Story by Brian Rosenzweig
Photography by Claire Jessen
Graphics by Bonnie Zhang
When John Tallmadge, interim project manager for the GoTriangle Durham-Orange Light Rail Transit, stepped onto the project in 2018, he had inherited a time bomb.
The light rail project, which had been in the works since the mid-2000s, had months before received a critical ultimatum from the North Carolina General Assembly: secure all pledges for non-state donations within two years, or lose out on funding from the state.
Over the past several years, the General Assembly had steadily reduced state funding from an expected $600 million to just $50,000. The project couldn’t move forward without support from the state, but non-state funding — including support from the federal government — almost definitely couldn’t be obtained without state funding.
“The clock was running out,” Tallmadge said. “That’s what was creating the urgency.”
In his nine months as interim director — ultimately, the final months of the project — Tallmadge worked tirelessly to secure the commitments necessary to have the project reach its deadline.
Things fell apart in February of 2019 when Duke University, citing concerns about construction on Erwin Road interfering with devices at its medical campus, failed to sign a cooperative agreement for the rail. Seeing no way forward, GoTriangle’s board of trustees formally voted to discontinue the rail in April of 2019.
One month later, Tallmadge left GoTriangle.
For Tallmadge, the end of the light rail wasn’t a one-off project failure. It was the conclusion of a decades-long attempt to establish a mass transit rail in the Triangle; it was a flagrant display of undue partisan influence within state government, and it was a testament to the challenges that public transit projects faced in the South.
Now, GoTriangle has debuted a new plan for developing a commuter rail between Durham and Raleigh, using existing railroad tracks. The project already faces an uncertain future, with a hefty price tag and funding left in the hands of local governments.
As one of the fastest growing areas in the country, the Triangle’s continued lack of an urban transit rail seems confounding, especially considering the success of the Blue Line light rail system in Charlotte. But amidst a sordid 20-year effort by GoTriangle to establish a system for the area, a complicated history of support from the federal government, and years of decreased funding from the North Carolina General Assembly, some critics like Tallmadge question if an urban mass transit system could ever be established in the area.
The Triangle’s early days of urban rail transit planning
When plans for the light rail ended in 2019, it wasn’t the Triangle’s first attempt at a mass transit rail.
The North Carolina Secretary of State established GoTriangle — originally known as Triangle Transit Authority — in 1989 to “plan, finance, organize and operate” public transportation across the Triangle.
Triangle Transit Authority established inner-city and regional bus services in the 1990s, but even from its earliest days, it was also focused on a long-term plan to establish a 28-mile rail corridor running northeast from Raleigh to Durham, with eventual plans to expand toward Chapel Hill.
But plans for the corridor were upended in 2006, when the Federal Transit Administration determined low ridership estimates wouldn’t justify the approximately $810 million price tag, and declined further funding.
By then however, Triangle Transit Authority had a new model for what urban rail transit could look like in a growing metropolitan area: the light rail system in Charlotte.
A tale of two cities
When Charlotte opened its light rail line in 2007, it made history. Not only was it the first rail of its kind in North Carolina, it was one of the few in the South.
In the months following its opening in November 2007, the 9.6 mile Blue Line rail achieved more than 14,000 daily rides, far exceeding initial ridership expectations, and transformed development in the area.
A 2011 study by the Center for Transit-Oriented Development found the Blue Line spurred nearly 10 million square feet of development, particularly transforming areas like South End, which changed from a historic manufacturing area to a densely populated residential and commercial area adorned with high-rise condos and local breweries.
The Blue Line’s success stood as a harbinger for the development of urban rail transit in the 21st century, and seemed to be undeniable proof that a similar system could be achieved in the Triangle.
Between 2011 and 2017, Durham, Orange and Wake county voters all approved referendums for a half-cent sales tax to fund public transportation efforts, with the light rail as a major beneficiary.
Yet Charlotte’s success didn’t translate to the Triangle. Due to external factors, the project was essentially dead on arrival.
Screeching to a halt
GoTriangle’s funding model for the Durham-Orange Light Rail began nearly identical to the Blue Line: 25% of funding from local governments and partners, 25% from the state, and 50% from the federal government. Originally, state contribution was expected at nearly $600 million.
But between 2007 and 2019, significant changes were made in the North Carolina General Assembly.
In 2013, the legislature passed the Strategic Transportation Investments Act, which stated that only 10% of the transportation department’s $700 million Highway Trust Fund could benefit non-highway projects like regional public transit systems.
From there, funding further decreased. By 2015, the state funding cap for the Durham-Orange Light Rail project had been reduced to $50,000, for a project estimated to cost $2.47 billion.
“$500,000 is the same thing as saying ‘no’ for a project that’s $2 billion,” Tallmadge said.
Tallmadge believes that lobbying by some residents of Downing Creek in Chapel Hill against a proposed light rail station in their neighborhood contributed heavily to the General Assembly, off-roading the Durham-Orange Light Rail project.
“And I believe that the chief of staff of the North Carolina House lived in that neighborhood,” Tallmadge said. “And so they were successful in getting this on the radar of the legislators.”
Tallmadge notes that while Duke University is often blamed for putting the final nail in the coffin for the project, the lack of support from the General Assembly would’ve rendered the project nearly impossible.
“I don’t want to totally let Duke off the hook, because if they had been a cooperative partner, we probably could have made it even despite all of the issues that the state was putting up. But there were other headwinds,” Tallmadge said. “Under any circumstances, [the General Assembly] didn’t think that rail transit was in the interest of the state taxpayer.”
New ways forward
Shortly after the light rail project ended, GoTriangle switched gears toward a new transit solution: a 40-mile commuter rail using existing railroad tracks that would run from downtown Durham, through Raleigh and out toward Clayton.
For GoTriangle, the proposed commuter rail achieves many of the same outcomes as the light rail: connecting the region with high-speed transit, providing commutes that are immune to traffic, and reducing car-dependency as the area continues to grow.
Jay Heikes, senior transit planner at GoTriangle, notes that the proposed commuter rail will provide a more regular service than traditional inter-city commuter rails, which often only run during early morning and evening periods to accommodate work commutes.
“It’s still very different than a light rail, but it’s a more robust service than you would have in a typical commuter rail,” Heikes said. “It isn’t necessarily limited to just typical commuting hours like you might find in systems in the Northeast, or elsewhere in the country where they’ve implemented commuter rail, this is more of an all-day train service.”
Matthew Clark, senior project coordinator for GoTriangle, said the commuter rail would run no fewer than 18 round trips every day, or “all-day service, every hour.”
And with a funding plan independent of the state government — drawing instead from local governments, funding partners, and the still-instituted half-cent sales tax in Durham, Orange and Wake counties — planners at GoTriangle feel confident about the ability of the commuter rail project to move forward.
But advocates for a distinctly urban transit system believe the commuter rail wouldn’t achieve the same positive development outcomes as the light rail.
John Rees, a board member of NEXT Chapel Hill-Carrboro, a non-profit that advocated for the Durham-Orange Light Rail as an equitable transit solution, believes that good public transit ought to spur central development within cities.
Rees worries that GoTriangle’s current focus on developing the commuter rail, with an estimated cost between $2.8 billion to $3.2 billion, could blind them to smaller investments in urban transit and contribute to further suburban sprawl.
“What’s going on right now is there’s so much sprawl-type development that it’s becoming — with every year that comes forward without any well-designed transit system — less and less likely that it’ll happen because there’s no place to put it,” Rees said.
Tallmadge shares a similar concern, believing the commuter rail’s limited schedule wouldn’t enable any of the accompanying urban development a light rail might.
“There’s only a few trips in the middle of the day, a couple trips in the evening, it doesn’t run at all on the weekends, so the only types of trips it works for are work trips,” Tallmadge said. “The commuter rail with the limited service levels would not allow you to move around more sustainably, and that defeats the premise.”
Clark and Heikes note that while the commuter rail remains a priority for GoTriangle, the organization is committed to multiple approaches to public transit.
Last summer, the N.C. Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization (CAMPO), a collaborative project between various governments and organizations in the Raleigh metropolitan area including GoTriangle, published its 2050 Metropolitan Transportation Plan.
The plan lays out various approaches to investing in public transit, including both the commuter rail and bus rapid transit, a transformed bus transit system that often consists of dedicated lanes and priority right-of-way at traffic signals, and increased service both within cities and regionally.
Though Tallmadge was a fierce advocate for the Durham-Orange Light Rail, he doesn’t see it as a reality in the near future. And until things change, Tallmadge believes planners in the area ought to focus on financially realistic, more readily achieved goals that can improve Triangle residents’ daily lives.
“I think that we should be focusing on bus rapid transit,” Tallmadge said. “I think we should be focusing on projects that we have very high confidence that we can deliver for the public so that for their taxpayers dollars, we are improving the community, and people are going to use it. We should be getting some smaller wins before going after the big project.”
