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19 <br /> The possibility of a rail alignment along 15-501/Fordham Blvd was first studied as <br /> part of the 1998 Major Investment Study for transit in between Durham and <br /> Chapel Hill. The 2008 STAC process did not propose a rail connection in the 15- <br /> 501/Fordham Blvd corridor, nor did the 2035 DCHC-MPO Long Range <br /> Transportation Plan, which was completed in 2009. Both documents received <br /> affirmative votes from Orange County members when they were adopted. In the <br /> summer of 2010, at the request of the Chapel Hill Town Manager, the 15- <br /> 501/Fordham Blvd question was studied again and addressed in a white paper <br /> released in September 2010 that concurred with the prior studies that the 15- <br /> 501/Fordham Blvd alignment was an inferior approach to link Chapel Hill to <br /> Durham when compared to the NC 54 corridor. <br /> If Orange County decides that it prefers that fixed guideway transit follow the 15- <br /> 501/Fordham Blvd corridor to either the C1 or C2 alignments recommended for <br /> further study to the Durham-Chapel Hill-Carrboro MPO, the recommended <br /> process is to communicate to the DCHC-MPO, Triangle Transit, NCDOT, DENR, <br /> UNC- Chapel Hill, UNC Hospital, the towns of Chapel Hill, Carrboro, Hillsborough, <br /> the City of Durham, Durham County, and the citizens that attended over 21 public <br /> meetings on this topic in the last 2 years that Orange County requests that we <br /> repeat the entire Alternatives Analysis process again to see if additional study of <br /> the 15-501/Fordham Blvd alignment in comparison to the other alternatives on the <br /> table would generate a conclusion different than those reached in 1998 by the <br /> MIS, 2008 by the STAC, 2009 by the LRTP, in September 2010 by the staff and <br /> consultant technical team, and again on January 25, 2012 by a near-unanimous <br /> vote of the Technical Coordinating Committee of the DCHC-MPO. <br /> 2. BRT cost estimates for the Durham-Orange Route appear to be about 55 million <br /> a mile vs. 81.2 million a mile for LRT. Although the BRT cost is 31% lower, <br /> Federal Transit Administration (FTA) study of 2001 (and 2009) and US General <br /> Accounting Office (GAO) of June 2003 report that BRT is typically $13.5 million <br /> for dedicated bus way and $9.0 million for use with high occupancy vehicle lanes. <br /> Could BRT routing be designed in such a way to reduce capital costs, and <br /> thereby allowing multiple BRT links in 2-3 corridors as noted previously? <br /> It is generally considered not a best practice to compared average costs per mile <br /> from 10 years ago with specific alignments and costs in areas with environmental <br /> complexities today. <br /> "Bus Rapid Transit" is a term that has been used to describe a wide variety of <br /> projects in the US, from $700-million underground projects in Boston to newly <br /> painted buses and unpatrolled "bus-only" lanes in Kansas City where cars <br /> double-park and prevent the buses from being rapid. Triangle Transit designed <br /> Page 11 of 13 <br />