolled section of 540 is already almost halfway done!). It would be very sad to see all that end now after it's been going so well. Hopefully it's only the projects listed that will be affected and not all of them; anything jeopardizing something like NC 540 (which will be essential in its entirety for travel as the area continues to grow) would be a bridge too far.
I am surprised that our MPO would make such a statement, but in reality the Federal Transit Administration generally requires that all Federally-funded rail transit projects be cost effective. That measure is called the TSUB (transit system user benefit), which includes a financial component that is related to the anticipated increase/decrease in surrounding transportation infrastructure (think future investment in highways). TSUB ratings are used to score different projects against each other when developing the FTA funding priorities.
The TSUB calculation has been changed several times since I worked on any FTA-funded projects, so I would hesitate on making any speculations whether such a decrease is currently a Federal requirement. In the past, a New Start transit system with a very strong forecast ridership and low costs (Initial Operable Segment) would still score competitively against other planned systems. It is hard to balance ridership (which factors in passenger originations and destinations) with costs. Longer systems have more passengers, but the IOS needs a railyard, maintenance facility, central control and railcar fleet (all which increase dramatically as round trip time increases). Thus, the longer systems that attract more passengers tend to be too expensive.
We hit the sweet spot on the original TTA Regional Rail System with a huge rail system some 26.1 miles long between Raleigh and Durham that originally came in just under $500M. But that required a design team that could transition quickly to a construction management team. When certain municipalities along the way decided to demand that the FTA pay for certain preferences, we missed the 1-year design deadline and that nearly doubled the design costs (killing the entire system).
The newer Durham-Orange LRT proposal (Durham to Chapel Hill) tried to go further. They went for a $2B monstrosity that didn't look feasible. But a huge increase in population boosted the forecast ridership, but even moreso, filled the coffers of Triangle Transit with a lot of extra funds that reduced the Federal funding needed for the project. But D-O tried to expand at the last minute to connect beyond Duke Medical Center to reach North Carolina Central University without reaching an agreement with Duke first. Many folks blame Duke for killing that system, but working with a private entity is an entirely different game than working with municipalities.
As best as I can tell, neither of those projects focused on how to reduce the cost of adjacent highways. But it was factored into the TSUB as part of how the numbers got crunched in each cost model iteration.
Any specific discussions about those two projects ought be posted under the Mass Transit category. Please reserve discussion towards the interaction of rail transit and highway demand.
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Topic: Raleigh-Durham (Read 1618 times)