BUSINESS
THE FUTURE OF TRANSIT
Nearly a year after the collapse of the light rail project, Orange County conducts a more considered search for Plan B
G
BY MICHAEL McELROY | PHOTOGRAPHY BY BETH MANN rowth has put our region on countless national lists of the best places to live. But the traffic is a different kind of superlative. While Orange County’s population growth is slowing, it still outpaces the state average, and the region adds 80 people a day, threatening to overwhelm roads ill-suited for such high volume. Commutes are maddening. Fender benders can back up traffic for miles. Regional leaders have long known that something needed to be done. In some form over the last 20 years, Durham and Orange County officials settled on a light rail system linking the two areas. It would solve congestion on the 15-501 corridor and be a state-of-theart mass transit system worthy of cities of the future. Voters in Durham and Orange counties
passed sales tax increases to fund a transit plan with light rail at its center; the state agreed to pay 25% of the total cost. Officials secured a major Federal Transit Administration grant to pay for another 50%, and Duke, UNC and other key stakeholders signed nonbinding agreements of support. Then in February, after two decades of planning, the Durham-Orange Light Rail plan fell dead at the party, and the guests accused one another of its murder. The collapse inflamed resentments that may take years to ease, but city leaders say that it also provides an opportunity. The light rail consumed a huge portion of the sales tax revenue, and now with that money freed up, who knows what could happen? Will the same disputes that doomed the light rail resume? And with the traffic still terrible, can the region afford another 20 years of planning? What can Orange County expect in the process to find what’s next?
28 • chapelhillmagazine.com • January/February 2020
Recent interviews with more than 20 government officials, business leaders and residents across the region suggest that, despite their severe disappointment, county leaders are intent to learn from their mistakes and are excited for alternative ideas.
A BITTER DIVORCE Every suspicious death deserves an autopsy. For many advocates of the light rail plan, its collapse was not just suspect, but an outright sabotage. The fight over who to blame has been well-covered, however, and all sides can name their villains with little help. Some sources for this article were far more candid off the record, but on the record they repeatedly expressed the genuine need to move on. So we’ll be brief. The spread of light rail systems across the country began in the 1960s, according to a study by Thomas A. Garrett, a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank
of St. Louis. And while the heavy rail systems of New York, Chicago and the like were born out of necessity, Garrett wrote, “The development of modern light-rail systems has been motivated by their potential to not only alleviate traffic congestion but to foster economic development.” For a region poised to boom, the allure was too bright to ignore. Light rail’s significance to the region grew profound. It could safely carry en masse the Durham residents who worked at UNC and the Chapel Hill residents who worked at Duke. The final numbers called for 17.7 miles of electromagnetically powered rail from UNC Hospitals to North Carolina Central University, connecting three major universities and covering 19 stations at 23,900 trips a day. Then, to put it simply, disagreements occurred. While feelings remain raw, the region owns the collapse together, and the problems
