ggSurprise, surprise. CATS finds that half-cent transit tax revenue is coming in light, expenses are up, and fares may have to increase. Add in the roughly $500 million in tax increment-financed trains CATS is talking about — that is $400m. worth of streetcars and $70m. for the North line — and the reality is clear. What was a $9 billion transit plan funded by the half-cent tax and fares is now a $9.5b. plan funded by the half-cent, plus future property taxes, plus higher fares.

And even that may not be enough. The details:

CATS also is adding more bus service than originally planned, and it needs money to help pay for it. Much of the new service is express routes for commuters.

“Demands are skyrocketing,” CATS chief executive Keith Parker said at a Metropolitan Transit Commission meeting Wednesday night.

CATS projected that it would spend $110.7 million in fiscal year 2009 to operate buses and light rail. It has increased that estimate to $112.3 million.

But revenue is projected to grow by less than $1 million, from $132.9 million to $133.8 million.

CATS is still projected to have a balance that year of more than $20 million. But it is concerned that rising expenses could continue to eat into its surplus. That money is slated to buy more buses and build more rail lines. … The agency’s long-term transit plan projected the sales tax would generate $85 million in fiscal year 2010; updated projections show slightly less, $82.5 million.

Notice what is going on here. Demand for heavily subsidized commuter routes is up, routes that cost CATS more money per rider to operate. We already know that CATS expects a paltry 65 cents per ride in revenue from its light rail operations. There is only one place to go for more revenue: The occasional bus rider. As we’ve said for a couple years now, bus riders will pay to subsidize rail riders. More specifically, short-haul bus riders will pay to subsidize rail and long-haul bus commuters. They have to — just as they do in Portland, San Jose, etc.

That CATS is already facing an operating revenue squeeze should give pause to local officials about expanding bus and rail service yet more — but it won’t. Not so long as the view mass transit spending as an adjunct to achieving denser — and hence more taxable — land-use development. Or in the case of the streetcar pipe-dream, re-development.

Further, it is absolutely stunning that after repeatedly and loudly declaring last fall to voters that the $9b. transit plan was sound and wise, not three months later CATS and city of Charlotte officials have effectively junked that plan in plain view, without so much as an “oops.” Every single major critique of that plan — that was more about land-use than transportation, that it could not be funded by the half-cent, that bus riders would suffer to serve rail goals — has proven to be 1000% correct.

Charlotte’s transit and transportation policy remains a dangerous threat to local quality of life — and there is manifestly not a damn thing anyone can do about it.

Bonus Observation: Yeah, I’m a glutton for punishment but remember when Rob Tober told us immediately before Election Day that the half-cent revenue projections had been vetted by BofA and Wachovia? Suckers.