I completely understand why the mayors of the county’s northern tier towns do not want to throw in with Charlotte to lobby for federal funds for the billion dollar Northeast line to UNCC: It would shovel dirt on their dream of the North line commuter line to Lake Norman. But reality is reality.
Even with boom-time projections, ridership for the North line was too low to qualify for federal funding. As none other than John Lassiter has said, the plan all along was to paper over this shortfall with tax increment financing of the $470m. line. The problem now, absolutely no demand for development along the line’s route, which makes TIFing it impossible.
The truly interesting thing is that we are starting to see the Metropolitan Transit Commission come apart at the seams as the county-wide transit tax is increasingly funneled into city of Charlotte priorities. The towns — and Matthews and Mint Hill might want to buy a clue here — have good reason to wonder what they are getting for their share of the half-cent. Better still is the choice hypocrisy Charlotte mayor Pat McCrory has rolled out to greet the towns’ stirrings of self-interest.
“We are starting to see renegade groups on behalf of themselves, or towns,” McCrory told Uptown transit stenographer Steve Harrison. “It will cause confusion.”
Gee Pat, what the hell was it when the city of Charlotte suddenly ditched the 2030 transit plan to take-on construction of the $500m. streetcar from CATS? The city immediately started hunting up federal funding for the project. Everyone with a brain understood what that was about — the city relieving CATS of the streetcar burden so that CATS could more easily pursue Charlotte’s top priority, the uber-expensive UNCC line. Wait, don’t tell me. When the city of Charlotte does it, it is “savvy” when someone else does it, it is “renegade.”
The first stage of grief is denial.
