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DURHAM -- Early planning in Durham, Orange and Wake counties all points to the likelihood that they'd use some of the proceeds of a half-cent sales surcharge tax for transit to pay for major, early expansions of bus service.
Even given conservative, recession-driven revenue projections, it looks like there'd be money enough to expand the Durham Area Transit Authority's offerings by a third and double service on Raleigh's Capital Area Transit, Durham Transportation Director Mark Ahrendsen said during a Tuesday briefing for Durham elected officials.
But one key question remains the timing of legislatively mandated, separate referendums on the tax in each of the three counties.
Administrators have been assuming their governments would put the question the voters in the fall of 2011, but Tuesday's discussion showed the county commissioners who would decide the matter for Durham aren't sure conditions will be right then.
They and Triangle Transit General Manager David King all said the key issue would be the economy.
"For that to happen, the economy has got to get better," King said, referring to the fall 2011 timetable. "No just more [gross domestic product], but more jobs. People have got to feel in their gut a sense of economic security."
King and Ahrendsen stressed, however, that local officials have to spend the remainder of 2010 preparing the transit plans for each of the counties that the General Assembly last year set as precondition for any referendums.
"It's easy to postpone the vote based on economic conditions not having measured up," King said. "But if conditions do improve, if the plan's not ready you can't force it to be ready in time for a vote in fall 2011."
Tuesday's briefing -- conducted for members of the City Council and County Commissioners -- highlighted some of the design and political issues the plans have to address.
Officials figure on front-loading bus service in any plan to show voters an early return on their money, build ridership and generate more support for transit.
But as they have for a couple decades now, they see rail service eventually becoming the backbone of a regional system.
And as it always has, that confronts officials with a design dilemma -- namely, that there isn't any one rail technology that promises to work immediately everywhere in the Triangle.
Planners have long assumed that in relatively dense places like Chapel Hill and western Durham, commuters would board streetcar-like "light rail" cars capable of frequent stops.
But to get from there to more distant locales like Raleigh or Clayton, it looks like they'd need heavier, mainline-capable rail cars that would run faster but make fewer stops.
Current thinking by administrators and Triangle Transit officials suggests using both technologies -- as did an earlier plan stymied by Bush administration policy changes, and a spring 2008 report from a citizens group tasked with reviewing transit policy.
Durham Mayor Bill Bell, however, said Tuesday he prefers the idea of using light rail throughout the system, to create what he termed "a seamless" experience for riders.
Transit planners floated that as a possibility starting in the fall of 2008, when officials with the N.C. Railroad signaled they'd be open to seeing light rail share the existing rail corridor between Durham and Raleigh.
But light rail is roughly four times as expensive as mainline-style service, mainly because of the provisions builders would have to make for powering the cars electrically.
Ahrendsen said the recession-lowered revenue estimates for the sales-tax surcharge county finance types are insisting on don't promise money enough to cover that everywhere.
There's also not enough housing around RTP to justify the extra expense of light rail between Durham and Raleigh.
"We're not really fixing the RTP issue until redevelopment happens" there, City Councilman Mike Woodard said, backing Ahrendsen.
Bell remained dubious. "Long term, I'm not convinced if we start with express rail we'll ever get the light rail piece," he said.
