Growth is missing the buses

The city of Raleigh has paid a lot of attention to the razzmatazz of urban life -- a new convention center, a new downtown Marriott and a city-backed restaurant where one can wash down one's butter-poached lobster with a $250 bottle of a French burgundy.

But buses? For regular folks? We're talking a strictly Nabs-and-Pepsi diet here.

The Raleigh bus system is to a robust metropolitan public transit system what a bottle of Boone's Farm is to bottle of Mongeard-Mugneret '05 Grands-Echezeaux Grand Cru (the $250-a-bottle stuff).

For years, Raleigh's bus system was little more than a service for the working poor. But the city has grown to 368,000 people. More people are getting old and can no longer drive. Gas prices are increasing ridership all across the country, including a 10 percent increase in Raleigh during the past year. Ridership for the month of June was up 17 percent over a year ago.

Raleigh is moving to improve its bus system, but oh so slowly.

A year ago, I wrote a column about the lack of benches and shelters at bus stops. I had never paid much attention to bus service until my brother, a disabled veteran who relies on the buses, began pointing it out to me. Suddenly I saw people standing everywhere in the heat, the cold and the rain. In some cases, such as along Falls of Neuse Road, they were sitting on upturned grocery carts.

In the words of the great hymn: "was blind but now I see."

Of Raleigh's 1,700 bus stops, more than 1,300 lacked benches a year ago. Nearly 1,600 bus stops lacked shelters.

Progress has been ever so slow. In the past year, four shelters and 12 benches have been added, according to David Eatman, the city's transit administrator.

Eatman said the city has to get permission to use land from the state Department of Transportation or from private landowners.

The city of Raleigh has a standard for putting up benches and shelters. A bus stop must have at least 15 boardings per day for a bench or 25 boardings per day for a shelter. By those standards, there are only 33 bus stops that should have shelters but don't and 67 bus stops that should have benches but don't.

That is little consolation to an elderly or disabled person who has to stand at a seldom-used bus stop.

A bus bench costs $2,500 -- with a concrete pad -- and a bus shelter costs $8,000 to $9,000, according to Eatman. (A Toronto company has offered to put up benches and shelters for free -- with the right to charge for advertising -- but ran into opposition from the DOT.)

Besides a shortage of benches and shelters, there aren't enough buses. Bus service in Raleigh is so skimpy that it is difficult if not impossible to ride a bus to some of the city's major cultural institutions -- the performing arts center downtown or the state art museum in West Raleigh.

Raleigh has 72 buses. Charlotte -- a city twice Raleigh's size -- has 342 buses, plus 93 vans.

But Raleigh is trying. Its public transit budget has grown from $13.8 million to $21.3 million in the last three years. The city has ordered 19 new buses, scheduled for arrival next spring, although some are to replace decrepit buses rather than expand routes. New routes are being added downtown and to and from Wake Forest and in Wakefield.

All this is good. But one wonders: If buses had a little more glitzy appeal, would the city do more?