GoTriangle Announces August Service Changes

Today, GoTriangle, the North Carolina Research Triangle's primary regional transit agency, announced its proposed service changes for August 3rd. These service changes include realignments, added stops, removed stops, and reintroduced routes from pre-COVID. These are different from the March service changes, which have been finalized, and we will write about once they are put in place on March 9. Below are the service changes in order by route.

Route 305 (Raleigh - Apex - Holly Springs)

Arguably the biggest change to the 305 will be the currently peak-times only extension to Holly Springs becoming all-day, everyday. This extension, which is routed between stops at Apex Peakway / Hughes Street in Apex and Ralph Stephens Road / Collins Crossing Road in Holly Springs, currently includes 4 Raleigh bound trips in the morning and 4 in the evening, with 3 trips to Holly Springs in the morning and 5 in the evening, on weekdays only. The first run from Holly Springs, which departs at 6:25am from Ralph Stephens, runs Not In Service straight from the yard to its first stop before departing enroute to Raleigh, which is reflected by the last run to Holly Springs which departs Raleigh Union Station at 5:45pm and gets to Ralph Stephens Road at 6:50pm, which then goes out of service once it gets to its' southern terminus in Holly Springs and runs direct with no passengers back to the yard. While this many trips is considered great for peak-times service, the awkward gap between runs midday and especially on weekends makes getting to and from anywhere in Holly Springs tough, because if you're not commuting, you are stuck wherever you're going for at least a few hours before the next trip back into town. The route currently runs all day to Apex on an hourly frequency, and recently weekend service to Apex was added, but these new service changes will make the route much more uniform, with every trip, every day, running the full route all the way to Holly Springs. This makes sense, too, as Holly Springs brings in decent ridership, and more service can only increase it. There will soon also be another connection in Holly Springs that will make these changes make even more sense, that I will elaborate more about futher down in the article. Finally for Holly Springs, two stops are being added in town, which are Main Street at Cayman Avenue and Main Street at Holly Springs Road. I must add, the Main Street at Cayman Avenue stop was my suggestion, as it is the intersection of two moderately-sized neighborhoods with shopping and dining very close by, on top of more than 1 lane of apron space on both sides of the street, which makes adding a stop just too easy, and I doubt this stop would have been added without my suggestion, so if you ever get on or off there, think about your old pal here at the TTC. It also makes the walk to get to the 305 much shorter for me, so... yay me, I guess. The Main Street at Holly Springs Road stop will also be useful, as these are two big roads, with many houses and shopping areas surrounding this intersection, and plenty of space for a stop in the new turn lane added on the south side of the intersection, and plenty of existing space on the opposite side. Now, aside from Holly Springs, the route will also be completely realigned between Dillard Drive in Cary and Raleigh Union Station. Currently, the route runs straight town Western Boulevard after departing Raleigh before turning South onto Jones Franklin Road at Plaza West, but with the new realignment, the route will run down Morgan Street and Hillsborough Street through N.C. State University where it will turn South and serve stops along Pullen Road, Oval Drive, Varsity Drive, Avent Ferry Road (the Raleigh one, not to be confused with Avent Ferry Road in Holly Springs), Gorman Street, and Tryon Road. In my opinion, while this new alignment runs down more local roads, I have a feeling that it will somehow still be faster than the current Western Boulevard alignment, as Western is almost always bumper-to-bumper traffic during peak times, which makes many runs of the 305 devastatingly late. The new alignment means the 305 will lose a valuable connection to GoRaleigh and GoCary routes at Plaza West, but there are still ways to get there with some transfers from the 305. More information such as frequencies, operating times, and a complete added / removed stop overview can be found on GoTriangle's website. 

Route 311 (RTC - Holly Springs)

Yes, you read that right, that says Route 311. And yes, you also read that part right, that says Holly Springs. After much public feedback (including my own) suggesting that route 311 come back, GoTriangle has answered our call and reintroduced the route, with a new extension that has the suburban folk of Holly Springs such as me quite turnt at this current moment in time. The original 311, which was suspended due to COVID-19, started at the Regional Transit Center in Durham and served stops along Kit Creek Road (Cisco building 10), N.C.-55, and in Downtown Apex, before its final stop at what is now the current alignment of route 305's Pine Plaza deviation, where the route, instead of running the same way it came because that would be stupid, instead ran straight down Highway 64 to get back to 55. It also had a lot of different am/pm directions that I don't fully understand so in everyone's best interest I will not try to explain them. The new routing will be more straightforward and useful, which is typically a good thing. It will still start at the Regional Transit Center in Durham, and will still serve Apex, but instead of deviating to Pine Plaza and terminating there, it will continue running South on N.C.-55 where it will meet its' new southern terminus at Sportsmanship Way in Holly Springs (Ting Park Park & Ride, although its' no-longer called Ting Park, and is now known as the "North Main Athletic Complex". I'm still calling it Ting Park, for the record). Here it will provide a useful connection to route 305 and the Holly Springs Hopper microtransit. After serving Ting Park, instead of doing a janky turnaround in the parking lot, it will turn North on Main Street and meet back up with its routing on 55 after about a mile or so. Personally I think at least one person will use the Holly Springs extension very frequently, that one person may or may not be me. In all seriousness, this will be a very useful connection to bring people from the suburbs of Apex, Holly Springs, and West Cary into their jobs at RTP or to other GoTriangle connections at the RTC, and will end the need to go via Cary or Raleigh to get anywhere west of Apex or Holly Springs for the riders in said towns. The route will run weekdays only as it did previously, but will run all day on an hourly frequency, which is a step up from peak-times only, which it was before it was suspended. More information can be found on GoTriangle's website.

Route 420 (Chapel Hill - Hillsborough)

GoTriangle is once again reassuming operations of route 420, which runs between Chapel Hill and Hillsborough. Currently it is operated by Chapel Hill Transit, although it was not very long ago, less than a year ago infact, that GoTriangle gave the route to them. It is still technically a GoTriangle route and you must pay a fare to ride (even though Chapel Hill Transit is free, hence the UMO readers on the 2012 units), but GoTriangle "contracts" CHT to run the route for them. There will be no changes to frequency, service times, or alignment. The route will run half-hourly weekdays only at peak times between 6:00am and 9:15am, and in the afternoon between 3:45 and 7:00pm. It will continue serving stops at UNC Hospitals, Downtown Chapel Hill, Durham Tech (Orange County Campus), UNC Hospital Hillsborough, and Downtown Hillsborough.