Last week, WakeUP Wake County (an affiliate of the NC Conservation Network) hosted a public forum on transit titled, Transit: Is Wake County Ready for It? The event was a huge success: 300 folks in attendance including many elected officials and top-level Raleigh city planners and tons of media coverage, both before and after the event.

The overall tone of the event was clear - Wake County is ready for transit. To see for yourself, click here to watch the entire event. But, there are some hang ups - specifically funding a large-scale transit project and getting the project up and running in a timely fashion (on average, it could take seven years from start to finish).

Charlotte passed a 1/2 cent sales tax in the late 1990's to begin its light-rail project (thanks to special authority granted to the city by the state legislature). Now that it's up and running, the only complaints Charlotte and Mecklenburg County officials are hearing are that individuals want more trains and more rail lines.

Meanwhile, Raleigh is waiting its turn for the state legislature to grant it special authority to pass a 1/2 cent sales tax for public transportation projects. However, the bill is on shaky ground and may not pass in the 2008 short session.

My concern is this: at the rate at which it is taking us to approve a comprehensive transit plan coupled with how fast the Triangle is expected to grow (an additional 1,000,000 people in the next 20-30 years) we could end up doing too little, too late.

So, what do you think? Is Wake County ready for transit? And, if so, how do we go about funding the project?