Why doesn’t the Triangle’s proposed commuter rail line go to RDU airport? What to know.

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When people learn about plans to build a commuter rail line through the Triangle, one of their first questions inevitably is, “Why doesn’t it go to the airport?”

You heard it more than 20 years ago, the first time the Triangle drew up plans for commuter trains connecting Raleigh, Cary, Research Triangle Park and Durham.

“Everyone, even people who don’t support it, have said, ‘How come you’re not going to the airport?’“ then Raleigh Mayor Charles Meeker said in 2001.

The question has resurfaced again as GoTriangle proposes a similar system of trains between Durham and Johnston County. People who think they might never ride a commuter train can envision themselves taking it to Raleigh-Durham International Airport, instead of driving and paying to park for a week or two.

The simple answer is that the existing rail corridor where GoTriangle would put commuter trains doesn’t go to RDU, and building a spur would be difficult and tremendously expensive.

The proposed commuter rail line would follow tracks owned by the North Carolina Railroad Company and used by Amtrak and freight trains. Those tracks happen to go most of the places you’d want to serve with a commuter rail line, including RTP and existing downtown train stations in Raleigh, Cary and Durham.

But some places would be left out, including Chapel Hill, Raleigh’s North Hills and RDU.

“If the right-of-way was there, we’d be at the airport,” says Charles Lattuca, GoTriangle’s president and CEO. “That’s a no-brainer. We are going to have to address the airport. You hear that all the time.”

Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) to the airport

The plan now is to run shuttle buses between RDU and the closest commuter rail station, in Morrisville, a distance of about three miles.

Remaining within the existing rail corridor is the easiest and cheapest path the Triangle could take for commuter rail. But even then, building a second set of tracks and new stations and buying train cars would cost about $3.2 billion, a price that would likely force GoTriangle to build the line in phases rather than all at once.

Longer term, transportation planners expect better bus connections to RDU, including possible extension of Bus Rapid Transit or BRT. Both Raleigh and Chapel Hill are developing their first BRT lines, which combine the lower cost and flexibility of buses with some attributes of rail, including covered, elevated platforms and dedicated lanes to avoid traffic.

Because of those similarities, BRT should stand for “Buses Resembling Trains,” says Joe Milazzo, executive director of the Regional Transportation Alliance, which represents the business community on transportation issues. Speaking at the RTA’s annual meeting Jan. 31, Milazzo said the Triangle needs better transit to RDU, but there are limits to what’s possible.

“So once and for all: How do we get trains to the airport? We do not. We do not get ferries to the airport either,” Milazzo told the gathering. “But we are going to do BRT, and BRT stands for ‘Buses Resembling Trains.’ So you’ll have trains to the airport, they’ll just be buses.”

Isn’t the real reason because the airport opposes it?

Many people think commuter rail isn’t going to RDU because the airport doesn’t want it. The thinking goes that a rail system would compete with RDU’s lucrative parking operation, so the airport has opposed it.

Indeed, the airport has more than 17,000 public parking spaces on its campus and plans to expand its largest remote parking lot, Park Economy 3, in part to meet growing demand. People drive from throughout central and eastern North Carolina to catch flights from the Triangle, says Michael Landguth, RDU’s president and CEO.

Landguth says the airport would welcome more and better transit connections, including someday BRT buses.

“We want to make it smooth, convenient and easy for people to get in and out,” he told a virtual gathering of the RTA in January. “Truly, we’re looking at multi-modal. It’s vehicles, it’s public transportation, it’s Uber, it’s Lyft, black car limousine, busing. All modes.”

For now, RDU is served by only one public bus system, GoTriangle, which on weekdays between 6:30 a.m. and 6 p.m. operates a shuttle between the airport and its regional transit center near RTP, where riders must transfer to another bus. At nights and on weekends GoTriangle Route 100, an express bus that runs between the regional transit center near RTP and downtown Raleigh, stops at the airport, though only every hour on weekends.

GoTriangle’s commuter rail feasibility study can be found at www.readyforrailnc.com/feasibility/. There’s a link on the page to a survey that local governments will use in part to decide whether to press forward with the project. The agency will collect comments on the study through Feb. 19.