CATS Long Term Transit Plan - Silver, Red Lines

[kayman]

2 hours ago, Hushpuppy321 said:

Does anyone think that a Separate Regional Entity would have run the bus/transit system better than this City Dept. and if so why?  I was impressed on the buses/frequency when I first moved to CLT in 2013 but don’t know what has happened here.

Yes because the focus on the current leadership is marketing, charts, and manipulating the amount and flow of information to the MTC and the COC City Council along with their City Manager.  It's all about job performance for the current setup of a city department hence there is always a slow and delayed reaction to the needs of riders and other jurisdictions within Mecklenburg County versus the overreaction of the COC City Council members at the meetings of information (or lack of information).  It's all tied to the shielding of political reaction of the current leadership (CATS CEO and COC City Manager)  from the people.  

Think about it, how can a part-time COC Mayor (weak with only veto power) and part-time COC City Council going to fulfill the needs of riders or hold the City Manager and CATS CEO accountable when the latter controls the flow of information to them?  

The form of Charlotte municipal government to change to mayor-council with full-time roles of all of them to be held accountable & be more responsible by us the public. Furthermore, the regional transit entity should be an actual public regional authority with actual boardmembers from all of the Mecklenburg County jurisdictions including the county itself not worried about the reaction of the COC City Manager nor City Council for this transit entity be held fully accountable and responsive of what's truly going on with the current sales taxes funds usage. 

CATS is different from the CLT Airport.  As it's a directly funded by us taxpayers of Mecklenburg County. Whereas, the airport is funded by the commercial airlines, airport usage fees, and federal funds. 

Edited July 19, 2022 by kayman

[Matthew.Brendan]

1 hour ago, kayman said:

Yes because the focus on the current leadership is marketing, charts, and manipulating the amount and flow of information to the MTC and the COC City Council along with their City Manager.  It's all about job performance for the current setup of a city department hence there is always a slow and delayed reaction to the needs of riders and other jurisdictions within Mecklenburg County versus the overreaction of the COC City Council members at the meetings of information (or lack of information).  It's all tied to the shielding of political reaction of the current leadership (CATS CEO and COC City Manager)  from the people.  

Think about it, how can a part-time COC Mayor (weak with only veto power) and part-time COC City Council going to fulfill the needs of riders or hold the City Manager and CATS CEO accountable when the latter controls the flow of information to them?  

The form of Charlotte municipal government to change to mayor-council with full-time roles of all of them to be held accountable & be more responsible by us the public. Furthermore, the regional transit entity should be an actual public regional authority with actual boardmembers from all of the Mecklenburg County jurisdictions including the county itself not worried about the reaction of the COC City Manager nor City Council for this transit entity be held fully accountable and responsive of what's truly going on with the current sales taxes funds usage. 

CATS is different from the CLT Airport.  As it's a directly funded by us taxpayers of Mecklenburg County. Whereas, the airport is funded by the commercial airlines, airport usage fees, and federal funds. 

 

Wait do you mean CATS CEO John Lewis (salary $282,000) and City Manager Marcus Jones (salary $379,000) the two highest paid city employees aren't interested in accounting for their job performance but rather choose to ignore and deflect any questions about their leadership?

 

https://data.charlottenc.gov/datasets/2eaeb9bbc40c4bc6816170ba08e71021/explore

[kermit]

^ Marcus Jones has been MUCH less visible than any of his predecessors. While I can’t really say that is reflective of his performance (I just don’t know), I did have a good sense of what past city managers valued and considered to be urgent. I think Ron Carlee would have been heavily involved in the ghost bus issue for instance, but Jones is just MIA (from my perspective).

Edited July 19, 2022 by kermit

[kayman]

1 hour ago, Matthew.Brendan said:

 

Wait do you mean CATS CEO John Lewis (salary $282,000) and City Manager Marcus Jones (salary $379,000) the two highest paid city employees aren't interested in accounting for their job performance but rather choose to ignore and deflect any questions about their leadership?

 

https://data.charlottenc.gov/datasets/2eaeb9bbc40c4bc6816170ba08e71021/explore

Yep, they do...

[TCLT]

Turns out CATS was misleading council and the public about driver absences. The numbers they were reporting as unexcused sick calls were actually all absences, excused and unexcused, planned and unplanned. And in some cases the numbers reported were double the actual number of unexcused. And not only was CATS management lying to the public, they were also trying to blame the frontline workers for the abysmal operating performance that’s most likely the result of management ineptitude.

Quote

WBTV obtained six days’ worth of code sheets covering July 12 through July 17. Each day’s sheet shows that CATS overstated the number of unexpected driver absences.

CATS has also apparently been misleading city council about the extent to which a third party contractor is involved in its operations.

Quote

WBTV first exposed the fact that RATP Dev is contracted to run the entire CATS Bus Operations Division last week. Prior to our investigation, Charlotte’s elected leaders were unaware of the extent to which RATP Dev was involved in managing day-to-day operations of the bus system.

Totally unforgivable. Heads should roll for this.

https://www.wbtv.com/2022/07/19/internal-records-dispute-cats-tweets-with-driver-absence-numbers/

Edited July 20, 2022 by TCLT
formatting

[kermit]

10 hours ago, TCLT said:

Totally unforgivable. Heads should roll for this.

Agree! Repeated lying simply to make management look less bad is a serious betrayal of public trust. Nothing Lewis says from now on can be assumed to be truthful.

Edited July 20, 2022 by kermit

[kayman]

This is why I've been calling for reforms of both Charlotte municipal government and CATS. I want all parties to be held more accountable especially the COC City Council.

It's time for THESE NEEDED CHANGES! Lobbying for this should start today. 

[TCLT]

John Lewis, Julie Eiselt, and Steve Harrison were on Charlotte Talks this morning. John Lewis doubled down on driver absences being the driver (hehe) of operational issues. He noted that CATS has 571 bus operators (he didn't specify but in context I took this to mean number of funded positions, not number of active drivers) and needs 292 to run their planned weekday schedule. He said they have 74 openings, so that means 497 active drivers but he didn't say how many are on shift any given day because each of them have a 2 day "weekend" at some point during the week. The WBTV article had a quote in which he used a number of 373 when he was reporting to council. So that's probably what they have available each day which would mean that 81 drivers can "call out" and still allow the schedule to be maintained. Obviously the staffing is not acceptable, but like every other business complaining about not having workers it seems like CATS is looking for every solution except the obvious one...better pay. He also said that RATP Dev handles all of the bus operations. It would be interesting to know if that includes route planning or if CATS staff does that. Because you should be able to get more efficient bus utilization with route/routing tweaks that would allow more or less the same schedule to run with less drivers. Lewis also took issue with the 75% drop in ridership reported by WFAE (that article was posted further upthread) because according to him many bus riders moved to rail as the rail system expanded with the BLE and streetcar. He also wanted the comparison to be made between peak ridership (26 million total system riders in 2012 according to him) and 2019 before the pandemic (21 million total system riders) instead of 2014 to 2022 as WFAE did. Not sure his way helps his case much as the region's population exploded between 2012 and 2019 so you'd expect a higher baseline of ridership even if rate of transit usage still dropped.  

As far as the interview went, I thought Mike Collins was pretty soft on the line of questioning overall. Pretty much just accepted that the labor issues were the main problem. And Steve Harrison seemed oddly understanding and defensive of CATS's issues.

[kermit]

Mary comes correct:

 

[Reverie39]

Lol what are the odds we could just get a subway tunnel for the Silver Line through the center of Uptown... difficult or impossible?

[JRCLT]

Lol what are the odds we could just get a subway tunnel for the Silver Line through the center of Uptown... difficult or impossible?

With construction costs ballooning and funding scarce I’d say very difficult but nothings really impossible. Especially a mile long tunnel. But if the current alignment is 1 billion through uptown which is what it cost per mile recently they might as well tunnel?

[CLT2014]

1 hour ago, Reverie39 said:

Lol what are the odds we could just get a subway tunnel for the Silver Line through the center of Uptown... difficult or impossible?

Low IMO.... we don't seem to even have a strong plan in place to convince the GOP controlled NC General Assembly to prioritize allowing us to put a measure on the ballot to raise the sales tax to fund the Silver Line.... let alone build a subway. They also haven't planned for a subway AT ALL, so if they pivoted to that, the Silver Line would porbably be delayed an additional 5+ years for studies and planning / making consultants rich. 

Edited July 23, 2022 by CLT2014

[15895]

1 hour ago, Reverie39 said:

Lol what are the odds we could just get a subway tunnel for the Silver Line through the center of Uptown... difficult or impossible?

For Charlotte? Impossible. Probably less than 1% chance. But the silver line 100% should be tunneled underground and the cost would be 100% worth it (Unless it interlines with the blue line which is ‘ite). I mean. The city leaders per the articles recently shared made city leaders look so clueless on mass transit. Why would anyone expect any mass transit to be a possibility at this point? Honestly. The alignment where the silver line skirts uptown, no good connection to the blue line is dumb. And connecting to Gateway isn’t that great. The connections from gateway to the silver line would probably be so insignificant. Especially with a redeveloped CTC…  
 

Anthony Foxx & McCrory we’re huge champions in making Charlotte a large urban city. They pushed for things like major events, stadiums, mass transit. They seemed invested in making Charlotte more urban. Clodfelter held that tradition but was too temporary, Cannon was bribed to lol. There’s no Hugh McColls to push for these, the city managers they hire from other towns that are temporary probably aren’t as invested personally other than it being their job. 

Jennifer Robert’s didn’t have that chance as the GOP became super hostile to urban areas when she came to power and I think Vi is cool making sure Charlotte has good schools, clean parks, etc. things that probably the rest of Charlotte cares about versus central charlotte. Her airport message that plays every 5 minutes or so “welcome to Charlotte, a large city with a small town feel” is so her vibe. 
 

A side note, San Francisco’s Central Subway opens soon which is I think 4 stations underground. Stations look fabulous. Would be perfect to have a 4 station underground silver line in uptown, with connections at a redeveloped CTC station, connection to the blue line. 

 

 

Edited July 23, 2022 by AirNostrumMAD

[videtur quam contuor]

Elevated lines are ALWAYS a possibility at substantially less cost and time compared to tunneling. They make sense in the more dense areas but not just the most densely built areas. Chicago El runs through residential areas on the north side.

[B Randy]

On 7/23/2022 at 3:07 PM, AirNostrumMAD said:

For Charlotte? Impossible. Probably less than 1% chance. But the silver line 100% should be tunneled underground and the cost would be 100% worth it (Unless it interlines with the blue line which is ‘ite). I mean. The city leaders per the articles recently shared made city leaders look so clueless on mass transit. Why would anyone expect any mass transit to be a possibility at this point? Honestly. The alignment where the silver line skirts uptown, no good connection to the blue line is dumb. And connecting to Gateway isn’t that great. The connections from gateway to the silver line would probably be so insignificant. Especially with a redeveloped CTC…  
 

Anthony Foxx & McCrory we’re huge champions in making Charlotte a large urban city. They pushed for things like major events, stadiums, mass transit. They seemed invested in making Charlotte more urban. Clodfelter held that tradition but was too temporary, Cannon was bribed to lol. There’s no Hugh McColls to push for these, the city managers they hire from other towns that are temporary probably aren’t as invested personally other than it being their job. 

Jennifer Robert’s didn’t have that chance as the GOP became super hostile to urban areas when she came to power and I think Vi is cool making sure Charlotte has good schools, clean parks, etc. things that probably the rest of Charlotte cares about versus central charlotte. Her airport message that plays every 5 minutes or so “welcome to Charlotte, a large city with a small town feel” is so her vibe. 
 

A side note, San Francisco’s Central Subway opens soon which is I think 4 stations underground. Stations look fabulous. Would be perfect to have a 4 station underground silver line in uptown, with connections at a redeveloped CTC station, connection to the blue line. 

 

 

I actually think the notion that it's "skirting" Uptown is focusing a bit too much on present day.  As in - where is the best route to serve the City that exists today - Trade and Tryon and Blue Line Corridor.  The things we know and are comfortable throwing investment behind.

If you think about where the current alignment runs and how it could transform the City - the already densifying Optimist/ Tryon neighborhoods across 277 + Levine / Gateway/ Hal Marshal properties being developed over the next 15 years + a transformed 277 at some point (please...)

That alignment could actually be a central corridor moving through one of the more interesting areas of Uptown - big time urban residential - serving a multiple newer, diversely populated neighborhoods w/ transit, and a TOD bridge to an extended Uptown not currently in the picture but very possible. 

Let both lines create a new transit framework for Uptown.  Anchor both ends of Trade with a major transit hub.  Connect the two with incredible pedestrian experience and more frequent street car service, and let Uptown fill in around both lines over the next 50 years and completely transform the entire city.  Just a thought!

Edited July 25, 2022 by B Randy

[kermit]

This was reported yesterday by WSOC. Hopefully this spurs some dramatic change at CATS:

Quote

CHARLOTTE — Channel 9 has learned Charlotte’s city manager is bringing in an outside team to do an organizational review of the Charlotte Area Transit System.

The move comes after weeks of driver shortages and system-wide delays have plagued the organization. CATS says at least 80 drivers have called out every day since the end of June. 

The transit service already said it will cut some routes to alleviate demand but now, Channel 9 has learned the city manager hired an outside firm to make recommendations on stabilizing CATS.
 

According to a memo obtained by Channel 9, the firm will look at five key areas:

• Organizational structure and leadership
• Contracts
• Employee morale
• The relationship with the third-party company that employs mechanics from CATS
• Reliability of the bus system

 

https://www.wsoctv.com/news/local/memo-outside-team-will-review-cats-make-recommendations-stabilize-it/D76MUYKF2NERJLIOAW4WMIFVCU/

Edited July 26, 2022 by kermit

[RANYC]

31 minutes ago, kermit said:

This was reported yesterday by WSOC. Hopefully this spurs some dramatic change at CATS:

 

https://www.wsoctv.com/news/local/memo-outside-team-will-review-cats-make-recommendations-stabilize-it/D76MUYKF2NERJLIOAW4WMIFVCU/

Missing a key bullet in the scope of work for the consultant: "Community/Stakeholder Perception, Sentiment, and Confidence."

[JRCLT]

Missing a key bullet in the scope of work for the consultant: "Community/Stakeholder Perception, Sentiment, and Confidence."

Transparency for cats is like looking through frosted glass. They give nothing.

[kermit]

The July 27 MTC meeting featured discussion of moving design work on all proposed fixed route lines to the stage necessary to apply for federal funds (I think they are a little late but I applaud this effort none the less). Once design work is complete, federal funding WILL REQUIRE local match funding to be in place first.

One topic of discussion was updating Red Line Commuter rail design. Jason Lawrence talked about double tracking the corridor (new) to create a line with 30 minute, two way frequency at peak (and hourly off peak). There were nods to new rail technology (they were talking about battery electric and hydrogen without explicitly mentioning the technology) making redesign necessary and acknowledgement that all day, two way service will now be necessary in the remote work world. These changes are going to more than double the initial, inflation adjusted cost estimates of building the line.

Unfortunately, Lawrence did not mention anything about changes at Norfolk Southern. AFAIK there has been no change of (negative) opinion on their part. Without approval from NS the Red Line -cannot be built-, regardless of design. I am torn, keeping all 2030 route designs current is vital to system expansion, but in the case of the Red Line redesign is putting the cart before the horse.

Mentioned briefly:

• the BLE-E (to Ballantyne) has not progressed in design beyond identifying the locally preferred alternative (LPA), so that project has a long way to go before funding. It was said to be the 2030 project which is least developed.
• A north Meck mayor (forget which one) said they really wanted light rail-like frequencies on the Red Line between N Meck towns. The implication was they would be reluctant to provide local funding without that. ("our expectations are high")
• Vi Lyles mentioned that metro growth combined with the very slow speed of transit development means air quality concerns (and associated federal penalties) are likely to return shortly. He implication (get this stuff built asap) was clear.

 

Edited July 30, 2022 by kermit

[Reverie39]

Glass half full takeaway from this is that I’m glad the Red Line is still being seriously discussed. Sometimes it feels like the region has given up on it but clearly not. 
 

Looking on the map it’s pretty crazy how far (relatively) dense suburbs branch out from Charlotte in the north-northwest direction alongside Lake Norman. That region is just itching for some type of transit. 

[Blue_Devil]

There has to be some sort of negotiation on going with NS, or else why pursue this. 

[15895]

You could rewind the clock 10 years ago and they came to the same exact conclusions. 

And in a few years. They’ll say double tracking is too cost prohibitive. Wash rinse repeat. 

[tozmervo]

4 hours ago, Blue_Devil said:

There has to be some sort of negotiation on going with NS, or else why pursue this. 

It's totally political. I think North Meck will ultimately end up with a really nice BRT system that will be politically underappreciated. 

[Third Strike]

Not sure NS would have a problem if a parallel rail line was built next to the existing O-Line, especially if commuter rail and freight rail is separated. It would make the project significantly more expensive. ROW, building new bridges, road re-alignment, etc. I’m personally on board with double tracking that corridor, if given the opportunity. Would also boost speed and train frequencies too, and subsequently ridership. 

[Reverie39]

If commuter rail is never going to happen I'd rather we just give it up and go ahead with BRT red line in the near future. Would be sad if we hold off on both for years and years because of false hope for the train.

That said if Thrid Strike's idea for a parallel line could happen I'd prefer that. I just wonder if the cost would keep it from ever being realistic. Which makes me sad - other cities invested a lot in transit and there's no reason Charlotte can't too.