West Cary Is Finally Getting a Bus
Cary Town Council voted 5 to 1 last Thursday to give western Cary its first bus route. The vote moves the hours from the old downtown circulator, which stopped running in July, to a one-year pilot route in District D, out by NC 55 and Green Level Church Road.
The route starts at the Walmart Neighborhood Market on High House Road, where it connects with the existing Route 4, then runs along NC 55 to Carpenter Fire Station Road, Green Level Church Road, and McCrimmon Parkway, looping past Whole Foods and back the same way. It is just under 13 miles, with a bus about once an hour, and roughly 30 minutes from Walmart to Whole Foods. The stops will include Panther Creek High School, the Northwest Cary YMCA, UNC Internal Medicine, Amberly Place, Cary Park Town Center, and the two neighborhood parks along the way. The exact stop locations are still to be set, using existing accessible stops where possible.
West Cary currently has no fixed-route bus service, and council members described NC 55 as a dividing line that makes western Cary feel cut off from the rest of town. This new route will hopefully make it feel more connected.
The downtown loop it replaces only ran Thursday through Sunday, and ridership fell as more downtown parking opened. Most of its stops are already served by other routes.
Staff estimated the pilot at $241,000. The hours are being shifted from the old downtown circulator. Cary has to keep a 1,350-hour local baseline under the 2016 Wake Transit Plan, or lose about $130,000 in Wake Transit money. The pilot runs under the town’s pilot policy, which caps pilots at less than 12 months. After the pilot ends, council has to decide whether to make it permanent or rethink it. Staff will ask residents about the schedule and stop locations, and report ridership back to council. Service is targeted for April.
The other option on the table was extending Route 5 down Kildaire Farm Road toward Koka Booth Amphitheatre and the Wake Tech Western Wake campus, about 7.5 miles with a bus every 30 minutes. Council members said both districts need service and choosing felt like picking a favorite, but District D, which covers west Cary, went first because it has no service at all while District C, which covers that southern portion of Cary, has at least some. Staff will keep pushing Wake Transit to fund District C later.
Additional reading: the full council quarterly meeting video