Chapel Hill Considering Adding Bus-Only Lane On MLK

The Chapel Hill Town Council approved a study that could be the first step to major changes along Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.

The study will look at a travel corridor for buses between MLK, South Columbia Street and portions of 15-501.

“Things don’t always work well in that corridor,” said transit director Brian Litchfield. “Accidents occur, people try to make strange turning movements and what happens to our 19 buses is they get stacked up behind each other.”

Photo via Town of Chapel Hill

To help solve this problem, the transit department offered three suggestions. Each suggestion includes having one traffic lane dedicated solely to bus use.

The least expensive option, estimated at $96.6 million is to convert one existing lane into this bus lane.

The other two options, both estimated around $105 million, will involve creating a new lane. One plan places the lane in the center of the road and the other places it on the outside.

“When we get down to the peak-hour traffic delay, you’ll see the first alternative results in slightly higher delays,” said Julia Suprock from AECOM Technology Corporation. “If you convert lanes that tends to result in slightly higher traffic congestion, whereas if you construct a lane you’re not affecting existing capacities.”

The new route would have a bus come up approximately every seven minutes.

Chapel Hill would also add 12 new buses to their fleet, something that has become a concern in recent years.

Photo via Town of Chapel Hill

“We’re talking about providing service that’s arriving every seven minutes or better,” Litchfield said. “It changes who’s using that system. Anyone that’s traveling within that corridor can say ‘wow I can go out and use this bus and I don’t have to think about where it’s going or whether it’s going to be on time.”

Litchfield said if everything goes smoothly, between the report and the engineering, the town could move towards construction of the project in four to five years.

“That’s a perfect time frame,” he said. “That assumes that while we’re doing the project development and engineering, we’ve also arranged for all of the local funds and we’ve also arranged for all of the federal funds. Most of that we have no control over.”

Litchfield said he expects the majority of the funding for the project to be from the federal government.

Depending on the plan chosen, the town is looking to get between $77 million and $85 million from the federal government, with some other money possibly coming from the state as well.

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