CATS Long Term Transit Plan - Silver, Red Lines

[SgtCampsalot]

It's got to be a confident political move in order to get everyone on board with existing/new taxes. Not a bluff so much as a seduction.

[Norm2]

I don't agree about the LRT to Davidson. I still think that commuter rail is the best option for anything outside of the Charlotte city limits. Keep LRT within the city limits.

[jednc]

16 hours ago, norm21499 said:

I don't agree about the LRT to Davidson. I still think that commuter rail is the best option for anything outside of the Charlotte city limits. Keep LRT within the city limits.

So you want the Silver Line to Matthews to be commuter rail too then?

Edited February 19, 2017 by jednc

[cltbwimob]

18 hours ago, norm21499 said:

I don't agree about the LRT to Davidson. I still think that commuter rail is the best option for anything outside of the Charlotte city limits. Keep LRT within the city limits.

Meh...The LRT line from Downtown Portland to Hillsboro, OR is approximately 20 miles long-roughly the same distance as exists between Uptown and the Iredell County line.  So an LRT line that pushes deep into the suburbs is not without precedent.  Plus LRT tends to have much higher ridership numbers than Commuter Rail due to its more frequent headways and typically longer hours of operation (I.e. Not rush hour only service).  And with the foaming-at-the-mouth anger over the toll lanes, I'll bet a light rail line would draw a substantial number of riders even if it is more of a one way commuting crowd.

I think an LRT line would do well, but I would say the best bet would be to terminate the line at Birkdale Village and choose a routing that follows I-77 roughly.  This would allow access to not only Birkdale Village, but also Huntersville, the proposed Hambright Rd development, and Northlake Mall.  Plus such a routing minimizes competition with a future commuter rail line should NS ever relinquish its position against commuter rail on its freight line.

One line servicing the I-77 corridor with all day service and one line servicing the downtowns of Huntersville, Davidson, Cornelius, and Mooresville with rush hour commuter rail service.  Both lines serving to reduce congestion and open up new waves of solid urban development.  That's the vision to which we should aspire.

[Norm2]

4 hours ago, jednc said:

So you want the Silver Line to Matthews to be commuter rail too then?

Sure. it can go all the way out to Monroe.

[deleted]

23 hours ago, norm21499 said:

I don't agree about the LRT to Davidson. I still think that commuter rail is the best option for anything outside of the Charlotte city limits. Keep LRT within the city limits.

What's the difference in cost, speed and construction time?  I wouldn't have any problem riding light rail to Weddington.

On 2/18/2017 at 0:36 AM, jednc said:

I think it sounds great as long as they prioritize LKN. Selfish I guess but I've been waiting 20 years for some sort of rail to North Meck.

Not selfish at all...LKN got screwed over twice and it's time to make it right.

[jednc]

6 hours ago, cltbwimob said:

Meh...The LRT line from Downtown Portland to Hillsboro, OR is approximately 20 miles long-roughly the same distance as exists between Uptown and the Iredell County line.  So an LRT line that pushes deep into the suburbs is not without precedent.  Plus LRT tends to have much higher ridership numbers than Commuter Rail due to its more frequent headways and typically longer hours of operation (I.e. Not rush hour only service).  And with the foaming-at-the-mouth anger over the toll lanes, I'll bet a light rail line would draw a substantial number of riders even if it is more of a one way commuting crowd.

I think an LRT line would do well, but I would say the best bet would be to terminate the line at Birkdale Village and choose a routing that follows I-77 roughly.  This would allow access to not only Birkdale Village, but also Huntersville, the proposed Hambright Rd development, and Northlake Mall.  Plus such a routing minimizes competition with a future commuter rail line should NS ever relinquish its position against commuter rail on its freight line.

One line servicing the I-77 corridor with all day service and one line servicing the downtowns of Huntersville, Davidson, Cornelius, and Mooresville with rush hour commuter rail service.  Both lines serving to reduce congestion and open up new waves of solid urban development.  That's the vision to which we should aspire.

I don't know how practical this idea is but it would def get my support!

[LKN704]

Indeed, the MAX Blue Line in Portland is 33 miles long, however the line was opened in segments starting in 1986, and only became 33 miles long in 1998 when the "Westside" and "Eastside" lines were combined. The entire line takes 1h40m to ride, stopping at over 45 stations. However, in some areas of Portland, the light rail system doesn't have a separate ROW and operates in street traffic. Some "stations" especially in downtown Portland, are just curbs on the sidewalk.

The Metro Gold Line in LA is also 31 miles, and takes 1h12m to ride the entire line. Whilst the majority of the line is either elevated, underground, or on its own designated ROW, it too operates in street traffic in some areas.

The Red Line in St. Louis is 38 miles, and takes 1h13m to complete. I am unsure of how the line operates, although I do know that it runs underground through downtown.

I think a LRT system would be successful into the Northern suburbs, but I fail to see it running past Birkdale unless it somehow runs in the median of I-77. You would have to substantially reconstruct downtown Huntersville/Cornelius/Davidson/Mooresville to run a light rail line through it.

I will say that the majority of the region seems to support light rail, which I find a little bit bizarre, considering it has to be one of the only things that the majority of the people can accept and agree on.

Light rail to the Northern suburbs would truly be a megaproject, costing billions of dollars and taking years to complete.

[kermit]

8 hours ago, JBS said:

What's the difference in cost, speed and construction time?  I wouldn't have any problem riding light rail to Weddington.

The original Red Line plan had a per mile cost of approximately $20 million per mile. The BLE was slightly under $100 million per mile (and this was relatively cheap since most of the ROW was in the public domain).  I suspect that all of NS's concerns about sharing their tracks would be alleviated with a $50 million per mile project. It would be difficult / impossible to run LRT alongside the NS tracks given current FRA regulations about buffering LRT from heavy rail.

LRT has somewhat better acceleration and slightly lower top speed. But I don't think either of these things matter given stop spacing on the North line.

Frequency is a wash. There is nothing about LRT that makes it inherantly easier to run more trains per hour. You could run heavy rail every three minutes all day if demand justified it. 

LRT can handle much steeper grades so heavy rail would likely be impossible on any route other than the NS tracks or I-77 median (due to the number of road crossings requiring overpasses)

Construction time can't really be compared. Building on the NS ROW would be comparatively speedy, anywhere else is going to add multiple nightmares of utility relocation, land acquisition and overpass construction (which IMO will trigger massive NIMBY resistance if adjacent to existing residential). 

While people -can- ride on LRT vehicles for large distances the construction cost makes extending the LRT network to exurban areas (e.g Stateville or through running to Rock Hill) impossible. Comfort issues may also discourage riders (seat comfort and availability and bathroom access will discourage riders on trips longer than 20 minutes). The Portland Blue line and LA Gold and St Louis red lines are long but their core destinations are at their center, so few ride the full length of those.

Edited February 20, 2017 by kermit

[southslider]

Commuter rail would have provided much less service than LRT, but also been built for much less cost, since sharing tracks, albeit upgraded, with freight trains.

Going to LRT also means looking at completely different alignments than NSRR, and not just I-77, but others, including US-21. Compact Davidson appears to be the most challenging place to thread new tracks.

Edited February 20, 2017 by southslider

[cjd5050]

Don't know much about rail, at least not close to what people know here but the more people talk about commuter rail the more I love the idea.

Have taken the Coaster in San Diego multiple times.  It can cover 40 miles from San Diego to Oceanside in an hour and that's with serious slowdown in the middle of the run for difficult terrain.  As Kermit pointed out these cars have bathrooms and are super comfortable.  Charlotte to Mooresville is only 31 miles and I assume there is not a slowdown.  So I would think that they could run that would comfortably put you in Uptown from the Mooresville station by the time it takes you to finish your Starbucks and read the paper.  The only thing I would want to ensure is they priced this similar to light rail as to remove the possible objection of N. Meck paying more for similar service.  

 

 

[deleted]

Kermit, thanks for helpful/very informative response!

[Spartan]

On 2/18/2017 at 0:45 PM, Nick2 said:

This sounds like great news to me. Maybe we can get an actual timetable for start and moving dirt on these projects.

That whole article is probably intended to just get people talking about the possibilities. CATS is going to initiate studies for the north corridor, west corridor, and uptown rail connections, and I'm assuming they will take about a year or so to complete (that's just a guess), so we won't know about the alignment, much less the cost or how it would be funded for a while yet.

The possibilities are really interesting though, and if CATS is really open to bold ideas then we could see some really cool/unique things come out of this. There's no reason they can't build on completely new alignment going to the north. Statesville Rd would be a perfect corridor for a North Tryon type of treatment. And at $2b/line, they would probably have enough to do it. I think that bold ideas like moving on all of the remaining lines at once and start building is the kind of thing that will set Charlotte apart in the future.

It will be interesting to see if the Camacho administration continues to fund transit projects, and if the all-knowing NC general assembly will allow funding to be spent on transit. For the record, I'm not convinced having Cooper in office will have much impact on urban issues (even though I think he will help reduce the craziness).

[Nick2]

The biggest thing they should push for is to get the silver line or some other LRT out to the airport. That's crucial for the city to grow and develop properly.

[LKN704]

As indicated above, a DMU light rail/tram-train service would likely be most viable for the Northern line. In addition to the Sprinter in Oceanside/Escondido, the Capital Metrorail in Austin, the River Line in Trenton, and the eBART in the Bay Area all use DMU light rail trains.

Edited February 21, 2017 by LKN704

[southslider]

DMU works great for commuter rail. Only problem is Norfolk Southern. Maybe Cheeto's bigly deals and yuge love for infrastructure will salvage a commuter rail project by private investors enriching NSRR. 

[ChessieCat]

Milecards.com did a ranking of all airport commuter lines, rail or bus.  

CATS Sprinter is rated the 3rd best bus-only airport transit line in the country.  

http://milecards.com/best-airports-for-transit-global-and-u-s-2017-rankings/#usrankings-8211-best-airport-transit

The bad news is that it's 12% slower than driving but you get what you pay for, it's only $2.00. 

[tozmervo]

23 minutes ago, ChessieCat said:

Milecards.com did a ranking of all airport commuter lines, rail or bus.  

CATS Sprinter is rated the 3rd best bus-only airport transit line in the country.  

http://milecards.com/best-airports-for-transit-global-and-u-s-2017-rankings/#usrankings-8211-best-airport-transit

The bad news is that it's 12% slower than driving but you get what you pay for, it's only $2.00. 

hahaha i love that it's the top scoring route that has a convenience score of zero

[southslider]

Any train to CLT would also be slower than driving, given infill stations.

[deleted]

52 minutes ago, southslider said:

Any train to CLT would also be slower than driving, given infill stations.

Depends on traffic (unlike the bus, which will always be slower).  I've never ridden the Airport Sprinter but those I know who do swear by it.  Not having to pay for parking is a bonus and I suspect the riffraff quotient is lower if riders are exclusively riding to the airport...

[elrodvt]

Riffratt ? Hmmm. I've never had issues on the bus. You've run into a lot of riffraff?

Edited February 24, 2017 by elrodvt

[SgtCampsalot]

I mean there are more strugglin' folk on some routes than others.

[southslider]

^All them folks strugglin to work at the Airport 

[swh1972]

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/politics-government/article134279674.html

Bus Ridership for CATS is down 6.7% since June.  One funny thing pointed out was that CATS Leadership thought it was due to the old ticket readers being inaccurate, so they spent $8 million to upgrade them, and now they confirm the lower ridership (the new ticket readers are nice, though).

I still think there is a stigma against riding the bus - the #4 Country Club route that runs more or less through the middle of Plaza Midwood, is not really utilized by residents of that neighborhood.  As a result, CATS plans to adjust the line when the BLE opens later this year.  It will no longer go through PM but will run along the northern border.

[kermit]

^ a portion of the decline in bus ridership (which has been happening throughout the US) is likely due to the gentrification / poverty declines of the center city. As the poor get pushed out of dense intown areas that are well served by transit the new residents are generally affluent enough to drive rather than wait on the bus. 

you can see the effects of this pretty clearly on the west side gold rush ridership.