You have to feel for Pat Mumford. I think he is a decent guy who truly wants what is best for Charlotte, but he is stuck trying to defend CATS and its clunker of a $9 billion transit plan. (Note that Mumford never once used “CATS” in discussing transit in Charlotte. Must poll like the plague.)

He has no arguments with which to defend the current plan, so he immediately turns to the totally false claim that opponents of the half-cent think “that roads alone will be our salvation from congestion.” No. As Pat knows, I’ve repeatedly said that Charlotte could do all kinds of things differently that it now does them.

One would be to stop building more trains. Another would be demand that CATS run its bus service more efficiently and look for alternative revenue sources — things like advertising on buses. And Charlotte could start treating telecommuting and flex-time as serious parts of its transportation solution mix. Right now our telecommuting rates trail both Greensboro and Nashville, according to census figures.

I joke that our goal should be that BofA stays home on Tuesday, Wachovia on Wednesday, and Duke Energy on Thursday, but we need that kind of radical thinking to understand that the status quo is just dumb. The cheapest, easiest way to get cars off the road at rush hour is to try to get people to stay home during rush hour, not put them on trains.

However, as we know, the city is not really interested in attacking congestion. The city cares about “place making” and ramping up density in order to maximize property tax revenue. Mumford knows this, but he also knows that the public-at-large does not care about “place making,” or top-line revenue growth for more government.

People care about roads and being able to get from Point A to Point B in a sane amount of time. Charlotte’s impending gridlock will not come as a surprise to area drivers.

Hence Mumford has to claim that building trains has something to do with fighting congestion — even though before the repeal effort was launched, city officials had become quite open about saying that light rail will not fight congestion.

Check out Mayor Pat McCrory from just about a year ago fairly glowing in the N&O, before the big jump in the South Line cost and before anyone was talking repeal:

The biggest thing you should look for is an alternative over congestion regardless of the form of transportation. Something that can get consistent point A to B without being impacted by rush hour and accidents and the continued increase in cars which is going to make congestion even worse. The way I sell mass transit is its a choice over congestion. It will not solve congestion. It’s a choice over congestion. We’re going to be catching up forever on roads based upon what the traffic engineers say both in the Triangle and in Charlotte with or without transit. But I’m also convinced that you have to have a choice over that congestion and transit is that choice.

Remember that “choice” line? It was all the rage when all McCrory, Mumford, and Ron Tober had to do was manage expectations for the South corridor. The funding was safe, they just didn’t want folks to get hacked off when the trains started running and traffic was still a nightmare — or even worse due to the at-grade crossings on South.

“Hey, it is just a choice, not a solution,” they could say.

But now that story is “non-operable” as the Watergate conspirators used to say. Mumford and the backers of the status quo have to come with something bad that will happen if the half-cent is repealed. The after a couple weeks of stumbling around they have hit on a two-part answer.

One part is intended to scare the suburbs, that is the congestion will get worse line. Then all the talk about shutting down the bus system the day after the election, as the Mayor said the other day, is intended to scare bus riders into voting in droves to save the tax.

I fully expect a two-pronged media campaign to kick-off any day now on those two themes.

But back to Mumford’s argument, a couple more quick observations.

  • He glosses over the MTC’s decision in November to continue to build five corridors of trains even after it was clear that the South line was going wobbly. The Destination 2030 plan and headlong rush to immediately build $1 billion worth of two new train lines is exactly what conclusively proved that repeal was the only option left for right-sizing our transit plans.
  • Let’s be clear about the congestion-reducing potential of those new lines. According to CATS today, the North line will cost $373 million plus another $97 million in taxpayer-bought infrastructure in order to get a maximum 4600 riders off of I-77 by 2030. By then, also according to CATS, the highway with have 177,000 cars on it each day, up from 77,000 today. The trains cut that traffic down to 172,000 vehicles or so. That’s a 2.5 percent reduction at most in traffic for what could be — should CATS’ South Blvd. cost per mile escalation hold true — about $650 million.

We need a new plan.