Hey, whatever happened to the city of Charlotte’s big fight with Parsons Transportation? You know, from last fall, the fight that was gonna get the city millions back for Parsons’ crappy light rail design?

Nothing. Big surprise.

The Charlotte Business Journal catches up with City Attorney Mac McCarley to find that the city’s zeal to sue Parsons over the South Blvd. line has cooled considerably. Big surprise.

Instead, the city wants to sign a tolling agreement with Parsons so that the upcoming statute of limitations for suing Parsons does not “force” the city to sue now. Check the spin from Mcarley:

McCarley and the city have also requested from Parsons a tolling agreement: a provision that gives the city the ability to sue beyond the statute of limitations, which expires this spring.

With that deadline pressure removed, McCarley says, the city and Parsons would have more time to negotiate.

What a joke. The city will never sue. One, that costs even more money the city does not have and two, the last thing the city wants is more public scrutiny of South Blvd. line and its phony numbers. Parsons should call that bluff in a heartbeat.

But there’s more. CBJ reporter Erik Spanberg actually talked to transit expert Wendell Cox about CATS’ latest gambit and Wendell did not disappoint. To wit:

“What kind of money are you going to get back from them?” asks Wendell Cox, a transit and urban-planning consultant who has studied Charlotte’s light-rail plans. “This is all phony political posturing. No company in the world, not even General Motors, could write a check big enough to make this transit plan work.” …

“This is a world’s record in cost escalation,” Cox says. “I can’t think of another project that compares with (the Charlotte transit plan) short of the Suez Canal. And the Suez Canal escalated because they had anticipated using slave labor but wound up having to pay people. You guys are textbook.”

You guys are textbook. Is that another way of saying World Class?

Look, as any serious person who has so much as remodeled a kitchen knows, you cannot sue a designer, an engineer, a builder, for flaws you sign off on. Oh, sure there could be gross incompetence, but CATS and city are not talking about that — they are talking about on-the-fly changes to a massively complex plan, a plan that wound up costing much more than anyone — inside CATS — thought possible.

So let’s check the story the city wants to feed us, say, mid to late 2007. The design was horribly screwed by Parsons; that’s why it is not done yet and that is why it is so far over budget. But negotiations on ongoing, can’t talk about specifics, of course, but the city is trying to recover money spent on the project. Meanwhile, let’s welcome the American Public Transit Association to town in October, continuing paying the half-cent sales tax, and look forward to the opening of the South Blvd. line in early 2008.

Big surprise.