BY BETH VELLIQUETTE
bvelliquette@heraldsun.com; 918-1042
CARRBORO -- In 2035, will the streets be too crowded for people to drive from one side of town to the other?
Will gas cost $8 a gallon? Will there be any parking available at UNC and how much will it cost?
Will riding a bus or light rail be the easiest, cheapest and quickest way to get to work in the Research Triangle Park?
Will commuters be willing to park their vehicles at the edge of Carrboro and take a series of buses to get to the Raleigh-Durham Airport?
These are the questions city leaders are asking as they prepare a long-range transportation plan for moving people throughout the area.
On Tuesday, the Carrboro Board of Aldermen heard about a final draft of the 2035 plan, with an emphasis on how Carrboro would fit into the plan.
David Bonk, Chapel Hill's long range and transportation planning manager, and Steve Spade, transit director for the Town of Chapel Hill, told the aldermen that future transit planning involves a higher level of transit services along six gateway corridors and expanding the local bus service to support the gateway service.
In Carrboro, the preferred service will include express bus service on Hillsborough Road, originating at the intersection of Hillsborough and Homestead roads, (Calvander) and traveling south through downtown.
The second hub would include express service that begins on West N.C. 54 going through Carrboro Plaza and following a route on the 54 Bypass, then north on Greensboro Street, through downtown to Estes Drive Extension to Carolina North.
Those hubs would be intended to capture drivers, including the hundreds of commuters from Alamance County who work at UNC, at the edge of Carrboro, have them leave their vehicles in a park & ride lot and put them on an express bus to get them to the UNC main campus, Carolina North or other employment hubs.
There would be a central transit hub at UNC that could connect express buses to a light rail system that would link to regional transit.
Spade told the aldermen about a type of transit called bus rapid transit, which is at a level between express bus and light rail.
It uses the flexibility of lower capital costs of rubber tire bus service but uses concepts of light rail to make it more efficient, Spade said.
It's usually a higher capacity bus and has three doors, with a higher frequency of service, with a bus running every 10 minutes during rush hour.
A bus rapid transit moves along a dedicated corridor that is sometimes separated from regular traffic or it could operate within traffic with special diamond lanes or traffic signals that give buses priority.
The higher level of service would be in addition to the neighborhood bus routes that are currently in service.
