RALEIGH — Transit will be on the agenda Friday when the Wake County commissioners gather for a retreat in Holly Springs, but they are not expected to dip into details of a moldering plan for buses and trains that the Republican-led board received in 2011 – and never discussed.

Democratic candidates and other transit advocates are impatient to see Wake catch up with Durham and Orange counties, where shoppers pay a voter-authorized sales tax for transit investments and the federal government has given the go-ahead for planning work on a 17-mile light-rail line…

… Sig Hutchinson of Raleigh, a Democrat hoping to unseat Republican Commissioner Joe Bryan in the fall election, is pressing the commissioners for action. But – like Bryan and others in the debate – he isn’t staking himself out on questions about trains versus buses, and other particulars. First, he said, Wake leaders must agree on where transit service is needed and what it would accomplish.

“The technology should be the last decision, not the first decision,” Hutchinson said.