Clayton & Fuquay old downtown areas seem to be doing pretty well with local restaurants and local business. (Apex is nice also). Why do you think they are doing well, while Garner and Benson are desolate?
There is that quaint feel walking downtown in Clayton and in Fuquay-Varina. Garner has about 2 blocks of a downtown and Benson seems a little chopped up. The Downtown Development Association in Clayton has done a great job making Clayton a fun, family oriented place to visit.
My opinion (for what it's worth) Garner's downtown area is very limited by one being a one sided street due to the train tracks. and Benson is a bit of a ways out from where the money is located and willing to shop. Fuquay and Clayton are so much closer with money actually moving into these area due to the ease and proximity of getting to the RTP area.
A lot of newcomers can't even find downtown Garner. No reason, everything is on 70 or 401. Kind of the growth in Smithfield. Unless you live near Benson, they have very little to offer (CPA, lawyer, photographer, Medlin and Dorman for farmers, Dixie Denning lpg, Carlie C's, a parts store).
Do you think once they get the commuter rail from Goldsboro to Raleigh that it will help the downtowns of Clayton and garner? http://www.dgdc.org/unionstation.aspx
Do you think once they get the commuter rail from Goldsboro to Raleigh that it will help the downtowns of Clayton and garner? No. Why would you train from Goldsboro to walk around Clayton or Garner or vice versa? Iv'e been to a couple of large cities where you can walk to anything. We don't have that in NC
All the talk about commuter rail around RTP makes no sense to me. You still have to drive to the depot. The parking lot would be as valuable as the rail ride. We don't have the density.
I think this is where it might help a small downtown like Garner. If the depot is close enough to downtown, that is. Imagine if I lived off Aversboro and worked in RTP. I could drive over to a park and ride and hop the train. After work, I'd get off the train and have a beer, coffee, do some shopping in the downtown area...if there were actually shops. I guess one thing is supposed to beget the other, but downtown Garner gets more irrelevant every day with White Oak blooming.
News flash from Captain Obvious here. Downtown(almost) anywhere died in the 80's with outskirt malls. Revitalizations have rebuilt downtowns with a lot of time, effort and money. Railways don't bring revitalization. Population and jobs do, in the downtown areas. Just because people will take a train to see the panthers doesn't mean they will take it to the Ace Hardware.
I would much rather have 540 built than a commuter rail to RTP. Currently taking public transit from my house near 42/70 to where I work in RTP off Davis near 540, would take me 2 hours and I would have to change buses twice. I would also have to drive to the park and ride at Walmart (15 minutes included in the 2 hour commute). It would cost me $5.25 each way, not including the small amount of gas from home to the park and ride. Let's call that $11 a day. If I drive my car, it takes on average 40-50 minutes to get from my house to my office, door to door. Sometimes an hour with traffic. I burn about 5 gallons of gas per day at $1.20 a gallon today (I use E85, that's what I paid yesterday). So that costs me $6 round trip. So if I take public transit, it costs me $11 a day and takes 4 hours out of my day for commuting. And I am 100% relying on the bus schedule. If I drive myself, it costs me $6 per day and takes 1.5 to 2 hours out of my day for commuting. I am 100% on my own schedule. Therefore, it's $5 a day cheaper to drive myself, and I get 2 extra hours at home vs public transit. Now if I had something that was a real commuter car, like a hybrid or something, I would save another $2-3 a day in gas at least. But it wouldn't be as fun to drive as my 600 hp sports car Public transit just doesn't make sense for commuting from our area to RTP. Once 540 is built, my commute times will go from 40-50-60 minutes each way, down to about 30 minutes each way, never any traffic again.
I'm at RTP too. I never understood mass transit here. What would they do drop everyone off at Miami & TW Alexander Sheetz and you walk from there. Or they add a 15 passenger van to go around RTP. that would add another 20-60 minutes depending on where you were going.
For light rail or any real public transportation option you need denisty, which is not seen here. San Diego, for example, has sufficient denisty and efficiency of transport to make it work. Once you travel to the nodes for public transport you are just as likely to continue on because of the flexibility of need and inflexibility of the public transport schedule. You need to be able to get to all locations with relative ease and speed, but the exclusion of the airport from the light rail plans, for example, illustrate the limitations we have and will continue to have because there are not sufficient warm bodies going the same places at similar times to make it workable.
Current NC540 rates are roughly 15 cents per mile with a transponder, no reason to think it will differ that much. It would be a total of 30 miles on NC540 from US70/I40 to NC147/RTP. That would be about $4.50 per day each day, or $9 per day round trip, and a 1 hour round trip commute. So while it would be then $4 a day more than public transit, it would be 3 hours less per day. Since I make way, way more than $1.33 an hour, the extra $4 is well worth it to save 3 hours lol. And it would save me almost an hour a day over I40, for $9, that is totally worth my time and aggravation over the traffic.
Your assumption on the travel time for rail is huge to say the least. I am not saying it will ever be feasible around here, but they certainly will not design it so it takes the average commuter and additional 2 hours round trip (or at least I hope they wouldn't). My best guess is this: drive to park and ride lot near train station/platform = 15 minutes, train ride to RTP from Garner = 35 minutes including stops in Raleigh x2, Cary, and Morrisville (Amtrak takes 35 minutes from Selma to Raleigh which is a bit farther distance-wise), then shuttle bus to office = 15 minutes. So a little over an hour assuming everything goes well. Some days this will work out for the better when some yahoo decides to jack his car up in the middle of I-40, some days it won't. Also, who the hell wants to pay $45 a week to drive on a road. That's over $2,000 a year!
Right now it cost me $2.01 to go from NC55/540 to Holly Springs (NC55/540). I would guess to go on to NC50 would be double + so $4.50/day. I only drive it on the way home. I would pay that in a minute.
I was talking specifically about taking the JCX bus vs driving, not the rail. There will almost never be a rail line that can take me from my house to office. The JCX Bus Route is over 2 hours from 40/42 to RTP. For me it works out to about $1800 a year (I work from home 1 day a week, and I am off 2 weeks a year) to take NC540 from I-40/US70 to RTP/147. But it will save me about 100 hours total per year (15 minutes each way, each day). That works out to about $18 an hour. I think that is totally worth it spend an extra 100 hours per year at home instead of driving in traffic. Not to get specific, but when that is only about 1-2% of your yearly salary, it's worth it.
