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monsoon

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If this is true, that's fantastic news!!

When I first read about the Battleground Rail-Trail, I sent this e-mail to Susan Schwartz at Action Greensboro. My e-mail was dated 6/29/2005. I believe you and I discussed this quite a bit as well, citiboi. It seems this idea has been rattling around in a few heads other than ours. Hopefully, something comes to fruition here, as that's far too valuable of a corridor to just nix the rail and convert it to a trail.

Hopefully the city will jump on this and not wait til every other major city in NC has a trolley. Greensboro needs to start becoming a leader and not a follower.

Edited by cityboi
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As some of you may have read in today's Greensboro News & Record, there will be a transit "open house" in downtown Greensboro on February 12th. This will be a great opportunity for us to voice our ideas and help shape the future of transportation in Greensboro and the rest of the Triad. I encourage you to attend if you can. If not, you can email your ideas. Give them an ear full!! :thumbsup:

http://www.news-record.com/apps/pbcs.dll/a...STAFF/930082096

Edited by luvdowntowngso
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  • 5 months later...
  • 3 months later...
  • 1 month later...

No, higher-order transit is dead in the Triad. There is nobody in business or political leadership speaking about it, there are no organized citizen groups clamoring for it, and a visit to the PART website today shows that the fall 2008 newsletter does not use the word "rail" or "train" anywhere in it. The website used to feature studies for rail and planning documents, now there is one page that mentions rail with a newsletter from 2005.

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Light rail in Greensboro, or anywhere in the Triad for that matter, is a long ways off. Greensboro and the Triad should focus instead on improving fixed route bus service. Until the Triad communities show a willingness to use public transit, no local government is going to propose multimillion dollar expenditures for light rail.

There are things, however, that GTA can do to improve its service. Further, GTA can accomplishment many service improvements by partnering with local businesses or better utilizing the resources Greensboro already has. The following are some suggestions I have brainstormed.

Downtown Circular or trolley

GTA should implement a downtown circular bus that makes stops throughout Greensboro

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  • 4 weeks later...

Just wanted to point out that in Greensboro's request for assistance from the proposed federal stimulus, the city is asking for funds to Construct the new administrative and maintenance facility for GTA as well money for Hybrid buses. Read the article here.

In another article a while back, the N&R reported that City leaders were seeking "$13 million to buy 16 buses and build 10

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  • 1 month later...

The News & Observer has a blog entry today about State Legislators re-introducing legislation to allow counties to levy a 1/2 cent sales tax for transit funding.

The House bill is co-sponsored by Greensboro Reps. Alma Adams and Earl Jones. Reps. Earline Parmon and Larry Womble, both of Winston-Salem, have also signed on as co-sponsors. Conspicuously absent, however, are Greensboro Reps. Pricey Harrison and Maggie Jeffus.

The Senate bill is co-sponsored by Greensboro Sens. Katie Dorsett and Don Vaughan. Winston-Salem co-sponsors include Sen. Linda Garrou.

If you want to support this legislation, click here to find out who your representative is and let them know how you feel. I personally believe that a dedicated funding source, such as a local sales tax is the only way real transit improvements will begin to take shape.

Edited by beyonce245
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  • 3 weeks later...

The Winston-Salem Transit Authority is purchasing several hybrid buses. According to this article, they could be delivered as soon as the end of 2009. Glad to hear this from an environmental perspective, but these buses won't really do much to improve WSTA service, save for a quieter ride. I hope WSTA will attempt to add Sunday service soon.

In other news, the Greensboro Transit Authority plans to increase evening service according to the latest minutes from the Greensboro MPO meeting available online. The current evening service is a composite of day routes. The new service will be expanded to use all of the day routes as they are. New service to begin July 1st.

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The Winston-Salem Transit Authority is purchasing several hybrid buses. According to this article, they could be delivered as soon as the end of 2009.

The busses are manufactured by the Gillig Corporation, one of the largest manufacturers of public buses in the country. Here is a link to the Hybrid bus page on the Gillig website.

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According to this article at News14, city official in Greensboro are anticipating receiving $5.4 million for the Greensboro Transit Authority from the first round of stimulus money. How do you all think this money should be spent? Hopefully, the city will get more transit funds as future money is dispersed of the coming weeks and months.

The city desperately needs to get construction started on its new maintenance facility because the current location downtown doesn't have enough space to accommodate the growing bus fleet. Yet $5.4 million isn't enough funding to reach the $20+ million the project will cost. I guess if the city thinks it will receive the necessary remaining funds for this project sometime near in the future, then this project would be the best use for the money, considering that all future service and route enhancements will be hindered because of the inadequate space at the current facility.

If not, then I think the city should use the money to fund the new crosstown connector routes and extending the weekday bus schedule to the weekends, as specified in the city's long range transportation plan.

What do you all think?

Edited by beyonce245
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Update to my previous post: Apparently, the $5.4 million for GTA will be split - a portion will be used to purchase hybrid buses, the other portion will be used to fund the new maintenance facility.

Greensboro will take delivery of its first hybrid bus sometime later this year, previously purchased from funds not in connection with the stimulus package.

Edited by beyonce245
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  • 1 month later...

I went to the GTA Board meeting today. It was really interesting and many of my questions concerning GTA were answered.

First the service updates:

At the beginning of the new fiscal year (July 1, 2009), GTA will begin offering 30 minute evening service on all of the city's routes with a few exceptions (Routes 1, 12, and 8 will have slightly different stop locations during the evening). This is a big improvement from the current evening routes, which are basically all 15 routes compacted into 7 night routes.

GTA has a new domain name, Ridegta.com. It's being used to redirect to the regular GTA website. But just from an ease of use standpoint, I think transit users will find the new domain name much easier to use and remember than GTA's old domain, which had a lot of backslashes and dashes.

Odds and Ends:

I had been wondering for awhile why GTA wasn't using all the buses in its fleet to offer more routes. GTA uses 32 of its 40 buses during peak service. At today's meeting, I learned that the Federal Transportation Administration requires transit systems to maintain at least a 20% vehicle reserve, presumably in case buses in use breakdown or need to be taken out of service.

But even if GTA had more buses to offer more routes, it couldn't because there is no more room at the current bus facility on Friendly, which is why the new bus maintenance facility on Meadowview gets built sooner rather than later, so that GTA can expand its fleet and offer more service.

Also at today's meeting, the Board passed a resolution concerning its bus replacement schedule. The Board resolved to replace 20 buses, which are expected to need replacing in 2010, with all hybrid electric buses. The total replacement cost would be 14,280,000.00. The local match that Greensboro would have to contribute would be 10% or 1,428,000.00.

In legislative news:

The North Carolina House passed a sales tax bill, which would allow Urban Counties (Guilford and Forsyth) to levy a 1/2 cent sales tax to improve mass transit. The levy would have to be approved by voters, which would be difficult. However, the State legislature has also taken up a bill to change the state tax system. If that legislation passed, the sales tax would be lowered by 1/2 cent. This would be good because then supporters of the transit tax could tell voters that the sales tax wouldn't be increasing from today's rate. Anyway, the transit bill has now moved to the Senate for consideration.

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More news from GTA today, this time in the form of their approved Program of Projects list - basically a list of projects that GTA will be applying for Federal and State funds for.

Those that I found particularly excited:

6a - Applying for funds to acquire land and construct the new maintenance facility from stimulus program

8a - Funding to implement technology to provide riders with real time bus and arrival times through an agreement between GTA, PART, and Hi-Tran (This would be a great improvement in terms of the passenger experience)

Read the entire list here.

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  • 2 weeks later...

According to the newspaper in Winston-Salem, PART is finally moving forward with a study for the commuter rail line.

The corridor being studied is the Norfolk Southern rail line from Hanes Mall in Winston-Salem to NC A&T in Greensboro. Actually, this line does at least as good of a job at hitting the major destinations as the NCRR corridor in the Triangle does. Destinations immediately on the line or within about 1/4 mile of the line include:

  • Hanes Mall
  • Forsyth Medical Center
  • Baptist Medical Center
  • Downtown WS
  • PTRP
  • WSSU
  • Downtown Kernersville
  • GRO airport
  • Greensboro Coliseum
  • UNCG
  • NC A&T

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According to the newspaper in Winston-Salem, PART is finally moving forward with a study for the commuter rail line.

The corridor being studied is the Norfolk Southern rail line from Hanes Mall in Winston-Salem to NC A&T in Greensboro. Actually, this line does at least as good of a job at hitting the major destinations as the NCRR corridor in the Triangle does. Destinations immediately on the line or within about 1/4 mile of the line include:

  • Hanes Mall
  • Forsyth Medical Center
  • Baptist Medical Center
  • Downtown WS
  • PTRP
  • WSSU
  • Downtown Kernersville
  • GRO airport
  • Greensboro Coliseum
  • UNCG
  • NC A&T

its about time and all those places are GREAT connections. I personally think the Triad is ready for this almost today because ridership has picked up on the PART regional bus. It wouldnt take long to put into operation because the rail service would use existing tracks. The main construction expense are the building of rail stations along the route. This is a great way to encourage very unique mixed-use development along these stops. The article is using the term "Light-Rail". It looks like they are leaning towards light rail like in Charlotte as oppose to commuter rail in the Triangle where there are no overhead wires. But this provides easy access between the airport and the downtowns which would spur more downtown development. The Obama administration is in favor of these kind of rail projects so we'll see what happens.

Edited by cityboi
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Seems to me that they use the terms "light rail" and "commuter rail" interchangably in the article. This probably demonstrates two things:

1. The author of the article doesn't fully understand the difference between the two technologies, and:

2. PART has not yet made a commitment to a specific technology yet.

The article mentions that Bus Rapid Transit will also be considered. The fact is, though, that BRT is seldom built to truly "rapid" standards. Usually it consists of moving a curb in a few places, restriping some lanes, putting in shelters, putting in dedicated lanes in a couple places where they are cheap and don't do much good, and buying sleek fancy buses.

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At 33 miles & $550M ($16M/mi) they have to be talking about standard commuter rail service with 30 minute or more frequencies, similar to Charlotte' North Corridor (which will have 18 daily round trips). I just don't think they could do double track for $16M/mi, but rather single track with passing sidings. This is definitely not light rail (rapid transit), and clearly the reporter doesn't know the difference (they never do).

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The recent comments over the last few days about rail precisely demonstrates the problems with mass transit in Greensboro. Everybody wants to talk about rail but not buses or other parts of the transit equation, when in reality, all the Triad cities will need to drastically increase ridership on existing transit options to make any kind of rail possible.

Rail is fun to talk about. And I too would like to see it in the Triad. But it's not going to happen until people start paying more attention and investing in the transit options we already have.

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It's my understanding that at least GTA in Greensboro is investing in improved bus service with a minimum of 30-minute headways on all routes - albeit slowly.

However, no significant increases in bus service will happen without additional revenue. The 0.5% sales tax which Guilford and Forsyth will soon be allowed to levy would help that, but that would have to be approved by referendum first. There is probably no way such a referendum would pass if it only included bus service. Like the sales tax in Charlotte, and the proposal for one in the Triangle, the initial focus will be solely on improving bus service. Rail lines probably won't start operating for at least 5 years, perhaps 10, after the tax is approved.

Therefore, expanding bus transit and rail transit are inextricably linked in both the triangle and the triad.

But again, all of this is completely irrelevant without a new source of funds.

As an aside, I personally see these local option sales taxes as a tool that should, in theory, used to operate transit systems, not build them. In my opinion, the state and federal government should bear the responsibility for construction (just like they do with highways), while operation is left up to the municipalities. Without the added burden of servicing debt related to capital expenditures, municipalities might be able to run their bus systems without federal operating assistance.

Perhaps that model wouldn't work in small cities, but I would gladly give up the federal operational assistance in exchange for an 80% federal contribution towards capital projects.

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It's my understanding that at least GTA in Greensboro is investing in improved bus service with a minimum of 30-minute headways on all routes - albeit slowly.

However, no significant increases in bus service will happen without additional revenue. The 0.5% sales tax which Guilford and Forsyth will soon be allowed to levy would help that, but that would have to be approved by referendum first. There is probably no way such a referendum would pass if it only included bus service. Like the sales tax in Charlotte, and the proposal for one in the Triangle, the initial focus will be solely on improving bus service. Rail lines probably won't start operating for at least 5 years, perhaps 10, after the tax is approved.

Therefore, expanding bus transit and rail transit are inextricably linked in both the triangle and the triad.

But again, all of this is completely irrelevant without a new source of funds.

As an aside, I personally see these local option sales taxes as a tool that should, in theory, used to operate transit systems, not build them. In my opinion, the state and federal government should bear the responsibility for construction (just like they do with highways), while operation is left up to the municipalities. Without the added burden of servicing debt related to capital expenditures, municipalities might be able to run their bus systems without federal operating assistance.

Perhaps that model wouldn't work in small cities, but I would gladly give up the federal operational assistance in exchange for an 80% federal contribution towards capital projects.

I agree about needing an additional source of revenue. On that note, I'm a little peeved that when city leadership decided to put a transportation bond on the ballot last year, virtually nothing from those funds will be allocated to public transit.

I also agree that the local sales tax, which I favor, should mainly be used for operations. However, at least initially, such a funding source would be needed for the city to contribute its 10% match.

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At 33 miles & $550M ($16M/mi) they have to be talking about standard commuter rail service with 30 minute or more frequencies, similar to Charlotte' North Corridor (which will have 18 daily round trips). I just don't think they could do double track for $16M/mi, but rather single track with passing sidings. This is definitely not light rail (rapid transit), and clearly the reporter doesn't know the difference (they never do).

Depending on the distance between interlockings, sometimes double-track can actually be cheaper than single track with passing sidings. I assume that $16 M will fund a mix of double and single track/passing siding approaches, with a commuter rail approach with trains no more often than every 20 minutes, more likely every 30 minutes.

I'd feel more excited about this potentially happening if some more local elected officials in the Triad actually uttered the words "transit" every now and then.

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