Gee, here I am cleaning up after Mary Newsom again.

Let’s just cut to the chase and say what the opponents of willy-nilly train-building hate — and no, I will not fall for the rhetorical jujitsu of pretending that only conservatives have problems with trains — are the lies. Lies of the sort which Newsom and the editorial page of the UPoR have quite deliberately spread during the past decade in order to clear the path for train-building in Charlotte. To wit, the very latest on CATS finances:

In the Lynx Blue Line’s first full year of operation, in fiscal year 2009, the Charlotte Area Transit System spent $220 to operate a rail car for an hour, according to a budget presentation for City Council last week. CATS projects that in two years it will cost about $342 per hour – an increase of 55 percent over four years. … During the same time, from fiscal year 2009 to 2013, the cost to operate a CATS bus for an hour is forecast to have a much smaller increase, about 8 percent. That’s mostly due to the cost of fuel and higher labor costs. … Steve Polzin of the University of South Florida’s Center for Urban Transportation Research said the operating cost increases are large and could make it difficult for CATS to expand.

“Can that number jeopardize future plans?” he said.

CATS has struggled to correctly project how much transit projects will cost. There have been cost overruns on the construction side, and the transit system has underestimated the cost of operating its system.

In 2006, CATS projected the Lynx Blue Line would cost $11.4 million to operate in fiscal year 2012, which begins in July. The most recent estimate is that light-rail will cost $14.6 million. … CATS data say that in fiscal year 2010, a bus carried 25 people an hour, while a rail car carried 106 people an hour. Despite the higher operating costs for the Lynx Blue Line, the train was more efficient at moving people, with each bus trip costing about $3.60 and each rail trip costing $2.60.

But by fiscal year 2013, CATS projects that cost advantage to shrink. A bus trip would cost $3.70 and a train trip would cost $3.40. … The half-cent sales tax is now projected to generate nearly $476 million less over the next decade than originally planned.

To save money, CATS has put off indefinitely plans for rapid transit along Independence Boulevard and has shifted responsibility for a streetcar to the city of Charlotte. It is seeking private dollars to build a commuter rail line to Lake Norman. A consultant, Jeffrey Parker and Associates, has also recommended that CATS not expand the bus system significantly to save money.

To build the light-rail extension to UNC Charlotte, CATS needs the federal government to pay for at least half of the $900 million construction and for the N.C. Department of Transportation to pay for 25 percent.

When some of us calmly and rationally stood up five years ago and pointed out that a half-cent sales tax could not possibly build and operate a $9b. transit system, that wasn’t hate, it was reality. Yet Newsom and crew had to deny that reality and go straight to ad hominem attacks and fantastic misdirection — only cavemen and crypto-racists oppose mass transit and dialysis patients will die if we consider any other transit options.

So here we are. The latest official transit plan for Charlotte would do the following certifiably insane things:

  1. Spend $12m. in city General Fund dollars to build a 1.5 mile streetcar line which would increase congestion and has no identified means of operating funds.
  2. Spend $1.5 billion to build a LTR line from inside 485 on the Southern terminus to inside 485 on the Northern terminus. The latter would have no additional commuter parking to boot.
  3. Cannabilize more efficient bus service — service which actually serves low-income workers without cars — in order to pay for more expensive rail service — just as has happened repeatedly across the country and just as we warned would happen.

Now the only way these things do not appear insane to you is if you a) Work for Charlotte city government b) Work for an entity that expects to profit from these government expenditures c) Think that any method for increasing density in Mecklenburg County is its own justification. That’s it.

This is where values creep in — not before. Of course those in camp c) like Mary would love think this is all just a left-right deal — and a weirdly childish one at that. This self-delusion insulates against the realization that transit plans in Charlotte are not just wrong, they are purposely wrong. And purposeful wrong is evil.

And I hate evil.