CATS Long Term Transit Plan - Silver, Red Lines

[kermit]

Ely has a really nice story on a potential Blue Line extension to Pineville, the mall and Ballantyne.

Great job with the history of P'ville's initial rejection of the Blue Line

https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/politics-government/article228475304.html

 

Edited April 2, 2019 by kermit

[CLT2014]

20 minutes ago, kermit said:

Eli has a really nice story on a potential Blue Line extension to Pineville, the mall and Ballantyne.

Great job with the history of P'ville's initial rejection of the Blue Line

https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/politics-government/article228475304.html

 

Edwards said “concern we have for the mall” is one of the main drivers for the light rail plan. 

[Matthew.Brendan]

“Too little too late” pal

[CLT704]

"CATS is planning to build about 20 miles of light rail from Matthews to uptown and west to the airport and, eventually, Belmont. Known as the Silver Line, back-of-the-envelope calculations have placed the potential cost as high as $8 billion for that project."

The Silver Line gonna cost $8 billion?? I though that was for multiple lines etc 

[EllAyyDub]

32 minutes ago, CLT704 said:

The Silver Line gonna cost $8 billion?? I though that was for multiple lines etc 

I personally think John Lewis is letting people/the media run with the higher cost estimate, so he can come back with a plan that costs less.  This would be great optically in an environment where it seems transit votes are getting voted down left and right.

[kermit]

45 minutes ago, EllAyyDub said:

I personally think John Lewis is letting people/the media run with the higher cost estimate, so he can come back with a plan that costs less.  This would be great optically in an environment where it seems transit votes are getting voted down left and right.

I think you are right about Lewis's strategy. I would FMA guesstimate:

• Silver / West will total out around $2.8 billion (in today's dollars)
• Btyne extension: $500 million

The transit vote thing is not accurate. The Gwinnett and Nashville losses got lots of ink, but they also had lots of issues (very weird election date in Gwinnett, mayor couldn't keep it in her pants in Nashville). Generally about 3/4 of all transit referenda get passed (including one in Atlanta in 2016).

Having said that the koch-funded astroturf organization "American's for Prosperity" is growing in size and effectiveness -- they have gathered enough signatures are about to hold a vote to repeal Phoenix's new transit tax (used to fund their big bang) which was established after a 2015 vote (the new tax was supported by 55% of Phoenix voters). We went through that same thing in 2007 (less than a month before the Blue Line opened). The anti-transit side of the ballot received fewer votes than the number of people signing the petition for the repeal election. The paid signature gatherers pitch was 'sign here to lower your taxes'

Edited March 28, 2019 by kermit

[kermit]

Interesting discovery in the CATS Charlotte Railroads Projects Update document I stumbled across today: https://charlottenc.gov/Transportation/PlansProjects/Documents/CharlotteRailroadProjectsUpdate.pdf#search=CATS

Apparently there was serious discussion of building an Amtrak station at Sugar Creek (why???), but the project is now listed as inactive and NCRR is evaluating a Harrisburg station instead (p34).

The ACWR relocation in NoDa is also listed as "on hold indefinitely"

Intriguingly a Phase III expansion of the CSX intermodal yard is also "on hold indefinitely." I keep hoping that CSX will abandon / sell their Charlotte sub, this sort of news renews my hopes.

The Draft EIS for the Charlotte-Atlanta Passenger Rail Corridor Investment Plan is due sometime in "2019"

 

Edited March 29, 2019 by kermit

[orulz]

I always have thought that University City is a better spot for a station than Harrisburg due to the possibility for connection with the Blue Line. Go ahead and put one in Concord too- it's the state's second largest suburb after all.

[southslider]

^University City and Concord make sense for commuter rail. Intercity rail should have fewer stops between Raleigh and Charlotte. 

[orulz]

 

3 hours ago, southslider said:

^University City and Concord make sense for commuter rail. Intercity rail should have fewer stops between Raleigh and Charlotte. 

It sounds like at least one intercity station between Kannapolis and Charlotte will be built. Given the choice between University City, Harrisburg, and Concord, I would choose University City because of the potential for a connection with the Blue Line.  (While they're looking at a southern Blue Line extension to Ballantyne, they should be looking at a northern extension too - 1 mile, 1 station.)

Also, it doesn't make sense for Cabarrus to get two stations while Mecklenburg gets one.  University City is walking distance from the 3rd or 4th largest university in the state. Either option is equidistant from 485. And while Harrisburg is not exactly "nowhere", it isn't exactly the middle of the action either.  It's well south of the built up areas of Concord, and too far east of the University to be useful in that regard. The main criteria I recall pushing it toward Harrisburg instead of University City was that at U City the site is more constrained so they would have to build a parking deck. How about: extend the Blue Line, and share the deck?

 

 

[Desert Power]

1 hour ago, orulz said:

 

It sounds like at least one intercity station between Kannapolis and Charlotte will be built. Given the choice between University City, Harrisburg, and Concord, I would choose University City because of the potential for a connection with the Blue Line.  (While they're looking at a southern Blue Line extension to Ballantyne, they should be looking at a northern extension too - 1 mile, 1 station.)

Also, it doesn't make sense for Cabarrus to get two stations while Mecklenburg gets one.  University City is walking distance from the 3rd or 4th largest university in the state. Either option is equidistant from 485. And while Harrisburg is not exactly "nowhere", it isn't exactly the middle of the action either.  It's well south of the built up areas of Concord, and too far east of the University to be useful in that regard. The main criteria I recall pushing it toward Harrisburg instead of University City was that at U City the site is more constrained so they would have to build a parking deck. How about: extend the Blue Line, and share the deck?

 

 

I like this idea a lot.  Probably good for the UNCC faculty/students to be able to connect to the universities/facilities in the Triangle

[orulz]

Station spacing on the Piedmont is a good question. NCDOT has stated a desire to add stations at Lexington, Hillsborough, and now Harrisburg. When that is done, stations would be between 8 and 20 miles apart. Cary-Raleigh would be the shortest at 8, and the gaps on either side of Burlington (to Greensboro or Hillsborough) would be the longest, at 20.

If University City were chosen instead of Harrisburg, that is about 10 miles from Gateway Station.

All the other gaps on the line would be about 15 miles (Kannapolis-Salisbury-Lexington-High Point-Greensboro, and Hillsborough-Durham-Cary).

Without a station at U-City, Harrisburg, or Concord, the largest gap would incongruously be the closest to the largest city in the state (25 miles.)

[orulz]

This is more of an Intercity comment, but With proper equipment (level boarding and DMUs, maybe even electrification) to reduce the time lost at each stop, even more frequent stops would probably make sense. Like direct stops at the other major colleges on the line: NC State, UNCG/Greensboro Coliseum, and Elon College. More suburban stops like Concord or RTP/RDU. Other small towns like Mebane or Thomasville. And of course Spencer for the transportation museum.

When HSR opens up to Washington DC, then those trains can take on the role of express, skipping the smaller stops in NC, stopping only in Charlotte-Salisbury-Greensboro-Durham-Raleigh.

[southslider]

4 hours ago, orulz said:

 

It sounds like at least one intercity station between Kannapolis and Charlotte will be built. 

I'd also switch Kannapolis from intercity to commuter rail, and maybe even Salisbury. The fewer stops between Charlotte and Raleigh, the better.

[orulz]

I'd also switch Kannapolis from intercity to commuter rail, and maybe even Salisbury. The fewer stops between Charlotte and Raleigh, the better.

Shall we skip Greensboro and Durham while we're at it too? Trains are not planes. Nonstop service is not nearly as essential as with air travel.

With our current platforms and trains, each stop probably adds 5 minutes, maybe more, with deceleration, dwell, and acceleration. With modern equipment and level platforms it could be under 2 minutes. Let's do that before we turn the whole state outside of Raleigh and Charlotte into flyover country.

I think the sharp distinction between intercity and commuter is a false one anyway. It's all just trains. There is a place for lots of different stopping patterns and endpoints. NCRR covers a region of 6+ million people. A comprehensive rail service would have at least 3 tiers of service: local/regional/commuter (stops every 1-5 miles), limited (every 5-20) and express (20-100).

IMO given that stop penalties on trains are not *that* big, I think nowhere on the Piedmont corridor is remote enough to warrant spacing over 50 miles - so I would not skip Salisbury. A hypothetical Piedmont Express would then be Charlotte-(40mi)-Salisbury-(30mi)-Greensboro-(50mi)-Durham-(20mi)-Raleigh. Heading north from there it's 50 miles to Henderson and then another 90 to Petersburg (where it *is* remote enough to go nearly 90 miles nonstop.)

[southslider]

1 hour ago, orulz said:

A hypothetical Piedmont Express would then be Charlotte-(40mi)-Salisbury-(30mi)-Greensboro-(50mi)-Durham-(20mi)-Raleigh.

That seems fast enough to compete with car travel.

[southslider]

On 3/10/2019 at 8:07 AM, tozmervo said:

When you have train operators being cautious around uptown crossings already that is going to, as I said, cripple east-west connectivity.

Hmm, a new cycle track on 6th St in Uptown just removed a full lane approaching the LYNX grade crossing.  So much for the traffic argument.

[kermit]

So we live in interesting times (in terms of our future of transit and auto mobility in Charlotte):

At this point four surrounding counties have expressed a strong interest in connecting to Charlotte's rail transit system:

• Gaston: Belmont appears to be a lock, the county has passed a resolution stating their desire for rail all the way to downtown Gastonia
• Union: The county passed a resolution in support of a Silver Line extension to Stallings
• Cabarrus: per a tweet from Ely at yesterday's council meeting  there were discussions of a BLE-E to the former Phillip Morris site
• York: SC's far-right governor has said (in a non-committal way) that it should not be a problem to find the money for SC to fund a Blue Line LRT connection to Rock Hill

This is quite a change from 2007 when the entire region was mocking the then under construction "McCrory Flyer." If half of these resolutions and hopes are converted into a workable revenue and ridership stream for CATS then more transit expansion is just over the horizon.

Simultaneously we have NCDOT telling us that any highway expansion into Charlotte will be tolled rather than free, moving us towards the equivalent of a  congestion tax (sorta, see below)

Finally, we continue to digest surface parking in uptown and replacing it with office and multifamily projects. I assume the price of parking uptown is increasing but I don't have any first hand knowledge.

In combination we are looking at a bit of a perfect storm for reducing our dependence on cars -- a situation that relatively few other US cities share.  But there are a couple of risks that need to be managed: 

• The Mecklenburg transit tax increase: Outlying counties cant get any transit until we find a way to expand the core network. I don't think any of us have much confidence in the current management of CATS -- their current (highly questionable) management tactics are making a tax increase harder than it needs to be. The big bang has gotta get done, but I am not confident that Lewis is the guy to do it.
• A disconnect between toll roads and transit. Congestion taxes elsewhere use the tax revenue generated from driving to fund transit expansion. Unfortunately NCDOT has put dibs on toll road revenues to pay the bonds to finance the roads. This means NCDOT's current strategy is to make it more expensive to drive into Uptown without concurrent improvements in transit -- this funding gap could just send development elsewhere. A toll surcharge for transit (or a parking tax for transit) might remediate the problem.

Edited April 2, 2019 by kermit

[Nathan2]

32 minutes ago, kermit said:

 

Finally, we continue to digest surface parking in uptown and replacing it with office and multifamily projects. I assume the price of parking uptown is increasing but I don't have any first hand knowledge.

 

1

I agree with almost everything here. Though isn't almost every surface lot that is being built on, being built with a giant parking garage? I don't think our car dependency is going away as much as we think, it's just being hidden. 

[videtur quam contuor]

or expanded. My eyeball count of 509 S Tryon is 325+/- spaces and the new building will have 5x that or more. Just one example.

[kermit]

12 minutes ago, tarhoosier said:

or expanded. My eyeball count of 509 S Tryon is 325+/- spaces and the new building will have 5x that or more. Just one example.

The number we need to have is the number of spaces per 1000 sq ft of office space or its proxy measure, the daily cost of parking.

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, tarhoosier said:

or expanded. My eyeball count of 509 S Tryon is 325+/- spaces and the new building will have 5x that or more. Just one example.

It actually will only have 3.5x that. DEC2 will have a refreshingly small parking footprint.

[KJHburg]

2 hours ago, kermit said:

Unfortunately our toll revenues are likely to be siphoned off into private companies instead so we run the risk of making it more difficult to drive into Uptown without concurrent improvements in transit -- this could choke off this promising combination of events

only toll road in the area planned is the 77 express lanes is  private.  State run Monroe Expressway and all others planned for 77 south, 485 south, Independence US 74 all we will be state operated. 

[southslider]

^But NC ain't sharing revenues with Mecklenburg (or 540 tolls with Wake either).

Edited April 3, 2019 by southslider

[XRZ.ME]

I would think extanding BLE to concord mills mall via Charlotte Motor Speedway would bring lots of ridership.

The water pond between mall complex and Concord Mills Blvd would be a good location for station, and we can reserve the option to extend further north to Concord Reginal Airport if that airport have more development.

 

on the southern side, is it a good idea to add a line from Mathews to Ballantyne/Pineville to river district and ends in airport  (probably the same station on silver line airport station)

 

 

Edited April 3, 2019 by XRZ.ME