Mary Newsom says the West transit corridor should run to the airport. Fair enough. No real reason for the line go to there, but going a mile off of Wilkinson to the airport makes a helluva lot more sense than running the Southest corridor to a bowling alley in Matthews. Yet that is exactly where the SE line is headed.

Besides, there will no doubt be plenty of transit links from the that line to airport in any event and direct stops at an airport are overated. Unless your ultimate destination was a few stops away, using DC’s Metro, for example, to get from National airport makes little sense. You could spend 90 minutes going by rail — lugging you luggage all the while — or be home in 30 minutes via car. And forget going to the airport via Metro. The more you know about that system the more you understood that a random 15 or 20 minute delay could ruin your whole day. So unless you have tons of time and very little money — taxi!

As I’ve said before, the South Blvd. line was the low-hanging fruit for Charlotte’s transit line dreams. From here on out things get much harder to justify and spin. West, North, Southeast — all will require attention to facts, not wishful thinking.

bp
Destination location?