Anyone listening to Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory on the Keith Larson show this morning had to wonder what in the world he was talking about with regard to Charlotte’s light rail transit plans. The mayor gave himself absolutely no wiggle room to stop building choo-choo trains should the $450 million South Blvd. line prove to be a bust. (Note the $450m. number is higher than the last “official” transit cost number of $427m. to try and reflect the $40 m. spent on the stalking-horse trolley and the millions more spent on roadway improvements along South Blvd. paid for with bond money.)
McCrory is essentially committing Charlotte to 5 or 6 billion dollars in train-building spending whether or not the South Blvd. line works. That is madness.
To back-up, the South corridor line was clearly intended to be the camel’s nose for the entire program, just as the little Uptown toy trolley was intended to get cars used to stopping for empty trains in South End and heavily subsidized conventioneers used to riding around aimlessly on some Charlotte train.
Also South Blvd. had McCrory’s infamous “corridor of crap” making it easy pickings for the city to rezone, redevelop, and stuff into the new high-density box. It also had an existing rail bed line which helped to, believe it or not, keep costs for the light rail line relatively low. Wait to you see the bill for the entirely new rail beds that will be needed for the Northern corridor or the Independence line. I would not be surprised if they cost twice as much to build. But McCrory says they must be built.
Yet reality intrudes even along the South line as the vital parking deck near 485 in Pineville has been shrunk by 89 spaces to 1125 spaces in order to save $2 million and kept the project on budget. Other parking spaces along the line are in lots with around 350 to 450 each, for a total of only around 3500. That is nothing in the larger scheme of Charlotte traffic. Double it to assume every car has two choo-choo riding passengers, 7000 cars is still nothing.
Meanwhile, the cars still on the roads in Charlotte post-choo-choo can plan on the mayor’s trains causing horrific traffic back-ups as they whiz by every 10 minutes or so during rush hour. Get out a map and look for yourself — the Clanton Road dog leg and its access to I-77 may be but a memory for thousands of commuters sitting and watching the empty CATS trains zoom by.
But, hey, not to worry, Mayor Pat says we are gonna spend even more on rail to make it all better! Yea!
And that is the crux of the matter. Charlotte simply cannot be on autopilot toward dubious transit “solutions” just because that is way other cities do it. Spending $450 million on light rail and watching it not work is not an argument for building even more light rail to make it work. Yet that will be the argument that is made: “Well, of course it is not meeting projections; we need to build out more stations.”
The responsible thing to do to would be to halt the train mania long enough to see if it works while looking to less costly alternatives like busways and HOT lanes as possible ways to reduce traffic congestion. But as building trains as nothing to do with actually helping traffic woes, Mayor Pat has a decision to make.
