CATS Long Term Transit Plan - Silver, Red Lines

[JRCLT]

The Google thing is kind of lame. It benefits their customers so why don't THEY contact them? All the responses just seem kind of ....  "laid back". 
At least they do seem to have good goals though.
Thank you for getting this information.

Data is out there for them to use it’s not really in CATS hand. Essentially CATS does not think it’s a priority. Especially with their own app. The tech lead seemed excited and proud of it and what else it could do in the near future i.e. live tracking.

[JRCLT]

Also as for streetcar priority traffic signaling: they are battling it out (negotiations) with CDOT. CDOT believes it will disturb traffic in uptown too much.

[davidclt]

21 hours ago, JeanClt said:

18 Electric Busses are supposed to start trial or be on some routes in March at some point (didn’t get to much details). I don’t know if this was already out there. They are testing battery capacity and how to optimize their use on routes.

I saw one of them on the road at West Blvd and Camden last week clearly running tests (the one I saw was not in CATS-spec silver/blue/black livery and had a large "plug" graphic on the side). Wanted to catch a picture but missed the opportunity. I look forward to 18 electric becoming 180 and 20 articulated electric coaches running on the busiest routes. I also look forward to the complete retirement of their diesel fleet which based on my past rides have grown a bit long in the tooth, a bit worn and unmaintained.

15 hours ago, JeanClt said:

CDOT believes it will disturb traffic in uptown too much.

F CDOT. They're as useless as tits on a bull.

[RANYC]

 

1 hour ago, davidclt said:

I saw one of them on the road at West Blvd and Camden last week clearly running tests (the one I saw was not in CATS-spec silver/blue/black livery and had a large "plug" graphic on the side). Wanted to catch a picture but missed the opportunity. I look forward to 18 electric becoming 180 and 20 articulated electric coaches running on the busiest routes. I also look forward to the complete retirement of their diesel fleet which based on my past rides have grown a bit long in the tooth, a bit worn and unmaintained.

F CDOT. They're as useless as tits on a bull.

CDOT may not have the right structure.  Systems like a department of transportation only align with clear goals laid out for them.  Just comparing summary descriptions of Charlotte DOT versus Denver's DOT starts to suggest that C-DOT's mission isn't really holistic.  Denver's DOT appears to have Transit embedded in its planning and operating structure.  It's puzzling to me that a DOT and a Transit agency would be at loggerheads on something like streetcar priority, after streetcar has already been rolled out. 

A DOT's mission should clearly integrate all the forms of getting around to holistically advance the cause of mobility, congestion reduction, and safety. 

Charlotte DOT:

Divisions & Contacts > Home (charlottenc.gov)

CDOT provides a variety of services directly to the community - such as maintaining streets; installation, maintenance and monitoring of traffic signals; traffic calming devices; and services to neighborhoods. The department also provides overall transportation planning in order to improve roads and streets and make them safer.  CDOT divisions:

• Street Maintenance
• Engineering & Operations
• Development Services
• Planning & Design
• Business Management Services
• Where is a bus & light rail division within the Department of Transportation?
• Where's a dedicated focus on and prioritization of cyclists and pedestrians  and greenways by forming a division with that focus?  If I walk a quarter or half mile to a bus stop to go to work, is that not transportation and shouldn't DOT be studying and improving that sequence of modes for me, the user?
• Which division addresses integrations/interfaces across transportation structures during design, so that there's not a fight over signal prioritization after years of construction of a streetcar line plus after it has gone live?
• Council oversees the CDOT, and would be the body to nudge a structural modernization, no?  Has it ever encouraged a wider remit for CDOT and better integration across mobility systems?  And I'm not talking about pilot programs and Vision Zero and other such gimmicks.  I mean waking up everyday thinking about seamless integration of mobility systems and their supporting infrastructure and context because all of them comprise transportation.

Denver DOT:

Department of Transportation and Infrastructure - City and County of Denver (denvergov.org)

Denver's Department of Transportation and Infrastructure, through its employees, enhances the quality of life in Denver by safely and efficiently delivering effective, high quality, sustainable and equitable public infrastructure and services.  Denver's Department of Transportation & Infrastructure (DOTI) is a modern agency focused on increasing mobility and safety while reducing congestion and fighting climate change.

These documents drive the planning and development of the department's projects and priorities. New plans are adopted after rigorous study and review and are periodically updated to reflect the changing conditions in the City and County of Denver.

• Making Bicycle & Multi-Use Connections
• Pedestrians & Trails
• Transit
• Strategic Parking Plan
• Strategic Transportation Plan

Edited February 27, 2022 by RANYC

[JRCLT]

Key mobility components missing in C-DOT should be more like C-Roads essentially. CDOR

[kermit]

^ agree with all above. CDOT is frustratingly focused on streets and CharMeck silos really get in the way of decent planning when intown areas are redeveloped (e.g. the lack of any sidewalks along N Davidson north of Craighead)

I will say however that I am just back from a very transit-intensive trip to Denver. While their transit system is certainly extensive I was surprised by several things I thought they did poorly (particularly in comparison to Charlotte)

• TOD adjacent to stations was generally awful. There was lots of multifamily going up, but for the most part station areas were either all park and ride lots or ignored completely.
• Sidewalk provision was poor (much like Charlotte), lots of areas (particularly around the new commuter rail lines)  lacked any sidewalks at all beyond the commuter lots
• Denver did not use signal preemption for the street running sections of LRT around downtown or the L-line tail to the north of downtown -- these lines felt like bus routes. I do think they had signal prevention on the new R line tracks out in Aurora however.

Denver did do some things well.

• The airport commuter line is very well used, runs every 15 minutes, and is triggering huge amounts of new housing development out in the plains (but all of it is hidden behind park and ride lots)
• Street running sections of LRT are well designed and nicely separated from autos (with the exception of the signal priority issue noted above)
• The core LRT network is fast (thanks to it running in a rail gulch where there are few grade crossings), but stations are widely spaced and felt very peripheral to existing development (with the exception of the W line).

While my experience may have been colored by the weather (low single digit temps and snow) and the covid/WFH era I was pretty unimpressed by Denver's rail transit network. Ridership appeared to be low (except for the airport line), the places that rail connected to did not seem to be all that convenient (not much employment around Union station, the loop into the office tower district was awkward to access, Tech Center was also poorly connected to LRT due to the suburban street network), It also didn't help that the weather turned the RTD trains into a defacto homeless shelter (but that is not really an RTD issue). Overall I left feeling like the Blue Line is better planned than any of RTD's LRT lines.   

Edited February 27, 2022 by kermit

[Reverie39]

7 minutes ago, kermit said:

^ agree with all above. CDOT is frustratingly focused on streets and CharMeck silos really get in the way of decent planning when intown areas are redeveloped (e.g. the lack of any sidewalks along N Davidson north of Craighead)

I will say however that I am just back from a very transit-intensive trip to Denver. While their transit system is certainly extensive I was surprised by several things I thought they did poorly (particularly in comparison to Charlotte)

• TOD adjacent to stations was generally awful. There was lots of multifamily going up, but for the most part station areas were either all park and ride lots or ignored completely.
• Sidewalk provision was poor (much like Charlotte), lots of areas (particularly around the new commuter rail lines)  lacked any sidewalks at all beyond the commuter lots
• Denver did not use signal preemption for the street running sections of LRT around downtown or the L-line tail to the north of downtown -- these lines felt like bus routes. I do think they had signal prevention on the new R line tracks out in Aurora however)

Denver did do some things well.

• The airport commuter line is very well used, runs every 15 minutes, and is triggering huge amounts of new housing development out in the plains (but all of it is hidden behind park and ride lots)
• Street running sections of LRT are well designed and nicely separated from autos (with the exception of the signal priority issue noted above)
• The core LRT network is fast (thanks to it running in a rail gulch where there are few grade crossings), but stations are widely spaced and felt very peripheral to existing development (with the exception of the W line).

While my experience may have been colored by the weather (low single digit temps and snow) and the covid/WFH era I was pretty unimpressed by Denver's rail transit network. Ridership appeared to be low (except for the airport line), the places that rail connected to did not seem to be all that convenient (not much employment around Union station, the office tower district was off on the kinda difficult to get to downtown loop, Tech Center was also poorly connected to LRT due to the suburban street network), It also didn't help that the weather turned the RTD trains into a defacto homeless shelter (but that is not really an RTD issue). Overall I left feeling like the Blue Line is better planned than any of RTD's LRT lines.   

I keep being surprised at just how many cities' light rail systems run on the streets in their downtown regions. It makes me pretty proud of the Blue Line.

I'm no transit expert but to me a light rail line running completely independently from roads (is there a formal term for that?) seems closer to a slightly downgraded metro/subway/heavy rail line (primarily lacking capacity)... whereas a light rail line running on streets seems closer to a slightly upgraded bus route. I'd MUCH rather have the former than the latter, yet both are classified as light rail.

[RANYC]

6 hours ago, kermit said:

^ agree with all above. CDOT is frustratingly focused on streets and CharMeck silos really get in the way of decent planning when intown areas are redeveloped (e.g. the lack of any sidewalks along N Davidson north of Craighead)

I will say however that I am just back from a very transit-intensive trip to Denver. While their transit system is certainly extensive I was surprised by several things I thought they did poorly (particularly in comparison to Charlotte)

• TOD adjacent to stations was generally awful. There was lots of multifamily going up, but for the most part station areas were either all park and ride lots or ignored completely.
• Sidewalk provision was poor (much like Charlotte), lots of areas (particularly around the new commuter rail lines)  lacked any sidewalks at all beyond the commuter lots
• Denver did not use signal preemption for the street running sections of LRT around downtown or the L-line tail to the north of downtown -- these lines felt like bus routes. I do think they had signal prevention on the new R line tracks out in Aurora however)

Denver did do some things well.

• The airport commuter line is very well used, runs every 15 minutes, and is triggering huge amounts of new housing development out in the plains (but all of it is hidden behind park and ride lots)
• Street running sections of LRT are well designed and nicely separated from autos (with the exception of the signal priority issue noted above)
• The core LRT network is fast (thanks to it running in a rail gulch where there are few grade crossings), but stations are widely spaced and felt very peripheral to existing development (with the exception of the W line).

While my experience may have been colored by the weather (low single digit temps and snow) and the covid/WFH era I was pretty unimpressed by Denver's rail transit network. Ridership appeared to be low (except for the airport line), the places that rail connected to did not seem to be all that convenient (not much employment around Union station, the office tower district was off on the kinda difficult to get to downtown loop, Tech Center was also poorly connected to LRT due to the suburban street network), It also didn't help that the weather turned the RTD trains into a defacto homeless shelter (but that is not really an RTD issue). Overall I left feeling like the Blue Line is better planned than any of RTD's LRT lines.   

Appreciate you sharing that.  I, too, feel the Blue Line is integrated in a way that I don't find with other systems in the sunbelt, and that trajectory is positive given all the TOD construction currently in the pipeline.

One of my implied questions from comments above is whether Charlotteans should be asked to fund a multi-model transportation strategy with a massive price tag, when we appear to have major weaknesses in governance and in giving the mandate to DOT on endpoint-to-endpoint mobility for city-dwellers and visitors?  Shouldn't we fix the structure of decision-making around mobility first, and then talk about specific projects and the funding model?  

Edited February 28, 2022 by RANYC

[Desert Power]

On 2/24/2022 at 7:55 PM, Durhamite said:

I guarantee you have no clue.  

I've been on these forums for nearly 14 years and today is the first I've wondered if there was an ignore function. You stay classy.

 

On 2/26/2022 at 9:22 PM, JeanClt said:

Also as for streetcar priority traffic signaling: they are battling it out (negotiations) with CDOT. CDOT believes it will disturb traffic in uptown too much.

Is it only uptown they are objecting to? I've been using Hawthorne a lot lately and it is noticeable how far it gets backed up over there.

[kermit]

Trigger warning: CATS bashing...

And yet CATS can't seem to overcome the obstacles of running more than its current 3 trains per hour in leafy and (mostly) artillery-free Charlotte.

 

Edited March 1, 2022 by kermit

[LKN704]

CATS did a phenomenal job at making the effort to fully grade-separate the Blue Line...the Blue Line is one of the only (if not the only) LRT system in the US to be fully grade separated. 

On 2/27/2022 at 5:13 PM, kermit said:

^ agree with all above. CDOT is frustratingly focused on streets and CharMeck silos really get in the way of decent planning when intown areas are redeveloped (e.g. the lack of any sidewalks along N Davidson north of Craighead)

I will say however that I am just back from a very transit-intensive trip to Denver. While their transit system is certainly extensive I was surprised by several things I thought they did poorly (particularly in comparison to Charlotte)

• TOD adjacent to stations was generally awful. There was lots of multifamily going up, but for the most part station areas were either all park and ride lots or ignored completely.
• Sidewalk provision was poor (much like Charlotte), lots of areas (particularly around the new commuter rail lines)  lacked any sidewalks at all beyond the commuter lots
• Denver did not use signal preemption for the street running sections of LRT around downtown or the L-line tail to the north of downtown -- these lines felt like bus routes. I do think they had signal prevention on the new R line tracks out in Aurora however.

Denver did do some things well.

• The airport commuter line is very well used, runs every 15 minutes, and is triggering huge amounts of new housing development out in the plains (but all of it is hidden behind park and ride lots)
• Street running sections of LRT are well designed and nicely separated from autos (with the exception of the signal priority issue noted above)
• The core LRT network is fast (thanks to it running in a rail gulch where there are few grade crossings), but stations are widely spaced and felt very peripheral to existing development (with the exception of the W line).

While my experience may have been colored by the weather (low single digit temps and snow) and the covid/WFH era I was pretty unimpressed by Denver's rail transit network. Ridership appeared to be low (except for the airport line), the places that rail connected to did not seem to be all that convenient (not much employment around Union station, the loop into the office tower district was awkward to access, Tech Center was also poorly connected to LRT due to the suburban street network), It also didn't help that the weather turned the RTD trains into a defacto homeless shelter (but that is not really an RTD issue). Overall I left feeling like the Blue Line is better planned than any of RTD's LRT lines.   

RTD's buildout and the FasTracks program are both impressive to me...but the system makes little geographic sense. It always struck me as odd as there was no through-running downtown lines. 

I got the feeling the lines were much more geared to the 9-5 commuter crowd rather than being a system people actually used for all aspects of their life. 

[elrodvt]

3 hours ago, LKN704 said:

CATS did a phenomenal job at making the effort to fully grade-separate the Blue Line...the Blue Line is one of the only (if not the only) LRT system in the US to be fully grade separated. 

RTD's buildout and the FasTracks program are both impressive to me...but the system makes little geographic sense. It always struck me as odd as there was no through-running downtown lines. 

I got the feeling the lines were much more geared to the 9-5 commuter crowd rather than being a system people actually used for all aspects of their life. 

I'm not sure I understand your rtd point. Could you clarify? I used it all the time. 

[kayman]

On 2/26/2022 at 7:32 PM, kermit said:

Yea, I don't really think the Google Maps thing is on CATS. Google compiles all of its map information from very large scale databases. They don't take calls from individuals (or organizations) that say "please put my unique data into google maps"

Open Street Maps on the other hand is developed by individuals and is generally much more up to date than Google Maps, it  does have the Blue Line and the (up to date) Gold Line. Having said that, I do see the importance of the lines appearing on GM, but IMHO that is a google fudge up.

Outside of Atlanta, Austin, and Durham, where Google have their regional offices, they don't seem care about up-to-date information, images, or data of cities in the South.  This is why Google might wind up like Microsoft if their model doesn't show mapping equity towards all growing places where the most up-to-date information is important. 

[kayman]

On 2/27/2022 at 5:24 PM, Reverie39 said:

I keep being surprised at just how many cities' light rail systems run on the streets in their downtown regions. It makes me pretty proud of the Blue Line.

I'm no transit expert but to me a light rail line running completely independently from roads (is there a formal term for that?) seems closer to a slightly downgraded metro/subway/heavy rail line (primarily lacking capacity)... whereas a light rail line running on streets seems closer to a slightly upgraded bus route. I'd MUCH rather have the former than the latter, yet both are classified as light rail.

You're referring to dedicated guideway versus mixed traffic light rail transit.  The CATS Blue Line light rail transit has its own dedicated right-of-way.

[kayman]

On 2/27/2022 at 5:32 PM, RANYC said:

Appreciate you sharing that.  I, too, feel the Blue Line is integrated in a way that I don't find with other systems in the sunbelt, and that trajectory is positive given all the TOD construction currently in the pipeline.

One of my implied questions from comments above is whether Charlotteans should be asked to fund a multi-model transportation strategy with a massive price tag, when we appear to have major weaknesses in governance and in giving the mandate to DOT on endpoint-to-endpoint mobility for city-dwellers and visitors?  Shouldn't we fix the structure of decision-making around mobility first, and then talk about specific projects and the funding model?  

Yep, this is why I've been saying that CATS shouldn't even be directly associated with the City of Charlotte municipal government for day-to-day operations as a department.  CDOT is the City of Charlotte and unincorporated portions of Mecklenburg County transportation department.  Their influence should enhance mobility rather than impede throughout said areas. There is a dire need for an organizational structure reorganization for CDOT and its long overdue. 

CATS should be an independent regional transit authority with its own leadership, fully-automonous Metropolitan Transit Commission, a  full-fledged planning department with long-range, service, and station area planning.  CATS should have its own real estate acquisition, management, and development divisions of their own as well

Current governance structure isn't setup to transit function for a region this size. Just like the City of Charlotte municipal governance shouldn't be a council-manager form of municipal government. As it's too many chiefs and not enough actual legislative representatives.  Charlotte should have a mayor-council form of government with a city administrator who handles the day-to-day operations with some reporting responsibilities to the city council but directly reports to the mayor's office.

Augusta, Columbus (Georgia), Huntsville (Alabama), Fayetteville can operate like this, but for a 3M+ population sized region like Charlotte, nope.  

Columbia, Richmond, Charleston,  or even Savannah have separated transportation authorities from their respective municipal governments.  The current setup is not how you integrate a true regional transit system.

This is why I am ambivalent about these things until the majority of citizens, politicos, and leadership here realizes and accepts this reality. 

 

Edited March 1, 2022 by kayman

[JRCLT]

Separating them won’t change the fact that the DOT has final say. Judging from their expression they like to the integration CATS has with the city for now. If they’re having trouble under the same authority the City…imagine what would happen if they were independent…CATS relies on city departments and work closely with them. Still confused by what it is mean by separating CATS and the city and how that would give CATS more freedom or advantages?

[LKN704]

1 hour ago, elrodvt said:

I'm not sure I understand your rtd point. Could you clarify? I used it all the time. 

The layout of the network makes it quite clear that it is simply a commuter, park and ride system, based on the system's poor station locations outside the city's core, the poor TOD, and the massive amounts of parking at most peripheral stations. I think the Golden station is a great example of this. Golden has a great, walkable downtown, yet the station is 3 miles south of Downtown Golden in the middle of a corporate office park next to a highway. 

There are no lines that directly connect the LoDo/Union Station and CBD area through downtown...the lines that do link the two areas take a massive detour around Downtown and bend around MSU Denver.  Yes...there are buses that connect the two areas together and its only a mile or so walk but it just seems odd. I also found it odd that no line connects to the Cherry Creek neighborhood. 

The times I rode the system (pre-pandemic) I would often find myself to be one of the only people on the train during off peak and evening hours...especially on the weekends. 

[elrodvt]

@LKN704, Living downtown gave me a different perspective but I get your point. I too hated the way Golden was done.

They also had the same issue we have with the northern suburbs. Bolder and such were/are? really angry their lrt line turned into BRT.

[TGIBridays]

13 hours ago, LKN704 said:

CATS did a phenomenal job at making the effort to fully grade-separate the Blue Line...the Blue Line is one of the only (if not the only) LRT system in the US to be fully grade separated. 

Wait, do you mean LRT with a dedicated ROW?  It's definitely not fully grade separated. 

[Third Strike]

Bus lanes on Independence Boulevard will be reopening:

https://www.wcnc.com/amp/article/traffic/charlotte-independence-closed-bus-lanes-middle-road-traffic/275-ac32abbd-32fa-4145-8ae8-6a83f947097b

[Reverie39]

3 hours ago, TGIBridays said:

Wait, do you mean LRT with a dedicated ROW?  It's definitely not fully grade separated. 

I'm assuming that's what he meant. I did a little exploring on Google Maps satellite/street view the other day and it was shocking how many light rail systems don't have a dedicated ROW/guideway (thanks for teaching me the term kayman) through downtown areas. Even famous systems like Portland and Denver don't, and forget about other systems like in Salt Lake City, Twin Cities, Phoenix,  and Sacramento. Charlotte Blue Line seems to be pretty unique in this regard, along with a handful of others (Seattle and Dallas come to mind as having at least some dedicated guideways - both are subways through parts of downtown).

[kermit]

1 hour ago, Reverie39 said:

I'm assuming that's what he meant. I did a little exploring on Google Maps satellite/street view the other day and it was shocking how many light rail systems don't have a dedicated ROW/guideway (thanks for teaching me the term kayman) through downtown areas. Even famous systems like Portland and Denver don't, and forget about other systems like in Salt Lake City, Twin Cities, Phoenix,  and Sacramento. Charlotte Blue Line seems to be pretty unique in this regard, along with a handful of others (Seattle and Dallas come to mind as having at least some dedicated guideways - both are subways through parts of downtown).

Its entirely the product of the Blue Line following the old railroad ROW through town. If Charlotte were bigger in the late 1800s when the railroad was built It would have certainly run along Irwin Creek instead. This is one of the rare cases of Charlotte’s late bloomer status being an advantage for its modern growth.

I will say that the exclusive ROW through downtown is a big asset, just as an underground N-S would have been for the Silver Line. The Silver Line route along the edges of uptown does not do much for accessibility to employment.

Edited March 1, 2022 by kermit

[videtur quam contuor]

Third Street station now is where cotton warehouses and cotton factors gathered during the season. Loading and unloading bales, testing, sampling for quality and dealmaking with credit and sales to move product onward. The cotton market as it is called in this book. See page 29 of the pdf of this book:

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/service/gdc/scd0001/2010/20100114006ch/20100114006ch.pdf

Passenger service line curved away at Morehead west to serve station at location of new station on West Trade.  To visitors of that time it may have appeared that the city grew along the rail line rather than the rail line designed to serve an existing city. And that may have been the truth.

[kermit]

29 minutes ago, tarhoosier said:

Third Street station now is where cotton warehouses and cotton factors gathered during the season. Loading and unloading bales, testing, sampling for quality and dealmaking with credit and sales to move product onward. The cotton market as it is called in this book. See page 29 of the pdf of this book:

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/service/gdc/scd0001/2010/20100114006ch/20100114006ch.pdf

Passenger service line curved away at Morehead west to serve station at location of new station on West Trade.  To visitors of that time it may have appeared that the city grew along the rail line rather than the rail line designed to serve an existing city. And that may have been the truth.

The history I have read referred to the cotton warehousing district along the tracks as "The Warf" which was an invention of the railroad who was advertising that getting your cotton bales to the depot was just as good as having them ready for overseas shipment on the Charleston waterfront.  I had always thought the Warf was around 7th street (not 3rd) and Google Fiber building (former Dixie Tavern) is the last remaining warehouse building from that era.

[Desert Power]

52 minutes ago, tarhoosier said:

Third Street station now is where cotton warehouses and cotton factors gathered during the season. Loading and unloading bales, testing, sampling for quality and dealmaking with credit and sales to move product onward. The cotton market as it is called in this book. See page 29 of the pdf of this book:

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/service/gdc/scd0001/2010/20100114006ch/20100114006ch.pdf

Passenger service line curved away at Morehead west to serve station at location of new station on West Trade.  To visitors of that time it may have appeared that the city grew along the rail line rather than the rail line designed to serve an existing city. And that may have been the truth.

Going to save this one down, some fascinating images of Charlotte's history