That is the only conclusion to draw from news that “fall 2007” not August 2007 is now the target completion date for the South Blvd. light rail line. And by fall CATS evidently means as late as November 2007. The project has a hard deadline of December, 31 2007.
The August date itself was a slip from April and was undertaken to at least nominally keep the project within its $427 million budget target. But when all is said and done, the 9.6. mile line probably will have cost $450 million to build and be at least six months late in starting service.
The South line, however, is in many ways the least critical project CATS is now juggling. The 30-mile North Corridor line, which is slated to usher in true commuter rail as far as Iredell County, thereby making CATS a real regional transit operation not to mention anchor the new $16.5 million Gateway Station in Uptown, is already a tough sell. The North line was supposed to cost around $167 million back in 2002. Now CATS only talks in the range of $250 million — and up. Yet the number is likely to be far greater.
To hit the $250 million number construction costs would have to be about $8 million per mile. The South line has come in at around $40 million per mile. True, the two projects are not exactly the same, but common sense should tell us the $8 million per mile number is too low. Another comparison: The original estimate for the South line was $227 million and that number has roughly doubled. Taking the $167 original estimate for the North line and doing the same puts us at $335 million, which should be the floor figure public officials keep in mind when thinking of how they are going to pay for this thing.
At the same time planning is ramping up for the Southeast, or Independence, corridor that will include three stations in Matthews. Transit fans up and down that line want trains, but a bus rapid transit lane running down the middle of Independence would be cheaper to build. Further, CATS does not have the $20 million needed to build a tunnel under 485 and run the line to the CPCC Levine campus, the original end-point for the line. Right now the line ends behind a bowling alley in Matthews.
The 13.5 mile line would also make radical changes to land-use and roads along the Independence corridor where a vibrant retail sector already exists south of Sharon Amity. This is the exact opposite of the South corridor where Mayor Pat McCrory’s “corridor of crap” made it easy for CATS to bulldoze anything in its path. In short, when CATS gets done Independence from 51 to Sharon Amity could be the retail waste-land that Indpendence now is from Sharon Amity to Pecan.
If that is the grand plan — kill off traffic-drawing retail “big boxes” and in their place build high-density mixed-use, particularly low-cost affordable housing — let’s get that out in the open.
But CATS does seem to love its little surprises.
