southslider

^Charging for the deck immediately across N Tryon from campus is logical. But charging for the largest deck on the LYNX (even bigger than 485) at UCB is foolishness.

^But the key benefit of a tunnel is an exclusive right-of-way with controlled access. That same benefit can be achieved by elevated (Blue Line in places), expressway-running (parts of Silver Line by Brookshire and Independence), converted rail corridor (Blue Line Parkwood to Woodlawn), railroad side-running (Blue Line south of Woodlawn, plus Parkwood to Old Concord), or even a pedestrian mall (what Gold Line should be mostly). The only difference with taking an at-grade street, compared with the other effective non-tunnel options is partially controlled access, and thus, a much slower speed. But since Uptown is also where station-spacing is shorter, the speed benefits of a tunnel are greatly diminished.

Make Independence I-177 as well to Briar Creek or someday farther out, if ever eliminating driveways and upgrading shoulders to expressway standards. Back to removing parts of Belk (or the less direct portion of 277), a Silver Line replacement would also gain stations closer to CPCC and Metropolitan. Plus, the new Stonewall station would be closer to many more jobs as a single-seat ride and even better for LYNX transfers to than the planned 11th station by Brookshire blocks off 9th St. The adopted alignment via Gateway just poorly serves Uptown-bound riders, as well as Uptown-connecting riders.

^The capacity issue in Dallas results from multiple lines running on the same track, tunnel or not. Seattle and St. Louis have their downtown portions of light rail in a tunnel, each of which is nearly at capacity, due to multiple lines or routes sharing the tunnel. The nice thing about running multiple lines on the same track is that it results in higher frequency for shorter trips along the resulting trunk spine, where riders can take which ever train comes first. If Charlotte would've chosen this for Silver Line, you wouldn't have midday frequencies of 15 minutes in Uptown between 9th and Stonewall stations.

Zero. Even reaching Belmont has a 50/50 chance at best.

CMS has always supported extending LYNX, just in advocacy, not significant funding. Unless they put money where their mouth is, their "support" isn't really that.

^Maybe an advocacy organization can put pressure on them to actually run trains on time.

The City already got back the cost of re-doing the Caldwell and Belk interchange. Personally, I wouldn't entirely remove the Belk. All of the crossing bridges would allow Silver Line a faster but cheaper corridor than tunneling under Trade or elevating along Brookshire. Plus, there's enough room for both rails and trails, linking XCLT at Metropolitan with the Rail Trail. West of Caldwell, the outer lanes of Belk could be kept as extended exits off 77 to Wilkinson Blvd. Similarly, east of 3rd/4th, outer lanes could be retained as extended exits to Independence Blvd. Only the middle or one side of Belk would be enough room for Silver Line. And only between 3rd and Caldwell would all freeway lanes be completely removed for the added trail connector between Blue Line and Metropolitan.

The CATS Twitter feed is just tweet after tweet about delay after delay on Blue Line. No matter how the Arts tax hike goes, nothing more should go to a broken system that majorly fails on reliability.

Or just run more buses all-day on the busway between Uptown and Matthews (plus a branch out Albemarle Rd). If it weren't closed forever to build just a half-mile extension of streetcar over Independence. At least new bus lanes are coming to Uptown.

Once paid an architect $5K just to re-label and re-print plans they already had on file. $5M would likely just get you conceptual (or very little) engineering. $50M should cover more preliminary engineering all the way from Matthews to Belmont, including through (or really skirting) Uptown. Both the first Blue Line and its extension were each about half as long as the entire Silver Line.

^Not physically feasible

No need to blame the Arts for filling the void left wide open for far too long by Lewis.

^The existing street was closed due to low clearance. The station area plan calls for reconnecting the street, if the AC&W RR were relocated, but that seems less likely now.

^Since all of NC 16 (Brookshire) will have a simultaneous green light (left, through, and right) at Mt Holly-Huntersville, a pedestrian must cross each of theses simultaneous movements individually for a staged crossing of four signal cycles. While a reduced-conflict intersection (often called super-street) requires a pedestrian to cross to the middle then wait until a second signal cycle to cross the remaining half, a continuous-flow intersection requires a pedestrian to wait through multiple cycles to cross each of the left-turning movements now on the outsides of the road, plus each of the two through movements in the middle of the road, or four signal cycles total.