NC: Work on Raleigh’s long-delayed bus rapid transit line to begin this fall

Nearly two years after Raleigh held a groundbreaking ceremony for its first bus rapid transit line, construction crews will actually break some ground.

The city has awarded the first of three construction contracts to build the 5.4-mile BRT line along New Bern Avenue. Work is expected to begin by November.

City officials expect to choose companies for the other two contracts by the end of the year. Together, they will build the first BRT line in North Carolina, between downtown, WakeMed’s main campus and a new park-and-ride lot where New Bern Avenue meets New Hope Road.

If all goes as planned, the system will be running by the summer of 2030.

That’s nearly five years later than expected when city and state officials gathered to make speeches and shovel a symbolic pile of dirt in November 2023. Much of the delay stems from the city’s difficulty finding contractors to do the work.

The city twice sought bids from construction companies last year. The first time, no one bid. The second attempt yielded one bid that was more than $41 million higher than the city’s estimates and was rejected.

To entice more interest, the city broke the project in three and made changes to the bid specifications in response to suggestions from contractors. They included giving them more time to complete the work.GoRaleigh will use special 60-foot articulated buses on the New Bern Avenue bus rapid transit line. The city presented one of the buses at a groundbreaking ceremony for the BRT project on Nov. 7, 2023. Richard Stradling/[email protected]

The city received bids from four companies offering to do the first phase of the project, which includes paving, sidewalk and utility work along New Bern Avenue and Wilmington, Blount and Edenton streets between downtown and Poole Road. This month, the City Council awarded the $28.7 million contract to Rifenburg North Carolina.

The bid was about 3% higher than city engineers had estimated, said Het Patel, who is overseeing the project for the city.

“That was really as close as we’ve been since we started this process, and we felt good about how competitive the bids came in for the first package,” Patel said in an interview. “We really wanted to make sure that we were getting good competitive bids and not using taxpayer dollars on something that was not reasonable.”

The second request for bids, to continue the paving work from Poole Road to Interstate 440, goes out next week. The city will seek contractors for the rest of the paving and the stations in October. What is bus rapid transit?

Bus rapid transit is a relatively new form of mass transit that features some of the amenities and advantages of rail at much lower cost.

Passengers will buy tickets in advance and board buses from covered, elevated platforms, as on a train car. Displays at the stations will show when the next bus is due to arrive. The buses will get priority green lights at intersections and often travel in their own dedicated lanes, to avoid getting slowed by traffic. The New Bern Avenue BRT line will have 10 stations and 3.3 miles of bus-only lanes.When it opens in the summer of 2030, the New Bern Avenue bus rapid transit line will run about 5.4 miles between downtown Raleigh and a new park-and-ride lot off New Hope Road. GoRaleigh

The city eventually plans to build four BRT lines radiating from downtown, as outlined in the Wake Transit Plan, which voters endorsed when they approved a half-cent sales tax for transit in 2016. With the shelving of a proposed commuter rail line between Durham and Garner, BRT has emerged as the region’s primary new form of transit.

At the groundbreaking for the eastern line two years ago, the city estimated it would cost about $97 million. Accounting for inflation and updated estimates, the city now expects it will cost $108 million, Patel said.

Raleigh has received $46 million from the federal government for the New Bern line; the rest will come from the city and from the half-cent sales tax.