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Comment by nsx147 | Hacker News Reader

Ask for Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill area to build better transportation, and that's the pick

+1. Proximity to Duke/UNC/NCSU/WFU means there are plenty of local new grads, MBAs, and Ph.D's. Already a pipeline of foreign talent immigrating to the Research Triangle. Good weather. Beach is three hours one way and the mountains are three hours the other. Local government will throw themselves at Amazon.

That's a multi-decade project. They should get started now and will be competitive for whatever the Amazon of 2040 is.

The first step is a backbone rail line that starts in Chapel Hill, runs up to Duke, then through Durham to RTP, to the Airport, and from there to and through Raleigh. Then add spurs and spokes to cover the region and funnel people to the backbone.

Good luck getting the legislature to authorize, much less fund that.

The current airport authority will sadly fight rail at the airport tooth and nail. I believe they make more money off parking fees than the flight ops.

Moreover, the strongest / largest municipality in the region (Wake/Raleigh) seems to be the least interested in serious non-road public transport projects, as they just withdrew from their chunk of the light rail connection with Durham / CH.

The Chapel Hill-Durham section of that is already in planning: http://ourtransitfuture.com/projects/lrt/

How did we ever manage to get where we are today without all that? Pretty much every major company has a presence here, not sure why Amazon alone warrants all that infrastructure.

I grew up in Raleigh and go to NC State. I'm very skeptical that RDU is a better location than Newark (NJIT, Stephens, Rutgers, Columbia, NYU) or Atlanta (GTech, UGA).

The talent is here at UNC and Duke but airport and local public transit is the weakest point.

With that said, I'd love for them to come here as long as they maintain salary parity.

Theres little-to-no traffic and land is cheap, public transit isn't needed.

The population density is probably higher on average in New Jersey than in metro Raleigh..

"little-to-no traffic"

As someone who lives in Durham and frequently commutes to Chapel Hill and Raleigh, the existing infrastructure would NOT support a big increase in commuters. During morning and afternoon rush hours, the highways are just BARELY large enough to prevent total gridlock. If you add just 10000 more cars commuting to Raleigh from Durham or Chapel Hill, you have a traffic nightmare in the making.

Triangle resident here, and we don't have anywhere near the density to actually make general-purpose light rail work, economically.

That said, I do think we're somewhat competitive for this, even though I don't want to see Amazon move in. The housing stock availability is a huge liability for the locals...we're already in a seller's market right now.

I think (hope) North Carolina's history with the 'Bathroom Law' and the general lack of democracy at the state level makes Raleigh a hard sell.

Not really sure what’s wrong with it in the first place. There’s traffic but it’s nothing like other major cities.

100% agree with you here.

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