I’ve read and re-read Edd Hauser’s study on transit in Charlotte that has Mary Newsom doing cartwheels and I don’t get the excitement.

At most, the study — really just a selective comparison of some other transit systems, some good matches for CATS others definately not, with the March 26th CATS dog-and-pony doomsday analysis grafted on — shows that CATS cannot help to but to spend money at the rate it is spending it.

OK, fair enough. Were the question before the community, “Resolved: We should toss Ron Tober to the wolves” then that might tell us something.

But that is not the question. The question before us is, “Do we continue to hand CATS $70, $80, $90 million a year for a $9 billion transit plan designed in 1995 or do we come up with something better?”

The Hauser study has only one answer, “Well, handing over money is what everyone else does.”

CATS defenders betray their reluctance to re-think the core assumptions underlying Charlotte’s transportation plan with that lame answer.

One more time: The core problem with CATS’ plans is not in the rear-view mirror along South Blvd. Instead, look years ahead to the crushing costs that will come with the current plan. The South Blvd. project, which is still working from a cost estimate nine months old, simply tells any reasonable person that CATS’ projections may not exactly pan out going forward.

Again, this is what informed critics of CATS have said for years — that mass transit plans historically over-promise, over-spend, and under-deliver — only to be shouted down and ignored. Now, in 2007, CATS’ defenders want to make a big deal out of admitting that of course cost claims change over time.

The Hauser study, more than anything else, puts a floor beneath CATS’ spending going forward. Assume that CATS really is doing well compared to its peers. That means CATS’ cost assumptions are as good as it gets.

That should scare the heebie jeebies out of you.

Bonus observation: Who paid for the study? It is described as “an independent research report by the Center for Transportation Policy Studies at UNC Charlotte.” Did the researchers donate their time?

I normally don’t worry about such things, figuring that everything evens out over time, but we’ve repeatedly noted that UNCC’s Phil DuBois has jumped up and down for his own UNCC choo-choo. Did the chancellor throw state instructional money at trying to influence a ballot measure?

Update: Rhino Times editor Mark Pellin emails to recover a May 18, 2006 letter from Dubois to UNCC supporters in which the chancellor observes: “For those of you who may not know, our planned Center City building will be located at 9th and Brevard streets, just a couple of blocks from North Tryon Street and the site of a future stop of the light rail system. Our long-term hope, of course, is that light rail can serve to directly connect the main campus and the Center City building and, for that reason, we are having conversations with light rail planners at the Charlotte Area Transit System (CATS) about whether light rail might actually be brought onto campus.”