That’s Charlotte City Manager Pam Syfert on the effect of repealing the half-cent sales tax for transit. Given the city’s willy-nilly spending habits, taking $69 million in annual revenue away would be quite a shock. Yet a shock is exactly what the city’s broken financial system needs.

Sometimes an addict needs a shock to see their bad habit and make a change. We’ll soon see Charlotte’s bad habit on display as we move into another budget season where millions will be spent on low priority budget items. Something’s gotta give besides the wallets of Charlotte taxpayers.

And Mayor Pat McCrory, do you really want to tell voters that the sales tax is needed because the revenue builds, maintains, and pays Teamsters to drive a gold-plated bus system most do not use? That the city will have no choice but to hike property taxes in order to pay the Teamsters and keep the buses running? That is total denial of both responsibility and reality. It is both craven and dumb, a truly rare combination.

UNCC transportation expert David Hartgen has repeatedly shown that CATS is over-spending and under-performing on its current system. And things will just get worse in the future. Just a few of Hartgen’s insights from his 175-page study of CATS:

  • Every new mile of bus service costs more than the ridership it adds, 10 percent vs. 6 percent.
  • CATS’ operating cost per vehicle-hour is $72 compared to a state-wide average of $63. This projects to $77.60 in 2010, 46 percent above its 1997, pre-transit tax level.
  • 42% of CATS riders do not have a car compared to an 8% car-less population county-wide.
  • The average speed of a CATS bus is 15 mph, meaning that riding a bus takes longer than driving solo.

And finally, at length:

By the completion of the Corridor System Plan in 2025, CATS forecasts about 75 million annual riders, about 250,000 per day; our current trends suggest a lower number, about 45 million by 2025. Furthermore, CATS estimates that fare revenues will cover about 27 percent of total operating costs. However, if the system’s fare revenue percentage continues on its downward trend, by 2025 fare revenues will account for only about 9 percent of total operating costs. Finally, CATS projects total operating expenses of $3.13 billion and total capital expenses of $2.94 billion over the course of its Corridor System Plan, or about $250 million in total expenses per year. Current trends, however, project total annual operating costs of about $219 million and total annual capital costs of about $127 million in 2025, summing to about $346 million in total yearly expenses.

Ahem, Mayor. You want to defend $350 million in annual transit expenses for a system that will have no impact on either traffic congestion or air quality, go right ahead. There is no way the half-cent sales tax can possibly pay for all that, yet that is the path we are on.

The choice before us is to either change course or drive right off a cliff. Not everyone in Charlotte is a lemming, Mr. Mayor.