Triangle Regional Transit

[JunktionFET]

One or both of the Eastrans lines would be perfect candidates for a Nashville-esque barebones system. In fact, it wouldn't even have to be that barebones... Wasn't the original pricetag for the system pretty damn reasonable for TWO 50+ mile long commuter lines. I'm too lazy to pull up the PDF right now.

I believe a "normal" commuter rail system would not work too well in the Triangle because its design is incompatible with the nature of the metro area. Commuter rail works good for a central city and satellite suburbs. In the Triangle there is a community of towns/cities--two main urban centers, two smaller cities, and a plethora of towns. A bidirectional "backbone" transit corridor that runs all day is the most logical and resourceful way to go, and this is the essence of TTA's regional rail system.

The big question now is whether or not the system would be approved IF local funding was secured. Will the Feds help then or will they manipulate the situation in their favor (as usual).

[monsoon]

If the ridership numbers are not there, then I would think the current plan is dead because there won't be any money from the Feds. It's really a shame as I remember being excited by this train line when they demo'd it in 1994. It will be interesting to see how this is reported in the press. It's very disappointing.

[ChiefJoJo]

Here's the N&O article on TTA's request to FTA for more time, as the model showed ridership is too low.

[1person]

One or both of the Eastrans lines would be perfect candidates for a Nashville-esque barebones system. In fact, it wouldn't even have to be that barebones... Wasn't the original pricetag for the system pretty damn reasonable for TWO 50+ mile long commuter lines. I'm too lazy to pull up the PDF right now.

I believe a "normal" commuter rail system would not work too well in the Triangle because its design is incompatible with the nature of the metro area. Commuter rail works good for a central city and satellite suburbs. In the Triangle there is a community of towns/cities--two main urban centers, two smaller cities, and a plethora of towns. A bidirectional "backbone" transit corridor that runs all day is the most logical and resourceful way to go, and this is the essence of TTA's regional rail system.

The big question now is whether or not the system would be approved IF local funding was secured. Will the Feds help then or will they manipulate the situation in their favor (as usual).

Where's the PDF????

[orulz]

I think there was a link to this earlier in this same thread, but I'll accomodate you with a link

The Eastrans PDF is here.

The similarity to the Nashville Music City Star is actually quite remarkable. But make no bones about it: this sort of transit will not work between Raleigh and Durham. There is too much freight traffic on the line and the transit frequency would be too great to share the tracks. TTA isn't proposing a traditional commuter rail system like that either. The TTA line will be operated exactly like a dedicated-ROW light-rail line (similar to Charlotte's south corridor.) The only difference is that the vehicles will be diesel-powered and compliant with FRA crash standards.

[willrusso]

The TTA has asked for two more weeks to revise ridership numbers. Full story can be read here:

http://www.newsobserver.com/news/story/280...p-9249786c.html

[yfreemark]

Great News!

TTA got the extension from the feds:

Biz Journal Story

[OE-305]

The TTA has asked for two more weeks to revise ridership numbers. Full story can be read here:

http://www.newsobserver.com/news/story/280...p-9249786c.html

"TTA plans to discuss its cost-saving proposals in public meetings across the region this fall. The cuts include changing each train from two vehicles to a single, self-propelled diesel railcar; reducing the length of station platforms, and building the downtown Raleigh station at street level instead of underground."

This is VERY disturbing news IMO and points out some serious flaws in TTA. Cutting costs in this fashion is not really going to help them achieve their objective of providing convenient alternatives to the worsening traffic situation. Either do the damn thing right, or wait 15 years for the Triangle to mature and then try again.

What happens in 5 years when increasing ridership necessitates that the trains be strung together 2 or 3 deep??? What happens when the downtown station (it's their signature one I'd imagine) becomes too cramped on the street level and a new one, similar to 5 points in Atlanta, is needed??? This blunder sounds a lot like the southern segment of 485 in Charlotte (it'll be a beotch to go back and fix it).

Like many here, I was a big fan of TTA's plan when it was announced. But these people need to get their funding in order (like Charlotte), do the thing right the first time, and just accept the nosebleed costs when they are ready.

My two cents

[urbanesq]

Like many here, I was a big fan of TTA's plan when it was announced. But these people need to get their funding in order (like Charlotte), do the thing right the first time, and just accept the nosebleed costs when they are ready.

I agree. Trying to do transit on the cheap won't work. Low expectations generally make for disappointing results. If we'd had the half-cent sales tax in place years ago, TTA would be sitting on a pile of cash.

[mattm]

I agree. Trying to do transit on the cheap won't work. Low expectations generally make for disappointing results. If we'd had the half-cent sales tax in place years ago, TTA would be sitting on a pile of cash.

I agree too, except about the sales tax. I sat through the series of board meetings that worked out the LPA (Locally Approved Alternative), at the end of the EIS process. At the time there was a national downturn in the economy, and sales tax revenues were decreasing across the country. The rental tax and especially the $5 car registration fee were holding up quite well. The FTA was impressed by this novel approach at the time.

The original Regional Rail plan *WAS* more of a bare-bones approach. The plan was to purchase the CSX half of the double track between Cary and Raleigh, lay just enough sidings to allow 15 minute headways, and accomplish a "bare-bones" system for something like $150M (at the time). There would have been plenty of money left over for extensions to Chapel Hill and beyond.

The trouble is, the project has taken a very long time without getting to construction. The time taken has allowed the original community support to decay, and for critics to gather their ammunition. They also unfortunately delayed to the point that they got enmeshed in the highway bill reauthorization fiasco -- with all the talk of 3000 pork projects, one forgets that attempts to pass the bill languished for two years in Congress, with a presidential veto threat hanging if they increased it beyond the original proposal from the DOT. The widespread pork usage was to veto-proof the bill. The bill that finally did emerge is less hostile to transit as well.

One final thought: at the end of the LPA process, one consultant (who has built a number of these kind of projects nationally) pressed on TTA that from that time on, TTA would be fighting national politics to get their project done. They had demonstrated a need and a suitable project to fulfill it, but they would be competing against all the other worthy projects nationwide for a shrinking pot of money. The outcome would have much more to do with politics than merit.

Unfortunately, this was also at the time that Jim Ritchie had left and John Claflin hadn't come in yet, which had something to do with the loss of momentum (just the fact of change -- John is quite competent).

[urbanesq]

^^^ good points, all. the sales tax does ebb and flow with economic cycles, but the car tax and registration fee just aren't enough money.

I'm so very tired of this project always being cast in such a negative light:

like today's article in the N&O.

The time to build this project was 15 years ago; imagine what the region would look like if we'd had high density corridors into which some of the go-go 90's development could have been focused!

I am thrilled to see the support from Mr, York and from Progress Energy. It is exactly this type of support that tends to shift public opinion. Kudos.

[dmccall]

I thought I'd throw some numbers around here. Feel free to correct them, blast me...whatever. I'm just trying to make sense of the whole thing. While I LOVE the idea of a TTA train and think it is a key, vital focal piece for reinventing downtown Raleigh's entire west side, the cost/benefit ratio just seems staggering to me.

There are two things that bother me:

A) Nowhere in the US Constitution does it say that the Federal Government should pay for a local transportation system that almost completely benefits only local residents. It is quite selfish for us to expect people in Peoria to pay for me to have another way to get to work. Likewise, I shouldn't have to pay for Houston's rail project. If it is a fantastic idea for us (and it just may be), we should fund it ourselves.

B) Given that the benefits, and therefore costs, will be completely local, here are some numbers:

* There are about 140,000 cars a day on I-40 in RTP

http://www.ncdot.org/planning/tpb/gis/Data...afSurvMaps.html (look at Wake 1)

* Estimated TTA riders per day in the short run is 12,000 (I think this was in the Independent's article last month). This would drop traffic on I-40 by 8% at the most.

* There are about 240,000 households in Raleigh + Durham + Cary (the chief beneficiaries of this project)

http://www.hometownusa.com/nc/Raleigh.html (120K + 80K + ~40K: dig around to the other cities)

* Estimated costs for the project are $759 million for 28 mi. of track = $27 million/mile (this is about 1/5 or so of the costs per mile of the Las Vegas monorail - still efficient. Highways are in the 10-20 million/mi)

Therefore, it looks like the whole deal is something that will cost each household around $3000 to make an 8% dent in I-40 traffic. If it were a viable replacement to having a car as a whole, as in a designed city at http://www.carfree.com/, it might be an easier sell.

Now, this is only considering short term effects, but I think it is a hard sell to residents, especially since so few people who work in RTP currently live near the planned TTA route.

Maybe the answer is a bigger system that seems more attractive to ride. This modest one seems about like riding the Pullen Park train to nowhere. I can't get to Crabtree, Triangle Town Center, Southpoint, the Airport, the RBC Center, Carter Stadium, the Dean Dome, or just about 95% of the businesses that I frequent. So I'd ride it as a novelty a couple of times and stick with my car.

What are your thoughts?

[RiverwoodCLT]

The Triangle is going to have problems with LRT because it is not plan for LRT. RTP is for cars, and no city in the Triangle has a large work force in center city. ex.(Charlotte, NC Approx. 65,000)

Maybe each city should first develop a trolley system, and get a network that could feed into the LRT system. A trolley system could be finance by local taxes or bonds. Example: Trolley from downtown Raleigh to NC State over to Cameron Village.

All the cities in the triangle must sign on and support with money to make LRT work.

[orulz]

Maybe the answer is a bigger system that seems more attractive to ride. This modest one seems about like riding the Pullen Park train to nowhere. I can't get to Crabtree, Triangle Town Center, Southpoint, the Airport, the RBC Center, Carter Stadium, the Dean Dome, 9th St. in Durham, a Durham Bulls game, or just about 95% of the businesses that I frequent. So I'd ride it as a novelty a couple of times and stick with my car.

You can get to 9th Street or a Bulls game on the first phase of the TTA rail line, provided you are capable of a 5 or 10 minute walk. But I know what you mean- very few of the existing, popular destinations are served by TTA's proposed rail line.

A big part of the problem is that all the shopping centers and destinations are scattered so randomly around the area that it's damn near impossible to serve all of them with transit. If you did try to, you'd either end up with as many different transit lines as the Tokyo subway, or a single line as jagged and crooked as a 600 pound man's EKG. The point is, basically nothing in the triangle is arranged in a linear manner that makes it easy or efficient to serve with a transit line.

Out of all the shopping malls in the triangle, Southpoint might be a potential destination because that's right along the third-phase TTA line between RTP and Chapel Hill, but that's decades away even in the best-case scenario. And we have to remember that all of our current destinations (with the exception of three downtowns and three universities) are designed exclusively for cars. Grafting transit on top of Southpoint or Triangle Town Center or any other auto-oriented mall for that matter just isn't going to work.

I can't help but think that all our auto-dependent neighborhoods and destinations are temporary. They are not the highest or best use of their land, and they will eventually be replaced. Malls often spring up and fizzle out in the span of 25 years; strip malls die even sooner. As a rule of thumb, anything with lots of parking and only one mode of entry (cars) was developed on the cheap, the perfect complement to the "cheap gas and disposable goods" lifestyle. While downtown buildings from the 1880s are still just as functional and aesthetic as the day they were built, shopping malls from the 1980s look dated and awful. Why? They weren't built to last; they were built to make a quick buck!

----

The idea behind the TTA regional rail line is that, since most current development in the triangle is impossible and pointless to serve with transit, we need to bring transit to places where we can start fresh. Build a transit line in places where there is little or no existing development, and build NEW destinations there that are made to last, and aren't just meant for cars. The thinking is, once the line is in place (and before, perhaps - it will be under construction for four whole years) a significant amount of the NEW development in the region will focus around the line. Two of the destinations on your list didn't even exist four years ago (Southpoint & Triangle Town Center) so you can bet that within four years, new destinations will form, and it will be the start of an alternative, more sustainable, less auto-dependent lifestyle in the Triangle.

Some people just don't think about the potential or how different the Triangle will look 10 years for now - they only see what is here right now. Others cry out over "social engineering" or "waste." I, however, am convinced that this is the future, and if we don't embrace it now we're gonna be in trouble. In the long run, there's no way this transit line won't catch on.

[MR-2]

I'd have to say the three universities and downtowns are very walkable. Connecting all of them would be really beneficial, particularly for watching games. Then if you just combine those aforementioned trolley systems (perhaps a one-way loop around each), you'd get amazing ridership. You'd get access to basically all the interesting points in the Triangle through it.

In the short-term, the problem I'm seeing is the rail corridor they're trying to use. It gets heavy use from other industries, and for most of its length there's no room for new tracks (and then you'd have to build tracks to even get to Chapel Hill). They might be forced to build a new corridor/tracks somewhere less convenient if they can't flat-out buy this one. It's the only good one unfortunately.

In the long-term this system has many directions it can grow, and with some initial success exceeding projections, it'll be able to link everything up. With the new convention center and hotel in Raleigh... I can see some demand for regional access to it.

I'm a bit pessimistic TTA will get funding for it though. That they haven't already says a lot about the political climate they're facing in Congress. Despite that, I think Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill will continue to improve their local bus systems, and we'll survive on that until our population is significant enough to guarantee federal funding.

[JunktionFET]

Another aspect of this to keep in mind is inflation. The Triangle will require a fixed guideway form of transit at some point, and the cost for building the foundation of such a system increases by millions of dollars in only a short time. I think it would be extremely wise to go ahead and lay that foundation now. The pricetag will never be this low again, and people will use it from the start... with ridership only increasing with time. Once the foundation is down, it paves the way for expansion anywhere with fewer headaches and dollars.

I WANT to see my hard earned tax dollars going towards big usable projects like this... We often never get to see where our money goes except on more of the same.

[mattm]

There are two things that bother me:

A) Nowhere in the US Constitution does it say that the Federal Government should pay for a local transportation system that almost completely benefits only local residents. It is quite selfish for us to expect people in Peoria to pay for me to have another way to get to work. Likewise, I shouldn't have to pay for Houston's rail project. If it is a fantastic idea for us (and it just may be), we should fund it ourselves.

...

B) Given that the benefits, and therefore costs, will be completely local, here are some numbers:

...

* Estimated costs for the project are $759 million for 28 mi. of track = $27 million/mile (this is about 1/5 or so of the costs per mile of the Las Vegas monorail - still efficient. Highways are in the 10-20 million/mi)

Therefore, it looks like the whole deal is something that will cost each household around $3000 to make an 8% dent in I-40 traffic. If it were a viable replacement to having a car as a whole, as in a designed city at http://www.carfree.com/, it might be an easier sell.

...

What are your thoughts?

The justification is through the interstate commerce and national defense clauses; the derivation is thus:

The interstate highway system was built to encourage interstate commerce and national defense, and was built using gasoline excise taxes and general funds. Maintenance (and congestion relief) is accomplished by a continuance of those taxes. However, interstate highways have led to decay of urban areas, because of the destruction of large swaths of property in order to bring the highways into the cities (think Durham Freeway and the destruction of the traditional black neighborhoods when it was built). Thus, 20% is set aside for mass transit projects that benefit the cities.

Comparison with monorail makes almost anything look good. Monorail is very expensive because of the raised guideway required for it. $27M/mile is pretty much in the normal range for surface grade rail transit projects, although most of them have the added expense for the electrical power lines (light rail). Highways only come in at $10-20M/mi when they're built in rural areas. Even the local 540 loop, which is built mostly in rural parts of Wake county, comes in at the high end of that. Attempting to build urban freeway comes in at a much higher price because of the wide swath of already developed urban landscape that has to be acquired.

It was a tremendous eye-opener for me when I saw an aerial view of the Highwoods proposed rail station -- it was near an interchange on 440. Both the rail station and the interchange are intended for the same purpose -- access to transportation -- but the interchange is vastly larger. Also, it serves to do nothing except move cars around -- there's no option for commerce within its boundaries.

The whole point of mass transit is not so much decrease of congestion, but preservation of your urban landscape. Cities work best when there's a lot of foot traffic in them. Highways do not mix with that. Mass transit increases the reach of foot traffic.

[dmccall]

No offense, but I think that is an incredibly weak argument for why Washington needs to get involved in local traffic issues. I also hardly believe that limited access highways caused neighborhoods to decay. Land near the interstate is more valuable than far away. We have large, decaying neighborhoods in SE Raleigh that aren't near an interstate. It could easily be argued that those neighborhoods are too far from an easy way to get to RTP, so they aren't desirable. There are plenty of converse examples in north Raleigh. 540 has made properties in north Wake MUCH more valuable. But thanks for responding!

To me the big problem is the target model is flawed to the core. If we don't want to become Atlanta, why should we do exactly what Atlanta did 30 yrs ago? You have to look long and hard for a city in the USA which has solved traffic and development pattern problems with rail. Try to find one that doesn't have a board like this complaining about sprawl.

Atlanta has a two-axis system. Very little dense growth has followed the station placements and sprawl has never been more prevalent. In other words, the very expensive Marta system is sexy and benefits a few people, but has had very little impact on changing the city's attitude toward its cars. Why would a 1-axis system in the RTP have any more effect than Atlanta's wimpy system? Even if it were free, it won't draw enough people out of their cars to change the development models used in outlying areas.

The problem is that the target model, again, is flawed to the core; regardless of price. People will opt to not take their cars if they can maintain their privacy, have freedom of movement, and get to destinations in the same relative time they would in a car. With large-occupancy, minimal access, pathway, and privacy vehicles (trains, even busses to an extent) riders will invariably wait and have few choices of where to go.

If we don't want to just fall into the same traps other cities have, we need to create a new model. If we want to get people out of their self-controlled cars, we need to offer something other than a large-occupancy train. It is WAY too limited, even in a best case model, for the price. Something like a small pod system on an elevated guideway or even minimal access smart roads would work better.

Somebody needs to do some hard thinking before the government puts a gun to our heads and makes us fork over $3000 so that 1% of the population can change their current methods.

[orulz]

Marta in Atlanta HAS allowed for extremely dense development in the few places where zoning allows it. (Buckhead, Lindbergh Center, Midtown, Arts Center to name a few) and this is really starting to pick up steam now that there is a national trend towards urban living.

But the places where MARTA fails are the other 80% of the stations where they built a parking deck and left everything else exactly the same. They did not plan ahead for denser development with things like sidewalk improvements or rezoning - and as a consequence developers have stayed away because there are too many barriers in the way.

Metrorail in DC started around the same time as MARTA - and take a look at how popular it is and how much it has changed the landscape there as first-generation strip mall development is replaced with mixed-use mid-rises and skyscrapers. Of course they have more transit lines than Atlanta does or the Triangle would - but they got their start with a tiny segment of the Red line downtown and a vision.

If you think that a single, high-capacity transit line costs a lot, wait until the "estimates come back" on a network of elevated personal rapid transit pods serving all our existing destinations quickly and efficiently.

[yfreemark]

Quote dmccall: "The problem is that the target model, again, is flawed to the core; regardless of price. People will opt to not take their cars if they can maintain their privacy, have freedom of movement, and get to destinations in the same relative time they would in a car. With large-occupancy, minimal access, pathway, and privacy vehicles (trains, even busses to an extent) riders will invariably wait and have few choices of where to go."

People will use transit when it takes half as long to get from downtown Durham to downtown Raleigh on the train as it does by car (as it would now during rush hour). Experience in other cities has demonstrated that large segments of the population, including many people without cars, find the experience of travelling by train to be preferred over travel by car.

But the main issue here, in my opinion, is that the regional rail project will open up Triangle-wide mobility to those who can't drive or would prefer not to. There are tens of thousands of people in the Triangle - kids, the elderly, and many regular adults - who would love better access to destinations that are served by the line: Duke University, Ninth Street, the increasingly vibrant downtown Durham and the Bulls, North Carolina Central University, Durham Tech, the future Triangle Metro Center, downtown Cary, the State Fairgrounds, downtown Raleigh, and Glenwood South. I don't know what you think, but I think that these are great places to spend time and are interesting to a very large portion of this region's population (I, for one, spend 99% of my time in these places when I'm in the Triangle).

Quote Dmccall: "I also hardly believe that limited access highways caused neighborhoods to decay. Land near the interstate is more valuable than far away. We have large, decaying neighborhoods in SE Raleigh that aren't near an interstate. It could easily be argued that those neighborhoods are too far from an easy way to get to RTP, so they aren't desirable. There are plenty of converse examples in north Raleigh. 540 has made properties in north Wake MUCH more valuable."

Interstates were used in the urban renewal period to destroy inner city neighborhoods, over and over. The crisis caused by the intrusion of the Durham Freeway in Hayti and in downtown has not yet been resolved, and the freeway by itself was the primary force in provoking this.

And interstates have decayed even the places around them that weren't demolished to let them through: "neighborhoods" around highways may have higher land prices, but they're almost always car-dependent sprawl, big-box territory, with little or no accessibility to the pedestrian. These aren't, in my opinion, desirable places.

[mattm]

Quote dmccall: "The problem is that the target model, again, is flawed to the core; regardless of price. People will opt to not take their cars if they can maintain their privacy, have freedom of movement, and get to destinations in the same relative time they would in a car. With large-occupancy, minimal access, pathway, and privacy vehicles (trains, even busses to an extent) riders will invariably wait and have few choices of where to go."

People will use transit when it takes half as long to get from downtown Durham to downtown Raleigh on the train as it does by car (as it would now during rush hour). Experience in other cities has demonstrated that large segments of the population, including many people without cars, find the experience of travelling by train to be preferred over travel by car.

But the main issue here, in my opinion, is that the regional rail project will open up Triangle-wide mobility to those who can't drive or would prefer not to. There are tens of thousands of people in the Triangle - kids, the elderly, and many regular adults - who would love better access to destinations that are served by the line: Duke University, Ninth Street, the increasingly vibrant downtown Durham and the Bulls, North Carolina Central University, Durham Tech, the future Triangle Metro Center, downtown Cary, the State Fairgrounds, downtown Raleigh, and Glenwood South. I don't know what you think, but I think that these are great places to spend time and are interesting to a very large portion of this region's population (I, for one, spend 99% of my time in these places when I'm in the Triangle).

Quote Dmccall: "I also hardly believe that limited access highways caused neighborhoods to decay. Land near the interstate is more valuable than far away. We have large, decaying neighborhoods in SE Raleigh that aren't near an interstate. It could easily be argued that those neighborhoods are too far from an easy way to get to RTP, so they aren't desirable. There are plenty of converse examples in north Raleigh. 540 has made properties in north Wake MUCH more valuable."

Interstates were used in the urban renewal period to destroy inner city neighborhoods, over and over. The crisis caused by the intrusion of the Durham Freeway in Hayti and in downtown has not yet been resolved, and the freeway by itself was the primary force in provoking this.

And interstates have decayed even the places around them that weren't demolished to let them through: "neighborhoods" around highways may have higher land prices, but they're almost always car-dependent sprawl, big-box territory, with little or no accessibility to the pedestrian. These aren't, in my opinion, desirable places.

There are other classic examples of urban decay caused by highway construction: the South Bronx is the ultimate, which died after the cross-Bronx expressway choked it off. Downtown Durham is a more local example: the "downtown loop" is referred to as the "noose" because it choked off all commercial life downtown (even the panhandlers don't bother going there, because there's noone there to approach).

I'm reminded of an old story of mine with all this. I wandered by the local college campus in the '70s and came across a couple of people playing a game called "The Siege of Constantinople". The game simulated the various battles at the end of the middle ages. One of the besiegers was Pope Urban, who brought along a huge medieval cannon that knocked down large swaths of the city. The players referred to this as "Urban Renewal."

The regional rail project would be useful on a daily basis for me. I live about 5 minutes from the Cary station, and work right across the street from the north RTP station. The door-to-door trip for me will be about 20-25 minutes, and is almost traffic jam-proof. Recently I've been riding the Cary bus route to do the same, and the best case trip on the bus is about 45 minutes. Driving in takes anything from 20 minutes to more than an hour, depending on highway accidents. I stick with the bus because of cost and stress savings for me.

[MR-2]

Indeed. As a carless NCSU student currently, who lives 50 meters away from the rail corridor, and who has to endure traffic on the bus like everyone else to get to Durham/Chapel Hill, I can't begin to imagine how convenient the trip would be in a third of the time.

It is ridiculous that TTA haven't found federal funding for the project, because unlike the vast majority of pork Congress likes to play with, this will completely pay for itself in the long run.

[dmccall]

Ahhh! I knew I'd get the "look at how well these areas are doing" response. We are talking about THIRTY YEARS that Atlanta and Washington have had with these systems before growth solidified around the minority of their suburban transit stops. These systems were built before the ATM was even invented and even after the most lucrative period of American History they are finally waking up and designing around these things??. Something is seriously wrong here.

It would be quite telling to look at the ratio of big box retail and strip malls to dense railstop pod development even in the last ten years. What you'd see is that for all the good this handful of developments is doing, there is still overwhelmingly massive growth of strip mall/big box retail lining major arteries. People in the DC area and Atlanta have much worse traffic than we have here. If we follow their model, we will only be where they are at best in 30 years. We want to be BETTER than they currently are.

This one-line train plan will be used by 1% of our population. This is a biased forum; we are all way more interested in riding it than the average Joe. Many of the potential 1% riders are already riding a bus, ie the NCSU students, poor, handicapped, etc. While a central train would be a big help to these people, it still is a tiny segment of the population as a whole.

We need to explore a different system that can keep up with growth at our outer limits better than trains have. I'm very intrigued by the podcar model the N&O showed a year or two ago. This might be a system people would like to use, making the expense to the public worth it.

Have any of you looked at the carfree cities model? Neat webpage and neat plan! That looks like a system that could handle growth fairly well. Of course it is only viable in a setting that currently doesn't have the expense of road maintenance.

http://carfree.com/

[monsoon]

These systems were built before the ATM was even invented and even after the most lucrative period of American History they are finally waking up and designing around these things??. Something is seriously wrong here.

Not true.

The DC Metro, opened in 1976. Atlanta's Marta opened in 1979, I used my first ATM, a Wachovia Teller II in 1977. There were 2000 ATMs in the United States in 1973, which easily preceeds both these systems.

The Metro in DC was almost completely built in the last 25 years. It made a remarkable transformation as to the character and desirability of that city. In 1977, nobody would even consider moving to DC. Now it is one of the most desirable cities in the USA from a property perspective and much of that due to the effects of the Metro. Even in suburban locales, the price of property is dependant upon its proximity to a DC Metro strop.

[sax184]

Another thing about DC- the Metrorail system is FULL. I mean at capacity, so many people using it the dwell times in station are getting too long and slowing the system down pathetically FULL. Read:

http://thirdrail.smorgasblog.com/archives/001590.html