By Ray Gronberg

gronberg@heraldsun.com; 419-6648

DURHAM – Plans for a rail link that uses the N.C. 54 corridor between Durham and Orange counties cleared a key hurdle on Wednesday, picking up a formal endorsement from the elected officials who serve on a cross-county planning group.

The action by the Durham-Orange Transportation Advisory committee gave Triangle Transit a green light to expand work on the project, among other things by launching a full-blown environmental impact study.

Committee members made only one significant change to the proposal, saying they would prefer not to use a reserved-since-1995 routing for the line that goes through Chapel Hill’s Meadowmont neighborhood.

They stopped short of ruling out the Meadowmont option entirely, saying it deserves continued study alongside an alternative that would pass by on the south side of N.C. 54.

That squared with the desires of Chapel Hill’s Town Council, but not necessarily those of the Orange County Commissioners.

Orange’s representative, Commissioner Alice Gordon, told fellow committee members her board preferred to dump the Meadowmont option entirely.

But Gordon’s request on that point drew no support from other committee members.

Among Chapel Hill officials, there’s a “general belief [that the south-of-54 option is] going to be the one that meets the town’s best interests,” Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt said.

But on the Town Council there “wasn’t support for completely eliminating” the Meadowmont option at this point, he said.

Wednesday’s cross-county committee decision came just hours after a divided Orange County Commissioners had given Gordon permission to vote for the N.C. 54 routing.

The commissioners’ debate focused mostly on another issue, County Manager Frank Clifton’s suggestion that they ask Triangle Transit’s planners to consider as an alternative to N.C. 54 a routing that would hew to U.S. 15-501.

The 54-focused routing endorsed Wednesday would follow U.S. 15-501 through southwest Durham until it hits Interstate 40, there turning south to follow the interstate to N.C. 54 before heading west again toward Chapel Hill and UNC.

Clifton and Orange County Planning Director Craig Benedict argued last month that a routing that skips the jog south along I-40 would open up redevelopment opportunities in Chapel Hill along U.S. 15-501.

But Triangle Transit officials noted that all the region’s land-use and transportation planning since the mid-to-late 1990s has assumed an N.C. 54 routing.

Reconsidering the matter now would cause a 12- to 18-month delay, and in focusing on U.S. 15-501 would be eying a corridor that’s only the fourth-most-popular choice of those who commute to UNC, Orange’s largest employer, said Patrick McDonough, a Triangle Transit senior planner.

Orange Commissioners Chairwoman Bernadette Pelissier made it clear at the outset that she thought county officials should defer to Chapel Hill’s preferences in the matter.

“This whole issue of 15-501 and 54 is related to their land-use plan,” she said. “We have heard from Chapel Hill that they have built in 54 based on transit. The land-use plan is within the jurisdiction of the towns, not the county.”

Commissioner Barry Jacobs was also unwilling to brook delay.

“We’re essentially the caboose on this train,” he said, noting that Chapel Hill’s and other local governments had already weighed in.

But Commissioner Steve Yuhasz said the development that could be sparked in Orange’s jurisdiction along U.S. 15-501 could go a ways toward overcoming doubts he and others have about the extra expense involved in based transit on rails instead of buses.

For Orange County, “there are very few economic development opportunities” in an N.C. 54 routing, he said.

Yuhasz and Commissioner Earl McKee dissented from a 5-2 vote by the Orange board that gave Gordon the instructions she followed Wednesday morning. McKee attributed his opposition to a broader preference for using buses only, for the flexibility they offer in choosing and changing routes.

McDonough noted that nothing in Tuesday or Wednesday’s decisions rules out a separate study of transit in the U.S. 15-501 corridor. He also pointed out that local transportation planning has endorsed an expansion of bus service there.