Spotlight On: Charles Lattuca, President & CEO, GoTriangle

Spotlight On: Charles Lattuca, President & CEO, GoTriangle

2022-11-22T14:13:35-05:00November 22nd, 2022|Infrastructure, Raleigh-Durham, Spotlight On, Transportation|

2 min read November 2022 GoTriangle serves as the regional transit system for the wider Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area. In a conversation with Invest:, Charles Lattuca, president and CEO of GoTriangle, touched on some of the issues facing the development of a more unified regional transit system, how he and others are addressing those issues and the outlook for the region’s transportation infrastructure as more people flock to the Triangle. 

Since you last spoke with Invest:, what has been going on at GoTriangle?

A lot of things are happening. The agreements around the Raleigh Union Station Bus Facility Project have been finalized. We have started early construction activities on that project and are demolishing some old warehouses to make room for the $275 million public-private development that will be an off-street bus transfer facility in the bottom part of a mixed-use project that will be up to 40 stories. An off-street bus facility will be located on the first floor. Private elements will include approximately 600,000 square feet of residential use with just under 600 rental apartment units across two towers. Approximately 10% affordable apartment units will be provided at 80% AMI. We want to start vertical construction on the off-street bus facility in 2023 and we hope that it will be completed in 2025.

In addition to that, we are bringing to conclusion our $9 million Greater Triangle Commuter Rail feasibility study. We are examining building rail connecting Johnston, Wake and Durham counties.

What does transportation look like in the Triangle’s future?

With all the new jobs and residents coming, there will be challenges. Each city here has its own transit system, and GoTriangle is the regional system that connects them together. We need to start focusing on a more unified system. Building out the commuter rail will serve as a launching point for the next generation of what the transit system will look like. It will knit things together more cleanly and help us manage the growth. 

What would be the environmental impact of the commuter rail?

It will have a great impact. It will take cars off the road and reduce vehicle-miles. People will move more quickly, there will be less idling, less congestion, and overall better efficiency.

Commuter rail is just one piece of the puzzle, though. We need a bus system, some other form of microtransit, Uber and Lyft and things like that. They need to work together as a coherent whole.

Can you talk about ridership numbers today versus pre-pandemic?

Pre-pandemic, we were running about 6,500 people per day. We don’t carry the highest volume compared to the other transit systems but we do travel the longest distance. During the workdays now, our ridership is almost 73% of what it was prior to the pandemic, and on the weekends, it is the same and sometimes even higher. We are continuing to run fare free, which is contributing to those volumes. GoTriangle and the municipalities we serve will continue running fare-free through FY 2023.

What are some challenges you are experiencing?

We need to find ways to pay for the commuter rail system now that the study is finished. The cost came out higher than we expected: $3 billion instead of $2 billion. We also encountered some engineering and construction challenges in Cary and Durham that were more significant than we thought they would be. Despite that, we were still able to develop solutions that were less impactful on the cities and landscapes, which we were happy with. 

Finding the money for that construction is also a challenge. There are a few ways of doing that. The state and federal governments could both have a seat at the table that they currently do not have. The other option is to build the system out in phases. If we build a smaller first phase and see that there is interest, then there are more options for funding going forward from there.

Is your transit system experiencing labor shortages?

It is. However, we don’t have enough drivers right now and are down by about 30% of that workforce. We are working hard to bring people on and we are starting to see an uptick in that but it is not happening as fast as we would like it to.

What are some ways that you are hoping to strengthen partnerships with the community moving forward?

As we develop new transit options, we want to make sure that we are servicing essential organizations like hospitals and universities. We want what we build to meet the work schedules of their employees. New companies are coming not just to the county but also to the edges of the county. There are no transit systems where some of those are coming in, so we will be talking to those communities to see how we can get workers to the new jobs at the crucial businesses that are choosing to open up there. 

We want to do more transit-oriented development like we did with the RUS Bus project, the Raleigh Union Station Bus Facility that brought in a $275 million development, of which just $40 million is public investment, which was huge. If commuter rail moves forward, though, we need to plan the development around those train stations. 

We also want to work with our other partners on bus rapid transit. Investments in those are also quite large and we want to do things that are complementary to their efforts so that we can maximize the transportation development in the area. 

All of these things will help us work with the private sector and other institutional stakeholders to make sure that the development we are doing makes sense for them. We are always listening to them for their input.

What are your priorities for the next few years?

Our priorities are commuter rail, expanding bus service and getting enough drivers and transit-oriented development. We serve developers and institutional stakeholders like hospitals and universities and we want to make sure that we are working very closely with them.

We also want to make sure that we have more electric buses on the road. The federal government is helping us with that. There are challenges with that, though, because we run regional routes that cover long distances that may exceed the charge capacity of an electric bus. The technology for that is improving, so we hope to bring more vehicles into our fleet soon. Siemens in North Carolina makes bus charging stations, so we could potentially work with them and other partners to accelerate the implementation of this process. 

What do you see as the next steps for the region? What will it look like in a few years?

We need to make sure that we are talking about regionalism, which includes transit, energy, broadband, etc. We need to make sure that we invest to benefit the region, not just one of its many counties. That is a challenge because it will cause a new way of thinking here. It will force people to consider regional impacts of the decisions they make. That will be the key to the region’s success. 

For more information, visit: 

https://gotriangle.org/ 

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