‘Lifestyle Rail’ And Other Lessons From North Carolina’s DOT

Remote work was already popular, albeit resisted by many large employers in the pre-covid world, and now it’s the norm. Job descriptions today routinely now list that they “remote” or “hybrid.” One place it’s had a dramatic impact is on our transportation systems, including the demise of “commuter rail.” Millions of people are still commuting to work each week, but not nearly as many each day as did pre-covid, unless they have a job that requires them to be onsite.

These changes are still evolving, however, transportation systems and urban planning requires a long lead time, extensive planning and investment, as well as political will.

“Recognizing that we aren’t being held to the same (commuter) model anymore, we have to be nimble and we have to be flexible,” Deputy Secretary for Multimodal Transportation in the North Carolina Department of Transportation Julie White explained in an exclusive interview on Electric Ladies Podcast recently . “As a government who has to budget in transportation 2, 3, 4 years out, how do you do that is a great question. So we are trying to create budgets that can be flexible within how we use them in order to flex for those needs.”

By way of example, she talked about data she heard at one of her meetings as a member of the board of the American Public Transportation Association. “If we look at traffic patterns, commuting has changed. People are working from home more, so we’re not seeing the five-day-a-week commute. And even when they go in, they’re not necessarily going in at 7, 7 30 in the morning and coming home at 5, 5 30,” White recounted. In one community used as an example in the meeting, “people will take a meeting from home virtually, then hop in the car.so they’re more like 10 o’clock, 3 o’clock commuters. They’ll go home, and they’ll take the last meeting. So, they’re (this community is) reexamining their whole schedule and they’re calling it ‘lifestyle rail’ instead, sort of regular, continuous service throughout the day rather than peak. So, moving away from the term ‘commuter’.”

Every community is so different, and evolving, so how do you know what any community needs and wants – and in enough time to accommodate the long time horizon on transportation projects?

North Carolina is a highly diverse state, with both the second largest rural population in the U.S. (Texas has the largest, she said) and large university towns, as well as cities of various sizes. Their transportation system includes 72 public and 300+ private airports, teleports and landing areas, six intercity passenger rail routes, serving about a million riders per year, more than 20 ferries carrying both passengers and vehicles, 98 public transit systems serving 70 million+ passengers per year, two ports, and 80,000 miles of roadway.

But White and her team wanted to find out from the communities themselves, so they embarked on – and continue to – ambitious strategies to go directly to members of the communities. The plan they constructed, White said, derives in part from her past experience as executive director of the North Carolina Metropolitan Mayor’s Coalition.

Here are ways they chose to listen to their communities that might be illustrious for other state and local leaders:

Ø Ask the community leaders about specific options for transportation-related improvements: White said they would start with a high-level group assembled by the mayor of a given city or town, tapping into her experience with the mayors’ coalition: “Typically, the mayor would pull together council members, top city staffers, city managers, planning directors, um, economic development heads, chamber heads.”

Ø Leverage existing events as part of a “formal community engagement process”: Once they had this high-level input from the community, they went to the people, leveraging existing events. “There was a series of pop-up events, so we looked to, rather than create a unique event, tack onto something that was happening in the community that was already bringing people together,” she recounted.

Ø Surveys, social media, email, in multiple languages – and show up in person: “We did surveys and we offered those in multiple languages, both electronically and in person through social media, through email, using distribution lists the city had. So a lot of that kind of engagement. We also…said, ‘who are the organizations and your community that are engaging people in meaningful ways?’ So, churches, community groups, so we went through those and went to where their meetings were already happening and did a lot of presentations.”

Ø “What do you want in your downtown?”: That’s the question White and her team asked community leaders. “We went out to the communities and we met with them and said, ‘what do you want in your downtown? There’s this rail line that goes through the middle of your downtown. What’s your vision for that?’ And they all said, ‘we think rail is a really big part of our future right now. It’s just seeing one freight train a day. We’d love to see passenger rail reestablished on the line. We’d love to use that to spur economic development in our downtown. We think it creates foot traffic and then creates economic opportunity.’ ”

Ø Leverage the new Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) funding: These community leaders do not know how to leverage federal funding opportunities, much less how to write a grant, so White and her team do that heavy lifting. “We immediately looked to the IIJA and started to study it and say, ‘how do we pull down some federal resources to help these communities, right?’ We know how to write federal grants, we know how to administer federal grants, we know how to win ’em. So, we got with the town and said, ‘here’s what we’re thinking. We’ll write a grant.’”

The other key strategy White emphasized, is the use of partnerships. “It’s intergovernmental partners from the Federal Rail Administration to the Federal Transit Administration, but then it’s the local governments along the line, and then it’s our engineering firm partners or surveyors, our contractors…. I think that partnership is the key to getting anything done.”

Listen to the full interview with Julie A. White on Electric Ladies Podcast here.