The city of Raleigh wants to rezone 744 properties totaling 726 acres along and near the New Bern Avenue bus rapid transit line. Stakes are in the ground along New Bern Avenue in Raleigh to show where the city's first Bus Rapid Transit line will run.
Construction on Wake BRT is expected to start this fall on the 5.4-mile route between downtown’s GoRaleigh Station and New Hope Road. It’s the first of four BRT lines planned for Raleigh. The transit promises more frequent and reliable service that can cut travel time by 10 minutes compared to today’s buses. How BRTs work in Richmond, Virginia
Faith Walker leads the nonprofit RVA Rapid Transit in Richmond, Virginia.
“We advocate for frequent and far-reaching public transportation in the region,” Walker said.
Richmond’s BRT is called The Pulse, which is a 7.6-mile route that runs down Broad Street. It stops at 14 destination centers, including the Convention Center Eastbound Station.
“It cuts down people’s travel times tremendously, so people are able to connect to different points a lot faster,” Walker said.
The Pulse travels in its own lanes and triggers its own lights to get ahead of traffic.
“The Pulse has the largest amount of riders compared to the other routes in our system,” said Greater Richmond Transit Co. Chief Development Officer Adrienne Torres.
How Raleigh’s BRT compares to Richmond’s
Raleigh’s first BRT will look like Richmond’s as it travels between New Bern Avenue out of downtown toward WakeMed.
The BRT will run in each direction down the median.
“Our riders are primarily low-income and primarily using it to go to work,” Torres said of Richmond’s ridership.
Richmond leaders anticipated 3,500 riders per day when The Pulse opened in 2018.
“Pre-pandemic, we were up to almost 8,000 a day, so it really, really did exceed expectations,” Torres said.
However, BRT riders aren't getting back on-board as quickly as other routes--and ridership is down 11% from before the pandemic.
Torres said the BRT has worked for Richmond.
However, Lynetta Thompson disagrees. At the time the city of Richmond was debating the BRT, Thompson was the president of the Richmond NAACP. She fought against the city's plans for The Pulse.
“I feel like we lost,” Thompson said.
Thompson says bus rapid transit is driving gentrification along the route. She helped file a civil rights complaint to the U.S. Department of Transportation against the system.
“They’ve brought in a whole new group of businesses, another layer, another tier of a community and that’s not a problem if we all get to share in it, but we don’t,” Thompson said.
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