Chapel Hill is debating on the best way to implement bus rapid transit

Chapel Hill Transit is considering options to build new bus lanes or convert existing traffic lanes ahead of the anticipated North-South Bus Rapid Transit route.

N-S BRT will be the region’s first bus rapid transit system and is the main transit solution town officials are advocating for. It will span 8.2 miles from Eubanks Road Park & Ride to the Southern Village Park & Ride Lot. 

“We are getting to the point where we have the project about 30 percent designed and engineered, meaning we have a pretty firm grip on what the project is, and we just need to do a little further revising to really nail down to the – to like the inch – where all the project is going to be,” said Jeffrey Sullivan, community outreach manager for Chapel Hill Transit.

The route will operate seven days a week, with buses running every eight minutes during the day and every 10 to 20 minutes during the early morning and night. The project is expected to use high-capacity buses and traffic signal priority to achieve an estimated daily ridership of about 8,500. 

“Once the BRT is up and running, we’re actually hoping to use about a 7 1/2 minute headway, so a bus will come every 7 1/2 minutes,” said Matt Cecil, transit development manager for Chapel Hill Transit.

Traffic signal priority will help buses get back on schedule if they’ve fallen behind, Cecil said. That system will extend green lights and shorten red lights to allow for expedited transit, he said, but it will not interfere if the bus is running on schedule. 

“For the majority of the corridor, it’s going to operate in its own bus-only lane,” Cecil said, noting that the N-S BRT would not have a dedicated lane near the hospitals.

As a result, Chapel Hill Transit needs to decide whether to construct new bus-only lanes or convert existing traffic lanes to create the two bus-only lanes, Sullivan said.

The Chapel Hill Town Council received the traffic analysis for the proposed plan at a work session on Oct. 16.

The traffic analysis presented to the town council focused on the area between Eubanks Road and the UNC Hospitals area, Cecil said. This analysis will help inform the decision to either convert or construct the new dedicated bus lanes.

Chapel Hill Town Council member Michael Parker asked if, rather than two bus-only lanes, there should be one lane that switches directions depending on the time of day, noting that with transit decisions, the council is mainly seeking to address two “bad hours” – the morning and evening rush hours.

“So instead of adding two lanes, you add one lane, and that goes in one direction in the morning and one direction in the afternoon, because it’s two hours that you’re really trying to optimize,” he said, noting that other regions have been successful with this operational change.

N-S BRT is part of a larger effort to improve public transportation in the community. Sullivan said Chapel Hill Transit is collaborating with the Federal Transportation Administration’s Small Start program to obtain federal funding for the N-S BRT route.

Cecil said while current efforts are focused on N-S BRT, there are some very rough sketches of a possible second bus rapid transit route that could span across town, connecting Carrboro and Chapel Hill.

“It goes beyond just having excellent bus service,” Cecil said. “It’s showing that the community that we’re a part of is dedicated to taking that transportation service to another level.”

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