Citizens panel fleshes out transit ideas

The cover photo is a blur, but a regional transit vision begins to come into focus in a new draft report from the Triangle's Special Transit Advisory Commission.

The bus and rail transit recommendations will be sharpened Friday and forwarded next month to elected officials inWake, Durham and Orange counties. The recommendations include:

* Heavy expansion of local and regional bus service in the next few years, including express buses to Raleigh-Durham International Airport and new routes to outlying towns.

* Frequent "circulator" trolley or bus service in downtown areas and in Research Triangle Park, with a transit link from RTP to the airport.

* About $2 billion in rail transit investment to begin trains on 56 miles of tracks from Chapel Hill through Durham and RTP to downtown Raleigh and North Raleigh.

The final report is expected to include a call for new local taxes -- possibly a half-cent sales tax combined with an increase in the vehicle registration fee -- that would be dedicated to transit.

The Special Transit Advisory Commission is 29 business and civic leaders from three counties with co-chairmen George Cianciolo of Chapel Hill, a Duke University pathologist, and Bill Cavanaugh of Raleigh, a retired CEO of Progress Energy.

The citizens group was charged in May with setting new rail, bus and streetcar priorities through 2035 -- with an emphasis on what to do first during the next 12 years. By 2035, the region is expected to add more than 800,000 residents.

Commission members bent over backward to avoid simply rubber-stamping the Triangle Transit Authority's failed 28-mile rail proposal, which was shelved in 2006 after it ran out of local and federal support.

But at their meeting Feb. 4, they endorsed everything TTA ever wanted -- and much more.