RDU chief asks TTA to include airport in plans

Don't skip the airport this time.

That's John C. Brantley's message to the mayors, moguls and mobility wonks who are cranking up a big Triangle transit rethink.

Raleigh-Durham International Airport was not among the 12 train stops proposed in the Triangle Transit Authority's plan for a 28-mile commuter rail line through Durham, Research Triangle Park, Cary and Raleigh. Brantley is the airport director.

Now that TTA has shelved its hopes for federal funds to finance 60 percent of the $810 million project, local folks are chewing on a number of questions that boil down to two words:

What next?

Civic groups and planning boards are talking about which busy corridors would make the best use of rail or other transit investment in the next 25 years. And about how to come up with the necessary millions of dollars.

At a forum last week organized by the Urban Land Institute, a real estate industry and planning group, Brantley made a pitch for making sure any new transit system serves the airport at the region's center.

But don't stick RDU at the end of a rail cul-de-sac, he said, with trains running out to the airport and doubling back into town on the same tracks. Instead, he said, the Triangle should emulate Washington's Metrorail trains that go in one side of Reagan National Airport and out the other.

"That way, you connect it to the entire region," Brantley said. "And you'll be more successful in doing so."

Brantley's endorsement may disappoint conspiracy buffs who say RDU secretly fears public transit as a threat to its lucrative parking garages. But it will cheer critics who fault TTA for not finding a way to send trains to the airport.

TTA went about it all wrong, Brantley said -- settling first on trains in the N.C. Railroad corridor, and then trying to make that idea work.

"I think that needs to be turned around, and we need to ask two questions," Brantley said. "What do we need, and where do we need to have it? If you ask it in that fashion, much as the Metro did in Washington, you come up with a different answer."

There's no short list of likely routes yet. But the Road Worrier list of unofficial candidates includes U.S. 1 north from Raleigh, which already is being studied, and the Glenwood Avenue-Brier Creek-RDU corridor -- briefly considered in the 1980s, when it wasn't half the hot spot it is now.

Add various Outer Loop arcs and interstate segments, including I-40 into Johnston County. And don't dismiss the original TTA plan to serve Duke and N.C. State universities and RTP.

Perhaps the harder questions are the ones about money. Developer impact fees and local sales taxes have helped pay transit bills in other cities. Other options include tax-increment finance districts, which tax businesses and others who stand to profit from nearby transit improvements.

Charles A. Hayes, president of the Research Triangle Regional Partnership, is one of the Triangle's chief industrial recruiters. He hopes we won't wait too long to figure out our next moves.

"Most all of the places we're competing with have worse local traffic than we do," Hayes told the ULI group. "But we're catching up, which is not good."

Transit talk Thursday

A free public discussion about growth and transit is scheduled Thursday from 3:30 to 7 p.m. at the N.C. Museum of History in downtown Raleigh, organized by the Women's Transportation Seminar.

Speakers include local developers; transit officials from Charlotte, Denver, Dallas and Salt Lake City; U.S. Rep. David Price, and David D. King, TTA's new manager. Details are online at www.wtsncevents.org.