“Sometimes making it fare-free doesn’t actually improve ridership a whole lot.”
Across the country, cities are looking to expand bus transit as a way to alleviate traffic congestion and combat climate change. The goal is the same: more riders and fewer cars on the road.
Last year, Kansas City became the first large city to make its bus system completely free — something the smaller Chapel Hill did back in 2002 — which has spurred talk that perhaps Raleigh, with a new city council committed to improving public transportation, could follow suit.
It’s not clear how much that would cost.
Each day, riders make about 18,000 trips on GoRaleigh buses, paying at least $1.25 a ride. Those trips add about $3 million to the city’s coffers a year.
Eating that cost would require roughly a half-cent property tax increase. But there would also be savings — GoRaleigh would no longer need to print tickets or maintain ticket vending machines — as well as additional expenses, such as higher maintenance and security costs associated with more ridership.
So the real price tag is difficult to calculate, says Michael Moore, the city’s transportation director.
What’s more important, he says, is figuring out what the city really wants to accomplish: a more equitable bus system or better ridership.
“Sometimes making it fare-free doesn’t actually improve ridership a whole lot,” Moore says. “What people see as a barrier to transit ridership is the frequency and reliability. It’s not always the cost. If the bus isn’t going where you want to go when you want it to go, it doesn’t matter what it costs at that point.”
That wasn’t the case in Chapel Hill, which saw ridership nearly triple after implementing its no-fare system, says transit director Brian Litchfield. Fares only made up about 12 percent of the bus system’s budget in 2001, making it “pretty easy” to absorb the cost, Litchfield says. The town went from 2.6 million annual riders in 2002 to about 7 million now.
Kansas City hasn’t yet gotten its zero-fare system up and running, but it will probably cost about $8 million a year, according to spokesman Chris Hernandez. Kansas City plans to fund it through a combination of sales taxes, property taxes, and federal grants.
The key to Chapel Hill’s success hinged on partnerships Carborro and UNC-Chapel Hill, which fund about 64 percent of the system’s $24 million budget.
Raleigh’s fares comprise only about 8 percent of GoRaleigh’s operating budget, the bulk of which comes from taxpayers, the Wake County Transit Plan, and grants.
Mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin says eliminating fares would likely require a joint effort with GoTriangle. The Regional Transit Alliance is planning a study to explore what that might look like.
That doesn’t mean the Raleigh City Council won’t look into abolishing fares during this year’s budgeting process, Baldwin says. But because the council already plans to ask taxpayers to shell out hundreds of millions of dollars in bonds for Dix Park and affordable housing, she’s wary of asking for too much, too soon.
“I think this is very doable,” Baldwin says. “I’m thinking it’s going to take us a little longer, though, than 2020 to figure it out. So what I would suggest that we look at this as an opportunity for 2021.”
Council member Nicole Stewart says the city should see bus rapid transit through before pushing a fare-free system. (BRT is included in Wake County’s transit plan, which voters approved in a referendum in 2016.) That means dedicated bus lanes, more pick-up times, and speedier service.
“I think it is worth exploring the idea of a fare-free system, but we can’t lose sight of our current priority of bus rapid transit,” Stewart says.
For now, the council plans to look into a fare-capping system to ensure that those who pay by the ride don’t pay more than the cost of a monthly pass.
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“I’m convinced they did not try to kill this light rail project because of all the things they mentioned. They did not want this project for some reason.”
You could argue that light rail was dying before Duke University killed it — that its demise was inevitable, a slow bleed that had played out over years of near-death experiences, the project lurching from one existential crisis to the next, hanging on for dear life until it could hang on no more. Duke merely put the period on an overwrought sentence.
You might not be wrong. But you’d be letting Duke off the hook.
The General Assembly, overtly hostile to mass transit, set the stage for last week’s drama in 2018, when it imposed an arbitrary deadline on the $3.3 billion Durham-Orange Light Rail Transit project, which, in turn, set in motion of a cascade of other deadlines. The legislature gave transit agency GoTriangle until November 30 to secure $1.2 billion in federal funding, or else lose up to $190 million from the state. To do that, GoTriangle had to submit its application to the Federal Transit Administration by April. To do that, it had to negotiate a dozen or so cooperative agreements with key local partners, including Duke, by the end of February.
Here, things went (sorry) off the rails.
Duke wasn’t the DOLRT’s only problem, just its most acute. GoTriangle also hadn’t inked a deal with the North Carolina Railroad Company and its operating partner, Norfolk Southern. The railroad informed GoTriangle that it wasn’t ready to play ball on February 27, during a Board of Trustees meeting.
Then there’s the money. As of January, GoTriangle’s nonprofit had only raised about $15 million of the $102.5 million in cash and land donations it needed to bring in by April 30, another legislative deadline. More important, last week the FTA told GoTriangle that it needed to find an extra $237 million to cover design changes, including a planned tunnel in downtown Durham, as well as other expenses.
These issues were difficult, but not insurmountable, officials believed. They could figure out the money. They could keep negotiating with the railroad. (The railroad’s letter made clear that it wasn’t a hard no — it just wanted to see more design work before signing off.) They just needed Duke.
With the clock ticking down, GoTriangle tried to shame the university. It released a timeline to The News & Observer that, in no uncertain terms, blamed Duke for the looming debacle and suggested that the school’s officials were erecting pointless obstacles and sabotaging the endeavor.
Duke wasn’t shamed. The N&O’s story came out Tuesday. On Wednesday, Duke told GoTriangle it was out.
The news was a gut punch. Twenty years of planning, $130 million already spent — all circling the drain. There was no good way to spin it. “It’s ninety-nine-percent dead,” Orange County commissioner and GoTriangle trustee Mark Marcoplos told me Friday.
The people of Durham voted for light rail. They agreed to pay for light rail. But Duke ended up with a veto.
And at the eleventh hour, Duke used it.
This isn’t a defense of the Durham-Orange Light Rail. Any project of this scope warrants skepticism of its cost and ridership projections, of the notion that it’s the best use of mass-transit dollars. That’s beside the point.
This is a defense of democracy.
In 2011 and 2012, Durham and Orange County voters, respectively, approved sales-tax hikes to fund light rail. They haven’t changed their minds since. They’ve elected politicians who support the project, even as the price tag rose and the state’s share fell — from 25 percent at the outset to less than 8 percent of construction costs now. These politicians have, in turn, made light rail a centerpiece of long-term land-use and transportation planning.
All of that just came to a screeching halt. Not because it’s unpopular. But because one wealthy institution decided that its needs matter more than everyone else’s.
“They [are basically] saying that they should have control of a public policy decision,” says Wendy Jacobs, a GoTriangle trustee who chairs the Durham County Board of Commissioners. “The decision to pursue light rail was a public policy decision made by the governments of Durham, and that’s a complete breach by Duke to say their interests are not aligned with the public interest of Durham.”
In a post on its website February 28, Duke said it supports “a comprehensive and sensible regional transit network for our dynamic and diverse area, one that serves all citizens and makes the best and effective use of all modes of transportation, including buses, commuter rail, and light rail. We recognize the transformative effect such a plan could have on our citizens, particularly those in underserved parts of the community.”
The day before, in its letter to GoTriangle spiking light rail, Duke offered similar bonhomie: “You have our personal pledge that Duke will maintain — indeed, deepen — our mutual partnership and shared engagement with the community. We are unwavering in our commitment to address our shared challenges. Together, we can be a force for even greater good.”
None of that quite squares with what happened. (It squares more closely with the $5 million the anti-transit Charles Koch Foundation gave Duke in September, if you’re feeling conspiratorial.) Far from engaging in a “mutual partnership” to address “shared challenges,” Duke dragged things out but refused to say yes.
Duke has its veto for one reason: The light rail line runs down Erwin Road, along Duke’s west campus and medical and research complex. For GoTriangle’s FTA application to proceed, the agency has to reach an agreement with Duke, and its nonprofit arm has to acquire a chunk of Duke property, worth $16.5 million, on which to build the line.
The DOLRT runs down Erwin Road for two reasons: One, it makes sense. Several of the 17.7-mile line’s nineteen stops are designed to service Duke students as well as employees and patients at its medical centers and at the nearby VA hospital.
Two, Duke agreed to it, or acquiesced to it. At least, it gave everyone the impression that it had.
On this point, Duke has engaged in some revisionist history of late.
In a letter to Jacobs and Durham Mayor Steve Schewel in November, Duke president Vincent Price said that “numerous and quite significant problems remain, in particular, the proposal to route and then elevate the line along Erwin Road which was never agreed to by the university, and in fact was identified as unworkable in correspondence going back decades.”
The facts say otherwise.
Four years ago, Duke vice president Tallman Trask III, Duke’s point-person on the project, specifically asked GoTriangle to put a station on Erwin Road, a block east of Duke Hospital, because it will “reinforce the Campus gateway.” Later in 2015, when GoTriangle crafted a key Draft Environmental Impact Statement on the route, it received well over one thousand public comments. None came from Duke.
And the idea to elevate the line from LaSalle Road to Anderson Road, which would cost $90 million? That came from Duke, too, so as not to disrupt the hospital’s emergency access and power supply.
By 2016, there was a Record of Decision, and the line’s route was set. Duke and GoTriangle signed a memorandum of understanding that December.
In other words, the university had a chance to weigh in before the alignment was finalized. It chose not to.
Duke’s president didn’t seem to realize that. Last April, Jacobs says, she visited Price, who’d taken over the university in July 2017.
“When I sat down and talked with him about the project, I got very concerned because it was very clear to me that he didn’t, first of all, know much about it, and that he did not seem to be very supportive of transit,” she says. “He was also talking about it as if it was some type of an option and didn’t seem to understand this was not an option — this was something we had Duke’s support on.”
In the end, several local leaders concluded that Duke’s upper echelon never wanted light rail to happen, not in their backyard. They didn’t say anything earlier because “they thought someone else was going to kill it,” one area politician told me last week.
To be sure, Duke has legitimate concerns. The letter Duke sent GoTriangle last week outlined four “unresolved challenges” related to the rail’s alignment and construction: electromagnetic interference, or EMI, from the rail line, vibration from construction, disruption to power and utilities, and liability.
Of these, the most important is probably EMI, which has plagued light rail projects across the country, as the electromagnetic waves the rail generates can affect sensitive lab and medical equipment within a few hundred feet of the line. In 2013, EMI concerns prompted Denver officials to reroute a light rail lineaway from a medical center. A line on the University of Minnesota campus has reportedly disturbed research in the chemistry and medical departments.
According to a January 25 GoTriangle memo, Duke is concerned that the DOLRT would run just 106 feet from the Global Health Research Center building, where the university conducts disease research. According to the letter Duke sent GoTriangle last week, Duke is also worried that the line will sit 150 feet from “the most densely concentrated corridor of patient care and biomedical facilities in the state.”
GoTriangle says Trask didn’t mention EMI until November 2017. Trask — who in 2014 was accused of striking a black parking attendant with his Porsche and then calling her the N-word — suggested moving the line north and running it near the Durham Freeway, through the historically black Crest Street neighborhood, according to GoTriangle’s timeline. The logistics were impossible at that late stage, which is fortunate for Duke. Just imagine the optics.
GoTriangle tried to accommodate Duke. It provided Trask with a list of the buildings it thought might be affected by EMI, and an analysis showing what types of equipment might be at risk and how close they’d have to be to the train to be damaged. It asked Trask to provide the locations of EMI-specific equipment. Trask, according to GoTriangle, was skeptical of the agency’s analysis and decided to shop the report around to other experts. He also worried that light rail’s EMI might get in the way of future expansion.
Last month, GoTriangle produced a new EMI modeling report. Of the sixteen buildings in the corridor GoTriangle calls Zone 3 — along Erwin Road near Duke’s medical facilities — ten are at no risk of EMI impact, according to the report. Two face a potential low impact, and four, including Duke University Hospital, could see a moderate impact. The hospital’s eye center, meanwhile, contains two electron microscopes, which have a high likelihood of interference.
But all of this depends on where sensitive instruments — electron microscopes, MRIs, etc. — are inside of these buildings. The further away from the rail, the more degraded the magnetic wave. GoTriangle needed more information. It says it asked for it in late 2017, then again in 2018.
Duke didn’t provide it. Then time ran out.
In its letter last week, Duke said that “there have been inconsistencies in the information that has been generated to date” and “we are not yet able to determine with confidence whether the new study we received last week can adequately address this risk.”
The potential impact to Duke Hospital is nothing to sneeze at. But there are solutions. The equipment could be moved away from the rail line. The room it’s in could be shielded. The light rail system could impose operational constraints — i.e., slow the trains down — to reduce the current and thus the size of the magnetic field. In 2011, the Maryland Transit Administration used “at-the-receptor” technology to mitigate interference with the University of Maryland’s sensitive equipment.
If Duke wanted to work something out, several pro-transit sources told me last week, it could. The other problems — construction, liability, and so on — have similar workarounds. They’re only deal-killers if Duke wants them to be.
“I’m convinced they did not try to kill this light rail project because of all the things they mentioned,” Marcoplos told me. “They did not want this project for some reason.”
“They didn’t want the inconvenience,” added another source.
GoTriangle had tried to accommodate Duke before, in elevating the line along Erwin. Last week, though, Duke cited this elevated line — which, again, Duke suggested — as the source of the vibration it could not abide: “The proposed elevated rail line … will require excavating at least nine 40-foot deep holes in Erwin Road. This excavation will cause vibrations over a construction period of years and is far beyond the acceptable levels we impose on any public or private construction project in the vicinity of our hospital and clinics.”
This sort of thing has GoTriangle officials flustered.
On Monday evening, GoTriangle begged Duke to reconsider. The alternative, CEO Jeff Mann wrote, would mean “effectively nullifying two decades of work.”
GoTriangle doesn’t think EMI will be a major issue, Mann wrote. But if it is, the agency will pay to address it. It’ll take care of relocating utilities, too. It’s offered to cover Duke on its insurance. And building the rail will cause less vibration than other construction projects currently underway around Duke’s hospital, Mann argued.
“GoTriangle remains committed to working closely with Duke University to execute the cooperative agreement so we can work together in good faith during the remainder of the design and throughout construction to address any issues or concerns that may arise,” Mann wrote.
What he didn’t say: What the hell else do you want?
Mann asked Duke to enter mediated negotiations over the next four to six weeks — the same request Jacobs says she and Schewel made two weeks ago and Price refused. Time is of the essence. The FTA reminded GoTriangle last week that “major delays” would be “cause for re-evaluation.”
The ball’s in Duke’s court. If the university won’t change course, GoTriangle has few options. It could try to take Duke’s land through eminent domain — hoping the FTA accepts the move, the General Assembly doesn’t freak out, and the agency isn’t bogged down in litigation — but that’s a long shot.
If DOLRT collapses, GoTriangle will still forge ahead with transit, just somewhere else. Wake County is planning commuter rail, but it too will need an agreement with the North Carolina Railroad Company. “If we don’t get some support from the railroads, we’re not going to be able to do commuter rail,” says Commissioner Sig Hutchinson, a GoTriangle trustee. “It is a severe problem right now.”
Hutchinson’s also eyeing a high-speed rail corridor that could connect Wake Forest to downtown Raleigh’s Union Station in twenty-three minutes, alleviating traffic on Capital Boulevard, and then to Apex. That and commuter rail, he says, could be the basis for a regional system.
From there, you could restart talks with Durham and Orange Counties. But Durham and Orange would rather not wait.
Duke has done a lot for Durham, even when the crime-ridden Durham was a liability for Duke. Through loans and grants, Duke’s Office of Durham & Regional Affairs has invested millions into affordable housing over the last decade. The university was an early partner in the American Tobacco Campus, a co-investor in the Durham Performing Arts Center, and instrumental in creating Durham Central Park.
“Duke and Durham chose each other, and our destinies are still entwined,” former Duke president Richard Brodhead wrote in 2016, at the end of his tenure. “At Duke, we are grateful for the benefits of living in Durham, and we are committed to doing our part to increase those benefits for all.”
But that relationship changed last week, no matter how this ends. There’s no getting around that.
“Of course our fates are intertwined,” Jacobs says, “and we have to work together. But it will be different going forward. In my view, this represents a turning point.”
On Twitter, Durham City Council member Charlie Reece put it more bluntly: “Duke’s decision to kill the light rail project sadly reinforces the worst fears of many Durham residents — that Duke University is an arrogant and elitist enclave with little interest in being the kind of partner this city needs.”
Additional reporting by Sarah Willets.
Contact editor in chief Jeffrey C. Billman by email at [email protected], by phone at 919-286-9172, or on Twitter @jeffreybillman.
No. 2: No one thought GoTriangle was going to pull it off.
In March, GoTriangle abandoned its long-in-the-works light-rail plans after Duke University effectively vetoed the proposed route along Erwin Road in Durham. This followed a decision twelve years earlier by the then-Triangle Transit Authority to cancel a regional rail system connecting Raleigh and Durham.
To figure out why we can’t have nice things, former GoTriangle CEO Jeff Mann asked the American Public Transportation Association to conduct a postmortem on the Durham-Orange Light Rail Transit dumpster fire. Over two days in September, APTA’s peer review team interviewed twenty local government and GoTriangle officials and stakeholders such as Duke University vice president Tallman Trask.
Last week, as WRAL first reported, APTA sent its findings to the local transit agency. The sixteen-page report, which cost GoTriangle $20,000, portrays the agency as completely ill-equipped to take on a task as complex as light rail.
Interim CEO Shelley Blake Curran told WRAL that GoTriangle doesn’t take responsibility for the failure of the project, which will cost taxpayers $158 million. Instead, she said, it shared the blame with the legislature, which put restrictions on the project’s timeline and funding, as well as Duke and the railroad companies, with whom GoTriangle couldn’t hammer out final agreements as a key deadline neared.
Here are our five takeaways from the report, which will be key as GoTriangle regroups, hires its next CEO, and starts trying to sort out what the future of regional transit looks like.
1. No one trusts GoTriangle to handle large-scale projects.
Twice now, GoTriangle has swung at big, ambitious regional transit projects, and twice now, it’s missed.
“Difficulties and challenges with the projects have eroded public confidence in GoTriangle,” the report says. “It is critical that confidence in the agency be rebuilt prior to or as part of the process to implement the next project.”
The problem, according to the people APTA’s team interviewed, is that GoTriangle isn’t equipped to handle a project of this magnitude: “The termination by GoTriangle of two rail projects has resulted in concerns from both staff and community leaders about the agency’s ability to advance multi-billion-dollar projects. Many felt that the agency was not adequately organized or staffed to undertake a $2.4 billion project.”
In the future, the report cautions, GoTriangle needs to keep its ambitions in line with its capacity. Otherwise, local governments and stakeholders will be reticent to partner with the agency.
“Credibility in the agency’s ability to implement the project is essential,” the report says. “GoTriangle should engage the board, staff, experts, and the community to define what is needed to enhance credibility. Most often the foundation from which to enhance an agency’s reputation lies first in successfully delivering on the core mission, and GoTriangle should determine if the community believes that this is the case. Major project implementation is more than the simple sum of the parts; it requires a belief in the institutions undertaking the work, trust that leadership is fully engaged and fighting the necessary battles, and an intrinsic commitment to success by the entire community.”
2. No one thought GoTriangle was going to pull it off.
There was always a lot of hushed skepticism about light rail, even among its advocates, as probably every reporter who covered it picked up on. There was also a lot of wishful thinking — local officials who thought they could almost will the project into existence despite the obstacles that kept emerging.
Per the report: “Discussion with several stakeholders, particularly business stakeholders, revealed skepticism that the DOLRT project could ever be successfully implemented. This skepticism enabled stakeholders on whom project success depended to defer, delay, and disengage from efforts to resolve key issues. [Cough Duke cough.] For others, hope and optimism tended to trump frustration and concern. Many were willing to move forward on the assumption that the organization could successfully deliver the project, even as they questioned whether it really would.”
GoTriangle’s Board of Trustees also acted too much like a cheerleader, the report suggests: “Most importantly, a board should bring a healthy skepticism and dispassion that enables it to ask the hard questions and, where warranted, to hit the stop button.”
3. Never trust Duke.
If nothing else, the report says, the light-rail project demonstrated the power that large stakeholders — the General Assembly, railroads, Duke University — have to kill these things, for reasons legitimate or petty. As such, “a highly detailed and choreographed strategy for building and maintaining support and consensus from key stakeholders and the public is fundamental and paramount.”
This is especially the case, the report continues, for private organizations such as Duke, the region’s largest employer, “which may lack governance structures and officials that can be held publicly accountable for past promises and commitments.”
“Agencies should be very cautious before undertaking costly work in advance of specific and enforceable commitments from key stakeholders, or at a minimum, without conscious and defined assessments regarding the state of stakeholder consensus,” the report continues. “Here, GoTriangle believed that the Railroads and Duke University were in fact fully committed to advancing the DOLRT and resolving key engineering issues, based on the signed documents and continued negotiations. In the peer review team’s experience, however, and as demonstrated here, advancing work on the basis of broad promises and commitments in the hope of future specificity and enforceable agreements is risky and substantially enhances the negotiating position of the stakeholder.”
To head this off in the future, the APTA team recommends tasking a single senior manager with overseeing relationships with major stakeholders and governments: “There should be specific owners for each key stakeholder relationship, coordinated and frequently assessed by this senior manager, and include detailed requirements and timelines for stakeholder agreements. … The responsibility for coordinating and assessing the relationships should reside in a single person. Formalized engagement of key stakeholders — e.g., through participation on advisory boards or review panels — can generate (and at times force) important benefits.”
According to the report, “Termination of the project, and the departure of some key staff including the CEO, has led other staff to question moving forward on the commuter rail between Raleigh and Durham. While staff continue to believe in the mission of the organization and the value of commuter rail, morale clearly has been undermined, particularly with recent staff turnover.”
The selection of the next CEO will be vital: “Staff indicated that the selection process for the next CEO will say a lot about the agency’s near-term future and its ability to overcome the challenges of the past year.”
The report suggested the agency use the CEO search to reaffirm or redefine GoTriangle’s mission while trying to rebuild the community’s confidence in the agency.
5. Next time, start smaller.
If you could distill the entire report into one sentence, it’s this: GoTriangle bit off more than it could chew with light rail.
The APTA report says this a bit more delicately, but it says it all the same: “The interviews underscored an underlying concern that, despite passage of tax referenda in Durham and Orange counties, the LRT project may not have been the best first project for the region. Many transit agencies start smaller — Charlotte’s initial Blue Line LRT cost less than $450 million — and the DOLRT project required resolving thorny issues with both the Railroads and Duke University.”
So the next time the agency wants to approach a big transit project, it should explore newer, more manageable options — e.g., bus rapid transit, which is a big part of Wake County’s transit plans.
“Transportation is experiencing rapid change, with new technologies, new services, and changing travel preferences and demographics,” the report says. “New options exist today that might change the approach for connecting the region. For example, Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) is experiencing rapid growth and success across the country as a cheaper and more quickly implemented option than LRT …. These changes should be taken into consideration when assessing future alternatives to meet the region’s travel needs.”
In addition, future projects should be prepared for ratfucking, whether from a vindictive legislature or a greedy university, and the public must be fully aware of and sold on the costs and benefits.
“For every project, but particularly a multibillion-dollar megaproject, there must be a rigorous, quantitative, thorough and transparent analysis of costs, risks, benefits, and challenges to implementation of the project,” the report says. “This goes well beyond maintenance of a risk register and regular updates to the board. It requires staff and the board to fully comprehend what it will take to implement the project, the risks to doing so, and the implications of both success and failure on the mission of the agency. Moreover, project risks must constantly be updated in light of changing circumstances. Realism regarding challenges is a critical prerequisite to success.
“In addition, there must be transparency regarding risks, challenges, and implications to the general public. In this case, did the board, key stakeholders and the public fully understand the level of commitment from and the implications of the failure to secure the support of key stakeholders such as Duke and the Railroads? Did Durham and Orange counties fully understand the financial implications of agreeing to commit their sales tax revenues for decades to come?”
6. There will be a next time.
While the report suggests that GoTriangle needs to get its house in order before taking on a new project, it’s sanguine on the opportunities for GoTriangle’s future success.
“Despite disappointment in the termination of the project, interviewees emphasized many important positives that will position GoTriangle for future success. These include: successful core bus operations on which the region is dependent; substantial sales tax revenue for future projects; GoTriangle’s de facto role as the governance structure undergirding regionalism in the Triangle.”
The key to making the next project work will be getting — and maintaining — buy-in from stakeholders, the report says: “Given the importance of key stakeholders to the success of regionalism and specific projects, the team recommends that the board consider ways to institutionally engage major stakeholders within GoTriangle’s governance. This could include nonvoting membership on the board for a business and/or academic stakeholder, or creation of advisory committees or boards on which stakeholders can participate in decisions that impact them.”
Read the report here.
Final_Report_DOLRT_GoTriangle_11.5.19__1_-DMID1-5krgva1ju by Jeffrey Billman on Scribd
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GoTriangle trustees voted Wednesday to recommend that Durham and Orange Counties “discontinue” the Durham-Orange Light Rail project.
“The timeline is just too challenging,” said GoTriangle CEO Jeff Mann, delivering the recommendation to the GoTriangle Board of Trustees following closed-session talks.
Trustees cast their unanimous vote after hearing about funding and timeline challenges. If the counties adopt the board’s recommendation, design work on the project would stop, but GoTriangle would “preserve” the work that has been done so far in case it can be repurposed for another transit project or conditions change, Mann said. The project has to remain active to stay in consideration for $1.2 billion in federal funding.
Mann said it “pained” him to recommend the project be discontinued, and board members were similarly disappointed. But ultimately, they decided it was the “responsible” move — as Durham Mayor Steve Schewel put it. More than $130 million in taxpayer money has already been spent on the project, and $7 million more is spent each month.
Trustee Wendy Jacobs, who chairs the Durham County Board of Commissioners, called the outcome a “nightmare” scenario, noting that Durham’s future land use and housing plans had been crafted around the project.
“I don’t think I can overstate my disappointment in arriving at this place,” said Schewel, who is also a member of the GoTriangle board.
Mann said considering the hurdles the project has left to face, it’s no longer practical to anticipate it will get federal funding in time to meet deadlines imposed by the state.
Mann said GoTriangle met with the Federal Transit Administration last week and that officials there expressed “significant concerns” about the project. GoTriangle needed to finish applying for federal dollars by the end of next month to stay on track to meet a November 30 deadline from the state to have a federal funding commitment.
GoTriangle still needs to secure agreements from Duke University, the North Carolina Railroad Company, and Norfolk-Southern as part of that federal funding application process. Duke announced last month it wouldn’t be signing an agreement due to concerns about the light rail’s alignment along Erwin Road. The railroad companies didn't sign either, though they’d left the door open to continuing negotiations.
A risk assessment by the FTA that GoTriangle received in February identified an additional $237 million in project costs. That figure includes money needed for changes proposed to the alignment downtown, as well as additional contingency costs and inflation adjustments.
In addition, the FTA says GoTriangle needs to identify another 10 percent of the project budget for potential cost overruns.
Altogether, that adds up to about $500 million in additional money. That doesn’t include an $87 million gap between what a nonprofit fundraising effort has raised and its $102 million goal.
Durham County Commissioner Ellen Reckhow, who chairs the GoTriangle board, said the federal government shutdown hurt the project by delaying the release of the risk assessment; FTA officials conducted the review in late November. It also meant GoTriangle found out later that federal officials required an environmental assessment of the proposed changes downtown.
Environmental planners with GoTriangle said that the assessment and a subsequent record of decision need to be complete before the FTA will begin to review GoTriangle’s application for $1.2 billion in federal funding. They said that could be done in August, giving the FTA three months to review the project’s application before a state deadline on November 30. GoTriangle CEO Jeff Mann said the process takes a “minimum” of six months.
Jacobs noted that the November deadline is “artificial.” After North Carolina legislators cut the state’s contribution to the project from 25 percent to 10 percent, they wrote into the state budget last year that the state would contribute no more than $190 million to the project. In order to get that funding, legislators said, GoTriangle needs all local dollars — including the proceeds of the GoTransit Partners fundraising campaign — committed by April 30 and federal funding committed by November 30. If the project misses either deadline it will be removed from current and future consideration for state funding.
Project manager John Tallmadge said that, in the event those deadlines aren’t met, the $190 million could be covered by making cuts to the light rail system and allocating additional local dollars.
Among the potential cost-cutting measures: eliminating the stop at North Carolina Central University and shortening the line. Tallmadge said shortening the other end of the line — near UNC Hospitals — would render the project non-viable. Previously, GoTriangle officials told the INDY the NC Central stop could be the most used on the route.
“Over the past six months, new challenges have made those deadlines increasingly difficult to meet and contributed to additional project costs.”
This is a breaking story. This INDY will have more as it develops.
The city and GoTriangle are weighing their options
Since 2010, the fare-free Bull City Connector has pinged from downtown Durham to Duke University, connecting the VA medical center, Duke's campus, shopping, dining, and government services.
Now, amid funding changes and a study of Durham's transit needs, there's uncertainty about the service's future.
That uncertainty comes on two fronts. First, Duke University has announced plans to cease funding for the route beginning in fiscal year 2018. Second, GoTriangle and GoDurham are reexamining all of their routes with potential changes in mind.
GoTriangle is currently taking public comments as part of its transit study, and the Durham City Council will likely be briefed on that study before the end of the year.
GoTriangle and the city say no decisions have been made to alter or discontinue the BCC, but concerns remain over how the service will look going forward. These concerns stretch back to 2015, when several stops (including Durham Station, the BCC's busiest stop) were eliminated in the name of efficiency, while more stops were added near Duke.
"That's what I kept hearing about these changes: we want to be more efficient. But are we throwing away effectiveness for efficiency?" asks Nikki Brown of the nonprofit SpiritHouse, who documented hazards on the route after the 2015 changes.
SpiritHouse took those findings to the Durham Human Relations Commission, which issued three recommendations last year: restore service to Durham Station, restore service to clinics at Duke South, and "focus on serving the Durham community, not primarily Duke."
"We're still concerned about the changes that were made in 2015," says HRC chairwoman Diane Standaert.
At the time, BCC riders were slightly older than the overall GoDurham ridership, 52 percent of BCC riders earned less than $15,000 per year, and 57 percent were African American. Most used the service to get to work or school, as well as appointments at the VA and Duke Hospital.
Terry Bellamy, the city's transportation director, says the route, stops, and operating hours will be considered in the context of the larger bus system. "The question we're asking the public as we do the study is where is the service demand?" Bellamy says. "So much has happened in the last two years that there could be changes in demand."
In the past, the city has covered about two-thirds of the $1.1 million annual bill for the BCC, with Duke contributing the other third. However, this fiscal year the university cut its funding in half, to $175,000, and indicated that would be its final allotment.
Phail Wynn Jr., vice president of Durham and Regional Affairs at Duke, says the university began funding the BCC in conjunction with grants to get the system running.
"It was never intended to be an indefinite commitment," Wynn says.
Now, the BCC isn't providing Duke students and faculty with adequate service, Wynn says. "To operate these new needs would probably triple the cost of the route. We found it would actually be cheaper for Duke to go ahead and run our own shuttles from the campus to downtown and back."
Standaert and Brown would like to see the service better serve riders who really need a fare-free bus. Brown questions why the route doesn't go to lower-income neighborhoods in east Durham or to N.C. Central.
"Are we being equitable?" Brown says. "Are we being the people that we say we are?"
Asked whether the BCC could be discontinued, Bellamy says it's too early to tell: "We don't know the answer to that question yet. That's what the study process will tell us. I really want to hear from a lot of the users."
A survey on GoDurham's short-range transit plans can be found at GoDurhamTransit.org.
Election years can be a great time for reflection and interpersonal analysis. I have tried to ask myself, “How much of a hypocrite am I being?” People want to see change, but we are reluctant to change ourselves before we spew off on the Internet.
While there are many things I could improve in my life, using alternative transit was an easier behavior for me compared to other goals I’d set for myself.
As I mentioned in the above video, I started taking the bus quite a lot after graduating high school. I didn’t get my license until 19. Between classes at Durham Tech, and visiting my friends at UNC Chapel Hill, I found the bus to be a low barrier-to-entry way for me to have more freedom.
In the time since I’ve moved out of my grandparents’ house, my commute from home has not been too far from most places I traveled, whether for work, school, or leisure. Riding the bus and biking became a routine way for me to journey across Durham.
Eventually, I started driving more. Convenience, weather conditions, and a small bit of social pressure convinced me that it was the right move. Most functioning adults have cars, and if I wanted to be taken seriously, I needed to get behind the wheel.
The car I bought was a 1995 Jeep Grand Cherokee. I got it from a neighbor of my Dad’s in Atlanta for $1000. When I bought the car, it was in decent shape but had been sitting dormant for a while. Because I was so used to either taking the bus, biking, walking, or getting rides with friends, the slightest hiccup in the car’s functionality caused me to neglect fixing it when I should have. It sat in my driveway for awhile before we moved it to my Opa’s for what turned out to be a lengthy repair process.
I do really enjoy the car, but it’s not exactly a “green” form of transportation. The smell of gas and oil is an unfortunate reminder of my hypocrisy as a self-described progressive contributing to the continuation of the fossil fuel industry by driving this machine.
Ironically, the week after I shot this video about alternative transportation, I finally got the Jeep back on the road after over a year. I haven’t driven it since I took it from my grandparents’ house. The mechanical tinkering was a great bonding experience for Opa and I, but in the end, I wonder how much it will be worth it for the vehicle itself if I don’t use it.
Filming this interview allowed me to really think deeply about how I want to impact the world. Riding the bus wasn’t just a means of transportation, but a way to stay connected with a community I wouldn’t otherwise be a part of. It kept me grounded. Most days, I still bike, walk, or bus into downtown where we have both our store and office. While I recognize there is a convenience with most of my life being centered around this one location, I hope that I can inspire even just one person to consider changing their travel behavior for personal health, mental stimulation, and the greater good.
Check out the full post on the #GoTogether campaign here.
