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This is the language of smart-growth fear: "They'll force me out of my home in the suburbs and send me to a Soviet style apartment, and make me eat goulash every day!"
First off, there's plenty of underdeveloped land that aren't neighborhoods. There are old industrial sites near Durham Central Park that are becoming an urban co-housing/condo project and office space. There are surface parking lots to be transformed -- the space that holds the Bulls ballpark was parking for the American Tobacco factory, while DPAC sat on an old transit yard.
Sometimes there are inefficient uses, like having a massive U-Haul facility downtown. The owner got bought out (for a pretty penny) and now a courthouse tower is going up there.
But no one is forcing anyone to live in these developments. However, I can tell you that the demand for in town housing is high. People, by CHOICE, are moving to these areas. West Village has a perennial wait list; hundreds of more apartments are going up on Ninth. And true story: I was out of town for a 3 day weekend in February, during which time the house across the street, from me hit the MLS (at a $575,000 price tag -- with bath and kitchen updates still likely desired), had an open house, and went under contract, all before I came home. Similarly, when we optioned our house, there were more than a half-dozen backup buyers who were also touring the house with contractors thinking about rehabbing it if we didn't.
What light rail does is help balance out commuting options and allows the increasing interest in urban living, plus the needs of existing residents, to be met.
It is not "fear" my friend, it is money and our lack thereof. I was not describing Soviet style living, but NYC. I happened to be watching "Selling New York" when typing the last message and was amazed at what people perceived a "huge" apartment was lol. In regards to money, I am in favor of utilizing alternate, and substantially cheaper methods before spending a "trainload" of it. Entice more business to downtown and the residents that live there can walk or ride bikes without spending a dime. Develop a dense living adjacent to RTP, Incentivize telecommuting, use the bussing system to full capacity and expand it (none of which requires a 50's mentality Eva ).
I also agree with Mike about property values, and you can reference your own neighbor BullCity. It was not long ago (10 years or so) when I could buy a house in downtown Raleigh or Durham for next to nothing. Now, you have to have a pretty significant income to buy in most of the areas. How can we build density when housing is $3-400 a sq ft downtown, but $100 a sq ft in the 'burbs? I can make it to downtown Raleigh in 25-30 minutes from Holly Springs. What is my incentive to spend 3x the housing cost or additional taxes for light rail to save that short of a drive? What do we do with the multitudes of people that can longer afford to live where they have lived their whole lives? The next step in the progression is companies have to pay continually higher salaries for their workers to live here. We eventually reach a point of diminishing returns, and so do businesses.
If the goal is to reduce traffic and cars, why not take alternative approaches first? Maybe we can set an example for the country instead of just following the herd.
Now, you have to have a pretty significant income to buy in most of the areas. How can we build density when housing is $3-400 a sq ft downtown, but $100 a sq ft in the 'burbs? I can make it to downtown Raleigh in 25-30 minutes from Holly Springs.
The problem with this line of thinking is it's only concerning right now. What about ten years from now? Twenty? Thirty? If we continue with the current level of investment in public transportation that 30 minutes drive could easily double or triple over time. The nice thing about this current plan is that it works on streamlining and boosting the bus system to make it more efficient and user-friendly while also putting into works rail options, which if we build now, will be there when we really start needing it rather than us fretting over how awful traffic has become. And as with anything, the longer you wait to build it, the more expensive it will become. It makes sense to get things started now so we have a good solid base that can be added onto as needed.
Have you not noticed the large swaths of surface lots and abandoned lots in downtown Raleigh and downtown Durham? There is PLENTY of under and unutilized lots that could be built on but probably won't as long as people stay stuck in the 1950s mentality of cars being the only transportation worth investing in.
Someone owns them. Why have they remained empty and not developed? Because of the costs and lack of ROI potential would be my guess. How many empty or sold at a significant reduction condos does Raleigh have downtown? Why would a developer build a new dense living building when the ones we have already built are not selling well at all. By and large, those moving to the downtown areas are interested in the established single family homes from or young singles/couples wanting to be close to the nightlife.
Say we did have the density. Why concern ourselves with giving 100,000 people an easier way to work when we can just incentivize business to move closer to the people?
I'm a bit confused because it seems that you believe this light rail would only be operating in downtown Raleigh. In the plans I've seen it would have spurs that go to North Raleigh, Apex, Cary, RTP, Durham, and Chapel Hill. Certainly much more than 100,000 people would benefit from that.
The Triangle does not have a traffic issue [right now]. Traffic here is extremely manageable and there is no need for light rail [right now]. I travel I-40 every day of the work week [right now] and it's no problem at all.
I added a few things to make this statement more correct. In the next 30 years, the population of the triangle is going to double. Therefore, if we do nothing, those "extremely managable" roads will have 100% more people on them, putting our road network way over capacity, and not just during peak commuting times, but all the time. And then, at that point, when everyone's (or if they're retired, their children's) commutes have doubled or worse, we'll be in a real pickle. So to handle the future we need to do something now. It's not like we can widen our roads enough to handle double their current capacity - that's just not possible unless you want to tear even more neighborhoods down, have everyone live right next to a 6-lane highway and create even more congestion because every road in the area will need to undergo construction at basically the same time (and while more and more people are moving here, btw).
And I know that rail won't completely solve the congestion problem - congestion will still get worse over the next 30 years even if we build light rail. The point is that it will be less worse than it would be without it.
I'm a bit confused because it seems that you believe this light rail would only be operating in downtown Raleigh. In the plans I've seen it would have spurs that go to North Raleigh, Apex, Cary, RTP, Durham, and Chapel Hill. Certainly much more than 100,000 people would benefit from that.
Why would a train operate in only downtown Raleigh? We were just talking about density and downtown in general. Obviously the train would have points of origin.
I would suggest that nowhere near 100,000 people would truly benefit from it (aside from very moderate reductions in traffic). Ridership in Charlotte is what, 15,000 people per day? We are to pay a few billion dollars (I do not believe the 1.1 billion figure for a second as we all know nothing ever comes in under budget when the .gov is involved lol) so 10-25,000 people can take a train around town? The triangle area has almost 1 million people. Basically 2.5% of the population would reap the benefit and the rest of us will be paying for it, perpetually. Even if 100,000 people use it, that is still only 10% of our population. All I am saying is there are other ways to solve these problems before stepping up to that plate. For a billion dollars we could set up telecommuting for 100,000 workers, and pay incentives to business for doing so. A billion dollars also buys a lot of busses. Either of these could remove a lot of cars from the road, and even rescue a lot of people from life in a cubicle. I worked in the corporate world at IBM for several years, and there are plenty of desk jockey jobs that could be done from the comforts of home. Business would not have to maintain as large of an office building, so they win in that regard. Of course, those are private institutions and we cannot compel them to adapt, but starting a dialogue on the subject would not hurt.
At the end of the day it really does not matter much to me as neither I nor my wife have the type of career that could utilize a train and the tax hike would be minimal. It just seems noone wants to look at different solutions, they just want what the other cities have. Thats not progress, thats stagnation. Let us do something new. We are the ultimate #1 on every "where to live" list afterall!
I hear you but we live in a state where the fastest Internet connection available is 50/5 (note the upload is 1/20th of Ethernet, and half the download speed, let alone gigabit) and where community fiber Internet connections have been stifled by recent legislation and lobbying. We've kind of missed our window for incentivising telecommuting IMO so I hope we don't miss the boat with light rail.
I'm a bit confused because it seems that you believe this light rail would only be operating in downtown Raleigh. In the plans I've seen it would have spurs that go to North Raleigh, Apex, Cary, RTP, Durham, and Chapel Hill. Certainly much more than 100,000 people would benefit from that.
Here is why it won't work. The average suburb commute currently ranges between 15 to 30 minutes. People are not going to drive to a parking lot, leave their comfortable SUV there and then travel on the rail to someplace near their work and then walk from there. Their overall commute time will increase, not decrease. On top of that, they will then be stuck at work without their vehicle. Going out to lunch will be difficult and shopping just about impossible. It will be far too inconvenient for most people. Most people will opt to drive their own vehicle, with all their necessities inside, and know they can come and go as they please.
Rather interesting how personal proponents can be on this topic.
Excise A12...
If a fiscal model cannot survive in the private sector, then we should not strap it to the back of the citizen.
svR
Edited to maintain locality
Can you give me the name of any business that operates completely in the private sector? Because any time someone uses the public roads to get to that buiness it is no longer self reliant and so it is not in the private sector.
Why concern ourselves with giving 100,000 people an easier way to work when we can just incentivize business to move closer to the people?
Winner! This is the most logical solution and somehow seems to elude some people. Novartis in Holly Springs is a perfect example of how it should be done. No need to drive toward RTP, Durham or Raleigh.
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