Report calls on officials to invest $8.2B in transit

DURHAM, Apr 26, 2008 (The Herald-Sun - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- -- A blue-ribbon committee has signed off on a report that calls on local, state and federal officials to invest $8.2 billion in a regional transit system over the next 27 years.

The report from the Special Transit Advisory Commission calls for beefed-up local and regional bus service in an area extending through the Triangle and beyond, to Alamance, Chatham, Granville, Franklin and Johnston counties.

It also supports the development of a rail system for commuters that would eventually link Chapel Hill, Durham, Cary and Raleigh.

Expanded bus service would consume an estimated 18 percent of the spending the panel suggests and should occur "prior to the opening of any rail service," its final report to transportation planners in Durham and Wake counties says.

Commission members said Friday that they believe the alternative to their plan is ever-lengthening commutes that would eventually choke the Triangle's economy.

Their report contends that the region's key highway corridors -- U.S. 15-501 between Chapel Hill and Durham, Interstate 40 and N.C. 54 through RTP, and U.S. 1 in Wake County -- are so hemmed in by buildings and environmental constraints that expanding them is a practical impossibility.

If Triangle leaders don't embrace mass transit soon, "we can forget about the golden goose because there are greener pastures elsewhere, and people will go there," said commission member Sandy Ogburn, a former Durham city councilwoman.

To help finance the proposal, Ogburn and the other 28 members of the panel are suggesting the imposition of a half-percent sales tax surcharge on retail purchases throughout the Triangle and a $10 increase region-wide in vehicle-registration fees.

They believe the sales-tax surcharge would raise nearly $5 billion over the next 27 years and the increased vehicle fee would add another $458 million.

Triangle Transit Authority General Manager David King said he hopes area officials can organize a referendum on the sales tax as early as November 2009.

The surcharge would parallel one voters in Mecklenburg County approved in 1998 to finance a rail system in Charlotte.

Panel members also recommend continuing a 5 percent tax on car rentals originally passed to benefit the Triangle Transit Authority and think it would raise another $331 million.

They believe fares would generate about $517 million. Subsidies from the federal and state governments, and bonds, would provide the balance of the needed funds.

Both the panel's cost and revenue figures are 27-year running totals that assume inflation in construction markets will continue to outpace the consumer price index over the next few decades.

If inflation wasn't a factor, the more-costly rail component of the plan would likely cost about $2.3 billion, an appendix to the commission's report says.

The group's bus plan calls for beefing up existing service with more express runs to RDU, downtown Durham, downtown Raleigh and Cary, plus the establishment of special "circulator" runs between the airport and RTP and in the core areas of Raleigh, Durham, Cary and Chapel Hill.

It also favors establishing routes to outlying communities like Burlington, Pittsboro, Butner, Wake Forest, Fuquay-Varina and Selma that house a lot of people who commute to work in the Triangle proper.

As for rail, the panel says the area will eventually need to build a light-rail connection between Duke University Medical Center and UNC, and operate heavier, mainline-capable trains from Duke to North Raleigh via RTP, Cary and downtown Raleigh.

Members rejected the idea of using buses only for cross-region links because there are no precedents in the United States for bus networks having much influence on land-use patterns.

The theory goes that developers will adjust their investment strategies and concentrate housing and commercial uses around transit stations only if they can rely on service continuing for decades. Buses, skeptics contend, don't offer that kind of certainty.

With the report complete, the next move is up to the two "metropolitan planning organizations" for the eastern and western Triangle that advise the N.C. Department of Transportation on spending decisions.

Ultimately, the plan requires backing from elected officials. Whether that's forthcoming is uncertain, as officials in Wake County have indicated that other services, schools particularly, are a higher spending priority.

The mayors of Durham, Chapel Hill, Cary and Raleigh intend to meet in early May to discuss transit planning.

A DOT official, Metropolitan Transportation Branch Assistant Director Mike Kozak, cautioned that Charlotte's rail network only came about because leaders there came "up with a plan that put all the pieces together and excited the community enough" to support a sales-tax surcharge.

Commission member and former Raleigh Mayor Smedes York said transit advocates have to convince people transit is an essential service.

"If we think of it that way, it'll lead to economic success," York said. "If you look at the total picture of successful community, your property values are going to be higher, your jobs are going to be better and it's going to be a net plus."

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