{"id":3834,"date":"2010-02-18T14:57:36","date_gmt":"2010-02-18T19:57:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.raleighpublicrecord.org\/?p=3834"},"modified":"2013-02-11T20:40:16","modified_gmt":"2013-02-12T01:40:16","slug":"r-line-successful-after-first-year-on-the-road","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/news\/2010\/02\/18\/r-line-successful-after-first-year-on-the-road\/","title":{"rendered":"R-Line successful after first year on the road"},"content":{"rendered":"

After a full year of service, Raleigh transit officials say the free downtown circulator known as the R-Line<\/a> has slightly exceeded their expectations.<\/p>\n

The service celebrated its anniversary Feb. 13, and through the end of January, about 178,000 people have boarded the hybrid-electric buses at an average clip of 521 per day.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe route was certainly performing at pretty much system-wide average for our entire CAT system, which is somewhere around 20 passengers an hour,\u201d said David Eatman, transit administrator for Capital Area Transit<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Cost per rider for the R-Line is also comparable to other bus services in the Triangle — each passenger costs the city about $2.86. Cost for CAT riders overall is a little higher at $3.33 each.<\/p>\n

But to downtown residents like Leo Suarez, there are other aspects of the R-Line that justify its $544,400 operating budget. Suarez, who chronicles downtown life on the blog The Raleigh Connoisseur<\/a>, says the R-Line represents a good public-private partnership that can promote downtown business.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are some business owners that take the risk and come downtown,\u201d Suarez said. \u201cIt\u2019s good to see the city make the investment too.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eatman said the return on that investment is reflected in the ridership figures, which peak toward the nighttime hours and on the weekend, when the bus runs until 2:15 a.m.<\/p>\n

That late-night schedule was one of the major draws for Suarez, who uses the service often.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was like, \u2018Finally, they\u2019re pushing something useful,\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Although he said the R-Line doesn\u2019t do much to attract those who travel from other parts of Raleigh to spend time downtown, he\u2019s noted it\u2019s often \u201cslammed\u201d during big events like First Friday<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey only value add for that is that you only have to park once,\u201d Suarez said.<\/p>\n

Looking forward, Eatman said there won\u2019t be any major changes to the service. He said that\u2019s because the R-Line avoided a typical pitfall of new routes like these.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the challenges of this type of service is that many people want to try to put a very limited service out to see how it will perform,\u201d Eatman said. \u201cThe problem is that many times, that very limited service doesn\u2019t have enough frequency or isn\u2019t nice enough to draw ridership.\u201d<\/p>\n

Instead, transit began the R-Line with high-quality service and an \u201caggressive schedule.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s a major commitment, but the public has responded by using the service,\u201d Eatman said.<\/p>\n

But he pointed out CAT is looking at planning bus shelters for the R-Line, as well as new signage featuring the recently implemented real-time GPS tracking<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Eatman also said he doesn\u2019t think ridership has peaked yet on the year-old route, especially as winter retreats.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got a very bright spring and summer ahead of us,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

By spring 2011, however, he said the R-Line will be more established and well known in the community, a fact that may stabilize its numbers and slow gains in ridership.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s when you\u2019re really probably going to test yourself of, can you keep the momentum going, can you continue to grow the ridership,\u201d Eatman said. \u201cPersonally I think we can, and at a minimum, we can sustain it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After a full year of service, Raleigh transit officials say the free downtown circulator known as the R-Line has slightly exceeded their expectations.<\/p>\n

The service celebrated its anniversary Feb. 13, and through the end of January, about 178,000 people have boarded the hybrid-electric buses at an average clip of 521 per day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24022,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15,23],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3834"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24022"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3834\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}