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DURHAM – Key Orange County officials are signaling doubt about one of the fundamental premises of a regional transit plan, questioning whether it should serve the N.C. 54 corridor.
The problem with that, in the eyes of Orange County Manager Frank Clifton, is that routing a new rail line along N.C. 54 would open up development opportunities in the western reaches of Durham County, at the expense of competing possibilities in Orange.
On Tuesday, Clifton told the Orange County Commissioners that he wants Triangle Transit to look at using the U.S. 15-501 corridor exclusively, a routing that could feed into potential redevelopment of sites like Ram’s Plaza and University Mall.
“The greater potential benefit to Orange County from an economic development standpoint is along 15-501,” he said, echoing comments from his government’s planning director, Craig Benedict. “It is not along a short stretch of 54 that is in Orange County.”
Clifton also dropped a bombshell during Tuesday’s meeting by telling commissioners that Chapel Hill Town Manager Roger Stancil agrees with him.
“Roger Stancil and myself have talked about this at great length,” Clifton said. “We’ve talked to our economic people. We just think [15-501 is] something that should not be written off, off the top.”
The Orange manager’s comment were surprising for many reasons, starting with the fact that city and county elected officials from Durham and Orange are supposed to vote in less than two weeks on a rough outline of the routing.
Since the 1990s, most of the transit-related planning work on both sides of the county line has assumed a rail connection would run towards Chapel Hill from Durham along U.S. 15-501 to about the Patterson Place area, then head south along Interstate 40 and turn back toward Chapel Hill at N.C. 54.
Moreover, all of Chapel Hill’s land-use planning since the mid-1990s debate over the Meadowmont development has been built around that assumption.
Clifton brushed off those factors. “The times have changed,” he said.
But his comments came about 24 hours after Chapel Hill’s Town Council reviewed the transit plan and confirmed its support for using the N.C. 54 corridor.
Clifton’s claim to be speaking also for Stancil drew skepticism from Orange Commissioners Chairwoman Bernadette Pelissier.
“Did the Chapel Hill Town Council discuss at all the 15-501 corridor last night?” she asked Clifton.
“I don’t believe so,” he answered.
Chapel Hill elected officials on Wednesday quickly made it clear they hadn’t abandoned their historical unwillingness to tolerate any freelancing on land-use matters by staff.
“I don’t know why Mr. Clifton decided to proclaim Roger’s position on this, but it’s just not the case,” Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt said. “We’ve all had conversations about [15-501], and that was resolved some time ago.”
Town Council Ed Harrison added via email that Clifton “has [no business] representing any of Stancil’s opinions.”
Chapel Hill, Carrboro, Durham and Triangle Transit officials have preferred the N.C. 54 route because it would in their view better serve commuter traffic to UNC.
Already, bus ridership along N.C. 54 is about 30 times greater than it is along Fordham Boulevard, Triangle Transit Senior Transportation Planner Patrick McDonough told commissioners.
“The transit demand of the future is very well indicated by the transit demand of today,” he added. “That’s where the heart of the matter is.”
Clifton’s comments provoked obvious consternation from Triangle Transit General Counsel Wib Gulley, who said an assessment of U.S. 15-501 would cause at least a two-year setback for local transit planning and cost millions of extra dollars.
But three of the commissioners – Pam Hemminger, Earl McKee and Steve Yuhasz – made it clear they shared Clifton’s reservations. McKee also said he had no problem waiting.
“If it takes an extra year, if it takes an extra 10 years, it will be worth it to get it right and get it right the first time,” McKee said.
Tuesday’s discussion also raised questions about whether Orange commissioners will schedule a referendum this year about a half-percent sales-tax levy to support the transit plan.
Durham voters approved such a measure last fall, but elected officials here are holding off on implementing it until they see whether Orange or Wake counties put the levy to a vote.
Yuhasz signaled that he’d be more inclined to support the N.C. 54 routing if Durham officials share with Orange County the extra tax revenue they’d realize if the area around a potential Durham station location near Creekside Elementary School develops as planners expect.
“All the costs we are being asked to recommend to our citizens, we need to recapture that within Orange County,” he said. “I’m not convinced this plan does that. Whereas if in fact all the revenue that was generated at [the station site], if some portion of that was shared back with Orange County, then maybe it would be more of a regional plan and it would make more sense for Orange County to look at it in a regional way.”
But one Durham official monitoring the situation, City Councilman Mike Woodard, said he’s set on the U.S. 15-501/I-40/N.C. 54 concept and added that Clifton’s objections are “11th hour.”
“Any plan that would just move along 15-501 and not help us on 54 is a plan I wouldn’t be interested in,” Woodard said.
