A video tucked away neatly at ourtransitfuture.com shows a flyover of the planned light rail system for Chapel Hill and Durham. The 14-minute video begins behind the parking decks of UNC’s hospital, and follows the route all the way to its eastern terminus near NCCU, east of downtown Durham.

What’s remarkable in the plan is the amount of elevated guideway that is planned, especially in thinly populated areas of Chapel Hill. Elevated guideways significantly increase costs because each span between stanchions must hold the weight of a train and its passengers for each direction of track supported. The elevated guideways allow the train to travel through the wetlands of east Chapel Hill and to traverse large roads, such as 15-501, where grade separation is required. The section near the Smith Center is, perhaps, the most perplexing.

There seems to also be a difference in opinion between Orange and Durham Counties regarding the mixing of modes on existing streets. Grade level crossings are avoided, at great costs, in Chapel Hill where the MLK area of Durham integrates the rail down the road’s median and with its large intersections.

As I stated in the previous post, the plan really does a nice job at connecting most of the high-traffic destinations on the line. The line includes the UNC hospitals, the Smith Center, and Friday Center. While the line does not access the older parts of UNC’s campus, passengers can freely transfer to Chapel Hill’s excellent bus service for access to the older parts of campus (same goes for Duke). In Durham, Duke is accessed via its hospital. The plan presents several redevelopment nodes in Durham County, especially the Duke Street area where the system connects to Amtrak. While some of the planned stations are not at current population centers or destinations, they are at gaps in the city which will be easily filled, unlike the layout of Charlotte’s Blue Line.