With the low-hanging fruit — the South Blvd. line — of the $6 billion train hallucination picked and almost packed, CATS now confronts the question of how to convince the feds to fund the rest of the scheme. The Matthews route looks a particularly tough sell as there is already significant development along the planned route, meaning CATS cannot “create” economic impact very easily with a few PowerPoint gels. There is also no clear rationale for the route to end where it does.
Recall that in October it became known that CATS did not have the $20 million needed to build a tunnel under 485 to take the line to the Matthews CPCC campus, the original terminus for the line and one that, at least in theory, might drive ridership. But now the line is slated to end behind a bowling alley, just one of the oddities of the line which includes a park-and-ride lot adjacent to a very busy Harris Teeter and a Home Depot with tons of truck traffic.
Add in the fact that a rail bed would have to be built from scratch in long stretches of the route and things would seem to point to a less-costly busway solution. That would be the busway solution that no one on the east side actually wants, least of all the folks in Matthews, who seem to want a choo-choo to help bring back the town’s old Stumptown vibe.
Up north, the question of just how much rail bed can be re-used for that line will be a large factor in the cost. And, as we’ve noted before, CATS is now in the business of making sure that I-77 stays as backed up as possible the better to make the case that its service will be both cheaper and faster.
So CATS has some work to do, but they have several more lives to burn before things get critical.
