Our Largest-ever RTA Annual Breakfast — and Perhaps Our Most Successful
- July 27, 2023
- Posted by: Jacob Rigg
- Category: Blog
RTA members,
Thank you to everyone who attended our largest-ever RTA annual breakfast event.
Last Friday we enjoyed seeing more than 250 business leaders, elected officials and transportation partners come together to celebrate the launch of BRT across the Triangle and the backbone of a future regional transit system.
As noted on the front page of today’s Raleigh News&Observer and Durham Herald-Sun, our elected partners spoke of the Federal Transit Administration’s increasing focus on BRT systems like we are building and planning in Raleigh, Garner, Cary, Chapel Hill, Durham, and nearby communities. Commuter rail is currently far more challenging to fund and operate both here and nationally, given the higher costs, changing travel and commuting patterns, comparatively low ridership, etc.
With a growing regional consensus, momentum, and action from the RTA event, we now have the opportunity to dramatically expand our nascent BRT system into a regional BRT network through purposeful investments and a growing federal funding partnership. In addition, we will continue to develop our existing regional and intercity passenger rail backbone, which now has 5-6 trains per direction every day serving Raleigh, Cary, and Durham.
If you missed this year’s RTA Transportation Breakfast or would like to relive it, you can view our photo gallery as well as presentations on BRT and a new FAST study which will tie our region’s BRT corridors together and link them to RDU Airport.. You can also listen to summary remarks from our various panelists about the importance and opportunity of BRT as well as a FAST network.
Thank you for attending, and for your ongoing partnership.
Let’s get moving,
Joe
Joe Milazzo II, PE
RTA Executive Director
