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NC: Consultant offers first view of future Triangle fully served by mass transit
Member of Raleigh's Passenger Rail Task Force draws picture of Triangle linked by commuter trains, light rail, trolleys and buses.
Amid the long and often circular debate over commuter and light rail transit in the Triangle, a Raleigh consultant has unveiled a picture of how a fully developed system might look decades in the future.
Paul Morris, a Raleigh consultant on infrastructure development and a member of Raleigh’s Passenger Rail Task Force, presented his vision (see document below) of a Triangle knitted by passenger train, light rail and trolley lines at a meeting of the task force Monday.
“To be a world class city means figuring out what a world class transit system would look like to support that,” Morris told the North Carolina Independent News. “You look out to where you want to be in 30, 40, 50 years and try to figure out how that system would look.”
Will Allen, the task force co-chairman, said Morris’s picture is the first of its kind and may play a key role in selling mass transit should voters approve a local sales tax increase to pay for it. That vote may come as soon as the fall of 2011.
“Even before the task force was organized, I asked. ‘In what context would all these individual pieces fit?’ And no one really had an answer,” Allen said. “No government, no civic association has ever come up with an overall strategy, a vision of where it might go.”
Morris, a former longtime resident of Portland, Ore., where light rail has flourished, spent years pulling together a vision he estimates will cost $6 billion and take decades to build.
What Morris sees is a commuter train linking Raleigh and Durham and passing through Research Triangle Park. The Raleigh and Durham ends of the train line would be hubs around which there would be a “snowflake” shaped grid of light rail and trolley lines for local travel.
In Raleigh, the local grids of the future would include fixtures from the past, trolley lines running along Glenwood Avenue, New Bern Avenue and parallel to Hillsborough Street.
Commuter rail transit has been debated in the Triangle since the 1990s, but the focus has been on where the system would begin rather than how it would look when complete, Morris said.
David King, general manager of the Triangle Transit Authority, said that approach has been deliberate. The TTA, he said, is trying to focus on feasible and affordable sections that would start a passenger rail transit, rather than a grand vision.
“It is good to know these possibilities exist,” King said of the Morris blueprint. “But we want to bring things back to the here and now and whether or where we get started.”
King added, “Some subset of that may happen, though planning crystal balls aren’t that great. But nothing happens unless you start.”
Morris thinks a built-out system will have a “dual identity” with twin light rail hubs for all day travel in urban areas and a commuter rail that serves the morning and evening flow in and out of RTP. Ultimately, he said, the debate isn’t over which form of transit to to use, but how to create a “layered effect” or trains, light rail, trolleys, bus hubs and bike trails.
But even if it were to all come together, he said, “It will never take away the car. It’s just that you won’t have to use it all the time.”
While the Triangle has struggled to commit to passenger rail, Morris said it’s no longer an option to delay it.
“What we’ve already started to see is increasingly congested corridors that the state is finding difficult to resolve. Widening isn’t getting it done,” he said.
Morris said a mix of transit options isn’t only a matter for commuters. The scope and quality of the transit system, and the speed with which it is put in place, will shape the region’s future development.
Without passenger rail, Morris said, new housing developments will continue to sprawl into rural areas. With it, he said, it will be possible to infill the region with concentrated development where many stores and services are within walking distance.
“Transportation is the single most significant land use decision we make,” he said.
Decisions on passenger rail are coming up. The TTA is studying routes and costs. It will present its findings to the region’s metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) early in 2011. The MPOs will then make recommendations to county commissions in Wake, Durham and Orange counties.
If commissioners approve, voters could be asked in 2011 to support a .5 cent local sales tax increase to help pay for passenger rail. The cost would also be supported by a local tax on rental cars, a vehicle registration fee and state and federal funding.
TTA spokesman Brad Schulz said three possible rail plans may be presented to voters. One would be a Wake-Durham commuter rail line. The others would be light rail connecting Carrboro and Chapel Hill to central Durham and light rail linking far North Raleigh near the Triangle Town Center with downtown Raleigh and on to Cary.
Cost estimates won’t be available until routes and stops are agreed upon, he said.
If the proposals win voters approval, King said it would be about five years before the first commuter rail would be available and about eight years before the first light rail lines would open.
King said new forms of mass transit will be important to shaping development as the Triangle grows. The area has 1.2 million people now and that number is expected to double in 25 years.
“We try to get people to think what the Greater Raleigh area was like in 1985 and what it is now,” King said. “That amount of change on steroids is what we’re going to experience between now and 2035. The question is: How are we going to assimilate one and a quarter million people?”
by Ned Barnett, Staff Writer
Originally printed in the North Carolina Independent News, http://www.americanindependent.com/157048/consultant-offers-first-view-of-future-triangle-fully-served-by-mass-transit