Totally Freaked About Moving to Raleigh! (Durham, Cary: insurance, high school, subdivisions) - Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, Cary - North Carolina (NC) -The Triangle Area - Page 9 - City-Data Forum

saturnfan · 07-23-2007, 11:28 AM

I'm actually a railfan and used to love the "Nostalgia train" rides on the NYC subway system.

Just doesn't seem viable here. Feds already nixed our proposal for light rail.

vbethea · 07-23-2007, 11:45 AM

Hi, Brenda--
I really think once you move here, your feelings will change. It's really quite nice to live in Chapel Hill and city life in Durham/Raleigh is in such close proximity that you sort of have everything at your fingertips. Whatever mood you're in, the Triangle has something for everyone. Unemployment in the RTP/Triangle area is almost unheard of. The Chapel Hill/Carrboro schools are excellent. The hospitals(UNC & Duke) are some of the best in the country. Believe it or not, there ARE nice, affordable homes in this area that I'm sure you would like. Also, you get all four seasons. I'm originally from New Orleans, where you only have two seasons if you're lucky, so I found that very exciting.

If you have any questions or need help, let me know. Good luck!
Virginia Bethea

jfre81 · 07-23-2007, 11:46 AM

Maybe not a drop in quality of life, but there are a lot more people there than 20 years ago. Raleigh didn't even have 100K population in 1970, and has doubled since the 1980s. There is no debate on that. This is fact. Raleigh doesn't have to come out and say it wants to be Atlanta. All it has to do is not control growth and the message is the same.

If I was a longtime resident of Raleigh and wanted it to stay like it is, I'd be on here saying whatever I can do to get the Yankees and yuppies from out west (including Austin) to go anywhere else but NC.

saturnfan · 07-23-2007, 12:12 PM

It's not that easy.

The way to stop uncontrolled growth is to no longer facilitate it by catering to it.

Eliminating road expansion, limiting water hookups, and controlling building permits can choke growth down to a manageable level.

Encouraging longer commutes is just economically and environmentally unsound.

jfre81 · 07-23-2007, 12:39 PM

They can also put the property taxes through the stratosphere and nobody will come there anymore. Problem is whether you could afford to stay. Failing to provide infrastructure will choke off growth, indeed - it's one of the reasons I'm not there anymore - but that growth is far from being leveled off at this point and it will just decrease the quality of life for everyone. Distance is not as much a problem as how much idling in traffic you're doing. Sitting in traffic with the windows closed and the AC cranked up is the most expensive way (financially and ecologically) the average person can do nothing on a hot summer day.

IdaClaire · 07-23-2007, 02:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jfre81

If I was a longtime resident of Raleigh and wanted it to stay like it is, I'd be on here saying whatever I can do to get the Yankees and yuppies from out west (including Austin) to go anywhere else but NC.

Heh... As an ex-resident of Missoula and Bozeman, MT, as well as the beautiful Champlain Valley in Vermont, I've seen the utter uselessness of fighting change. It's impossible to stop overall trends in migration. I'd rather help drive the change and be the one helping to plan the new Triangle area than to be reactive and behind the curve. My poor Vermont relatives are angry and bitter about their home state, and if you look in the Montana threads on this board, there are some folks popping blood vessels about all the newcomers.

The fact that this area continues to attract newcomers means that we still have a robust economy and decent standard of living, and I'd personally rather deal with the problems that THIS causes than to live somewhere so unpleasant that NOBODY wants to move there.

jfre81 · 07-23-2007, 04:13 PM

I'm all for change and adapting. But failing to provide infrastructure is the opposite of adapting, and using that method to fight change (in the form of increased population growth) will only cause more congestion and misery.

What about that mess of a school system in Wake County? What to do about those? Texas' school taxation system is what really makes the property taxes here high as they are, but I will say that I cannot think of a school offhand that is having to go to a year-round schedule or is shoving kids into trailers because there isn't enough room for them. When schools get overcrowded they build new ones.

98 people a day. That works out to 35,770 a year. In Wake County alone. Raleigh practically gets a new suburb every year, if not in name. These are not figures Bozeman and Burlington, Vt. are facing, but it's in line with what Austin's been experiencing. Wherever you are, fighting change is senseless with those numbers staring you in the face.

lamishra · 07-23-2007, 05:19 PM

I really don't think it's that bad! I don't even think traffc is bad here except for a few slow spots. Unless you live in the desert, traffic and ample road space is going to be an issue every metro area. I have yet to visit or live in a city where there were ample enough roads to have free flowing traffic at all times. Overall, traffic in the triangle area is not that bad.

The triangle is not laid out in such a way to support mass transit at the moment. If we had a proper "downtown" where the majority of people worked and had to commute from the burbs to the city, I can see it working, but instead, people live and work all over the place. There are no centralized living versus work areas. Yes, it's sprawl, but that's really always the way it's been here (at least for the last 30 or so years) and many people over that time have moved here specifically so they can get AWAY from centralization and have their own space. Is it good? Or is it bad? I don't know, I'm sure both have their pros and cons, but "sprawl" is what brought people here in the first place when the area really started growing (and Im talking 15 years ago, not recently).

As for the schools in Wake County, I'm one of their biggest critics and will agree that their planning has left a lot to be desired i nthe last few years, but seriously, the schools here are not THAT BAD. I hate it when people keep talking about "what a mess it is" in Wake County schools, because it is not a mess. Sure it has it's hurdles, as does EVERY school district, but overall the quality of education is good across the county and has is one of the best districts in the state academically speaking. Once they get over their issue with forced year round, they'll work it out. Test scores are good and improving and the media seems to love to heap negative attention on WCPSS just to keep people reading. Again, I don't agree with everything they do, but at least look at the overall quality of education in the county as a whole, which is pretty good.

One of my closest friends is a 1st grade teacher in Charlotte NC, in what she calls one of the poorer areas on the city. She had 32 students in her class NO teacher's assistant, and she said the majority of the kids still couldn't read by the end of the year. In my child's 1st grade class LAST year in Wake County, she had 22 children in her class, a full time TA daily and the majority of the kids were reading when they started the year. And not a trailer in sight.

jfre81 · 07-23-2007, 05:51 PM

The problem with the schools is that conditions are worsening in terms of overcrowding than the county can/will keep up. Eventually that is going to become a detriment to those kids' education, especially since it seems that the city seems to cater to families with children. They have to go to school somewhere.

As for why transit wouldn't work...don't buy it....I live in Houston. Talking sprawl with a Houstonian is like talking hotdogs with a New Yorker. You don't have to build an entire transit system all at once. One line can open from RTP to downtown Raleigh, stopping at RDU, Cary, NC State and ending at downtown Raleigh. Just having NC State on the line would bring loads of riders who do not have cars. It could similarly get extended to Duke and Durham, and Chapel Hill and UNC, as well as North Raleigh.

Since everyone is talking about buying a home and long-term investments, I'm surprised that all anyone ever talks about is what things are like now and not, say, 10-15 years from today.

98 x 365 x 10 (years) = 357,700 new people in Wake County between now and 2017, if the current pace does not deviate. How easy will the Triangle be to get around then?

lamishra · 07-23-2007, 06:03 PM

Eventually, the area is going to grow large enough and expensive enough, that growth will slow as part of the natural process, and so will growth in the schools. People are already moving out to areas like Johnston County and Chatham County which 10 years ago was almost unthinkable. It's part of a bigger picture that will continue to cycle through. Right now the growth is here and we're dealing with it, in 5-10 years, my bet is that growth will slow significantly in Wake County as more and more people get priced out and we'll be hearing the same crap from people in Johnston, Chatham, Orange, Granville and Durham Counties that we hear now.

BTW, there is already a mass transit line to and from RTP in place to NCSU, Cary, Apex, Garner, Chapel Hill, downtown Raleigh and more called the TTA.