Mayor Pat McCrory is getting a little loose in his claims about “leadership” on rail transit. Here McCrory is trying to pretend he adheres to hard and fast rules about where rail should go:
The Republican gubernatorial candidate told Dome in a recent interview that the Lynx Blue Line in Charlotte has been a success, but he doesn’t think every part of the state needs — or wants — its own rail-based transit.
“It’s not suited for all parts of our state or even all parts of the city,” he said. He would not say whether the Triangle, Greensboro or other North Carolina cities need it, saying that is a local decision.
In Charlotte the local decision has been to change the decision rule in pursuit of $9.5 billion worth of transit projects whenever needed.
Here’s McCrory from a November 2006 city council meeting, reassuring the public on how the city could afford the North line rail project in light of the South Blvd. project’s alarming cost increases:
We have always said we are going to work within the half-cent sales tax and never ask for money above and beyond that half-cent sales tax, and I feel strongly that we need to stay with that commitment.
Except that right now the official North line financing plan includes $70 million in debt secured by future property taxes. And that sum is dwarfed by the $400 million worth of streetcars city staff is at the moment trying to find a way to fund, not with the half-cent as Mayor McCrory said in 2006, but with additional tax increment financed debt.
Also remember that the $350 million North line, unlike the South line, will not receive a penny of Federal Transit Administration money due to much lower ridership projections. The South line, recall, got almost half of its $463 million cost paid by the feds. On the streetcar pipe-dream, recall that not even Portland’s vaunted streetcar operation received federal money for the same high-cost, low-ridership, low mobility improvement reasons.
In the past both McCrory and county commissioner Parks Helms have strongly suggested that lack of federal money for a rail project was also a deal breaker. That was certainly the impression left with many in East Charlotte and Matthews when the Metropolitan Transit Commission selected a cheaper bus rapid transit system for Independence Blvd. instead of rail.
So absolutely on the half-cent affordability front and probably on the federal funding front, McCrory’s positions have migrated to a more anything goes stance as the financial numbers softened. That’s salesmanship, not leadership.
Were McCrory inclined to be dead-bang honest about rail options statewide in light of his Charlotte experience, he’d say something along the lines of, “It depends. It depends what kind of economic re-development numbers you can cook up in order to float the debt. If you can find a bank willing to take your scheme to market, you are home free. Nothing can stop you.”
Certainly not voters.
