CATS Long Term Transit Plan - Silver, Red Lines

[Cadi40]

It’d sure be cool to have our own little Subway and it would mean you could choose more possible alignments than the choices they have now, But it would be highly costly and a pain to construct.

[archiham04]

I think we should build a portion of the light rail line with a road structure over it, and force the adjacent property owners to build to the new road elevation.  Kind of like this.  I realize they built the road and structures all at the same time, but why not build the road first?

Edited April 5, 2018 by archiham04

[HighRiseHillbilly]

While a tunnel would be cool, aren't there masses of prohibitive granite under our red dirt? Would a monorail type thing not be more feasible? I know it's not cute, but wouldn't it cost less - and we could use a few of thse saved dollars making unnecessary, but fun loops around the buildings. We would at least stand out among other cities. 

Also, why TF are these studies SO expensive? Why does it cost a handful of dudes millions of dollars to study something that has already been studied? I haven't made a decent salary in far too long, so is that what it is?

[deleted]

3 hours ago, HighRiseHillbilly said:

Would a monorail type thing not be more feasible?

I can hear the music now!

[HighRiseHillbilly]

5 hours ago, JBS said:

I can hear the music now!

Oh my goodness... lol. This is why I was scared to ask that question. Last time someone mentioned monorail the Simpsons jokes were the only response.

Made me actually look the clip up.

Is it cheesy? I'm just a hillbilly, I don't know!

[Nick2]

Who is @soumith050118 and why is he laughing at every post?

A tunnel under stonwall connecting to blue line and the stadium/gateway (a gateway station can be close enough to be considered stadium) would work really well. It could also have a stop at midtown (trader Joe's with rail transit access ftw).

[15895]

What if The blue line came to uptown around 277 in the north until it hit the blue line, merged with the blue line until Stonewall, then went onto stonewall into the median

[CLT2014]

12 hours ago, Nick2 said:

Who is @soumith050118 and why is he laughing at every post?

A tunnel under stonwall connecting to blue line and the stadium/gateway (a gateway station can be close enough to be considered stadium) would work really well. It could also have a stop at midtown (trader Joe's with rail transit access ftw).

I love tunnels, but I think the cost just won't justify it. I'd rather have an entirely new light rail line for several miles rather than 1 mile of a tunnel. These are the types of gives and takes that happen with the limited budget for transit. 

LA Metro is building 1.9 miles of new tunnels under downtown Los Angeles to connect their light rail system to their subway system. The cost for 1.9 miles of underground light rail.... $1.75 BILLION. That's almost the cost of the entire Lynx Blue Line over 19 miles. https://www.metro.net/projects/connector/

New York's new Second Avenue Subway line is going to be 8.5 miles and is expected to cost $17 BILLION. 

Tunnels on Seattle's East Link light rail extension (14 miles) is part of the reason the cost has ballooned to $3.7 BILLION. At the cost per mile of the Blue Line extension, Charlotte could have built the light rail to Salisbury for what Seattle is paying for 14 miles due to tunnels and bridges. 

With CATS looking at $5 billion to $7 billion to build 3 lines, the team needs to balance whether they want to cut a line out and just build 1 or 2 lines with a high quality tunnel incorporated or get three lines out of that budget without tunnels. 

Edited April 17, 2018 by CLT2014

[queensguy06]

I would imagine that elevated railway would be significantly cheaper than burying a line.  I could see a really cool elevated corridor through uptown that bypasses the stadium and through Gateway before dropping back to grade out to the airport.  #pipedreams

[orulz]

Building a tunnel under or elevated line over Stonewall seems like such a waste, when the Belk Freeway right-of-way is so huge and is literally right there.

First, eliminate two of the eastbound ramps (the College Street loop offramp and the Morehead Street onramp) and you won't need the eastbound collector/distributor lanes anymore. People going to College Street can just get off at Carson instead, and the Morehead Street onramp could be moved to Carson/Mint as well.

Next, shift the eastbound through lanes into the space where the collector/distributors were. That leaves a contiguous, dedicated right-of-way in the middle to run trains.

Last, build the cap. This will make it into an insta-subway (instead of a freeway median transit line.)

And for bonus, you get two new parcels along Morehead for development that were previously taken up by ramps.

[deleted]

4 minutes ago, orulz said:

Building a tunnel under or elevated line over Stonewall seems like such a waste, when the Belk Freeway right-of-way is so huge and is literally right there.

First, eliminate two of the eastbound ramps (the College Street loop offramp and the Morehead Street onramp) and you won't need the eastbound collector/distributor lanes anymore. People going to College Street can just get off at Carson instead, and the Morehead Street onramp could be moved to Carson/Mint as well.

Next, shift the eastbound through lanes into the space where the collector/distributors were. That leaves a contiguous, dedicated right-of-way in the middle to run trains.

Last, build the cap. This will make it into an insta-subway (instead of a freeway median transit line.)

And for bonus, you get two new parcels along Morehead for development that were previously taken up by ramps.

I'm sure there are reasons why this doesn't make sense but I can't think of many.  I assume building the cap would be much less expensive than tunneling under Uptown.  Seems brilliant to me.

[11 HouseBZ]

2 hours ago, CLT2014 said:

I love tunnels, but I think the cost just won't justify it. I'd rather have an entirely new light rail line for several miles rather than 1 mile of a tunnel. These are the types of gives and takes that happen with the limited budget for transit. 

LA Metro is building 1.9 miles of new tunnels under downtown Los Angeles to connect their light rail system to their subway system. The cost for 1.9 miles of underground light rail.... $1.75 BILLION. That's almost the cost of the entire Lynx Blue Line over 19 miles. https://www.metro.net/projects/connector/

New York's new Second Avenue Subway line is going to be 8.5 miles and is expected to cost $17 BILLION. 

Tunnels on Seattle's East Link light rail extension (14 miles) is part of the reason the cost has ballooned to $3.7 BILLION. At the cost per mile of the Blue Line extension, Charlotte could have built the light rail to Salisbury for what Seattle is paying for 14 miles due to tunnels and bridges. 

With CATS looking at $5 billion to $7 billion to build 3 lines, the team needs to balance whether they want to cut a line out and just build 1 or 2 lines with a high quality tunnel incorporated or get three lines out of that budget without tunnels. 

Is this extreme inflation in price for tunnels limited to boring type tunneling? Of which I believe all examples mentioned above are. Or, is cut and cover economically feasible if the only underground part is the straight shot up Stonewall (from articles I just read are limited to street row's)? Is the depth of bedrock too shallow? What's the cost for cut and cover vs bridging? One major downside to cut and cover is disruption to businesses. The articles aren't specific and I'm too tired to sift through the minute details (running on 1 hour sleep, rough day at work yesterday). Thanks if you can answer. 

[15895]

Are there any underground light rails? 

 

A quick google search yields Seattle that has a 1.3 mile underground Bus and Light Rail tunnel

 

 

Wonder if its any cheaper building light rail tunnels versus tunnels for heavy rail?

[kermit]

I can't think of any LRT systems that run entirely underground, but plenty of systems have extensive tunnels (Boston, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Buffalo and Portland come to mind).

Keep in mind the tunnel costs discussed above are only for the US. Spanish tunnelers can do their thing (boring tunnels beneath urban areas) for as little as $25 million a mile IIRC (South Korean's have built multiple tunnels for less than $60 million per mile).  For a reason that escapes me (Buy America requirements?) they are unable to bring their expertise to the US.

Shrug, it would be far cheaper (and probably better) to just close Trade street to cars and use it for rail and a rail-trail equivalent.

https://pedestrianobservations.com/category/transportation/construction-costs/

 

Edited April 17, 2018 by kermit

[dubone]

Tunnels OUGHT to be cheaper and hopefully the Boring Company can build that up and we can have lower cost tunneling in the 2020s.  However, it is very easy to just dedicate a median to transit like was done on North Tryon.    We even still have miles of green median that was once transitway for the historic streetcars.  

There is no reason that if are rebuilding a street that we don't just plan for some transit right of way if it is in the long range plan.   We are about to rebuild Statesville Ave, so why not plan that for the red line.     Rebuild Trade and BF and Central with a median and then you have a transit right of way when you need it.  Why act like we have the density for a metro subway when we don't. 

 

(Muni in SF is a subway light rail and I'm sure there are others). 

[CLT2014]

31 minutes ago, AirNostrumMAD said:

Are there any underground light rails? 

A quick google search yields Seattle that has a 1.3 mile underground Bus and Light Rail tunnel

 

Wonder if its any cheaper building light rail tunnels versus tunnels for heavy rail?

That 1.3 mile tunnel in Downtown Seattle was built in 1990 at a cost of ~$480 million in 1990 dollars for buses. It was refurbished for light rail trains in 2007 for around ~$90 million. 

A good example of a light rail underground and built in recent times / recent cost is the University Link extension in Seattle. It is 3.15 miles underground and has 3 stations. The total cost was $1.7 billion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_Link_tunnel

Edited April 17, 2018 by CLT2014

[11 HouseBZ]

My question is not whether there are light rail tunnel but what kind of tunnel, cut and cover vs boring tunnel. Most mentioned above are of the boring tunnel type and are well documented to be expensive here in the US. Is the "old" way of doing things, cut and cover, an economically feasible option for Charlotte to bury a line. The only recent example I've found on this type of tunnel was Toronto. Some have been mentioning bridging, but what are the cost of that vs cut/cover?

[Scribe]

1 minute ago, 11 HouseBZ said:

the boring tunnel type and are well documented to be expensive here in the US.

They are expensive everywhere (except - maybe - where human life is not valued) and they are painfully slow everywhere! Boring machines have not seen real innovation in decades.

[11 HouseBZ]

True dat, I guess I meant more expensive than overseas. 

[Third Strike]

I’m still a fan of the original Silver Line alignment, which would have ran the light rail down 6th street. You could run it all the way down towards the Gateway Station, and make 6th a transit mall, or you could connect it to the non-revenue part of the Gold Line, in front of the Spectrum Center, so that it can connect to the Blue Line. 

[CLTranspo]

Re: the US having uniquely expensive costs associated with transit 

Federal Transit Cost Investigation

[dubone]

2 hours ago, Third Strike said:

I’m still a fan of the original Silver Line alignment, which would have ran the light rail down 6th street. You could run it all the way down towards the Gateway Station, and make 6th a transit mall, or you could connect it to the non-revenue part of the Gold Line, in front of the Spectrum Center, so that it can connect to the Blue Line. 

Well.  the Gold line is being built.  Why does everyone want to put these lines redundant to that?  None of it will be fare free after this phase is done.  Well, not unless they need to beg people to ride it because a competing line is a block away.  We'll see what the studies come up with, but i sure ope they don't opt for cannibalistic redundancy. 

1 hour ago, CLTranspo said:

Re: the US having uniquely expensive costs associated with transit 

Federal Transit Cost Investigation

This will hopefully yield a good result.   We are in a sea change for transit.  Hopefully it turns out to be good for the public and good urban planning.

[Nick2]

I really hope Charlotte does a "big bang" style expansion of rail transit. Funding and constructing phase 2/3 of street car since it's already underway. Silver line. Red line. Airport line. And possibly even commuter rail to York, Gaston, iredell, union, or cabarrus. Setup a plan for 8 billion or something and get public support.

[15895]

I never realized. But ATL only has 48 miles of rail line between “4” rail lines and a streetcar. 

Charlotte will have around 22 miles after the gold line extension is complete. 

Miami has 24 miles of rail. 

Houston has 22.7 miles of rail . (Seems like for the most part it’s 12 minute frequencies generally and 18 minutes non peak)

 

Not counting commuter because I think commuter can blow (no weekend services, hourly service until like 7pm? Lame. Though I still want the red line :D)

 

I don’t think Tampa, Nashville, Norfolk, Orlando, Raleigh, etc have mass transit rail excluding commuter. And I don’t think any one of them is any far along on their rail lines than we are with the silver line by maybe more than a year or so. 

 

Considering our size relative to ATL, Houston, Miami.... we are doing good with rail and I think there’s a much larger appetite in CLT for rail than other southern cities 

 

And DC...

I know DC, the last train is at like 12:20 the latest -  period. Sunday’s 11am and I think it opens at 9am.  I think ours goes until like 1:10am departing UNCC. So about 1:40am  for uptown towards I485. 

I am going to be living in DC and live car free. Disappointed my new toy has disappointing hours. And it led me to research CLT itself ain’t doing to bad in mass transit

 

 

 

 

[videtur quam contuor]

Leaving Navy Yard station on Metro in DC after a late Nationals game means no return train sometimes. I was at a game and the announcer mentioned last train in xx minutes and a healthy raspberry was heard throughout the stadium.