Charlotte Center City Streetcar Network

[orulz]

I don't really understand why Charlotte doesn't have dedicated bus lanes in and around the urban core. Many cities smaller than Charlotte have this, Richmond and Cleveland are two recent examples I can think of, and they work. 

I think NCDOT has a general policy of never repurposing existing travel lanes as bus lanes on state roads, which means they can only be added on city streets, or as a part of a very expensive widening. I am not sure about Charlotte but generally in NC you might be surprised how many roads are actually state roads, and widenings are generally not feasible on downtown areas.

[XRZ.ME]

Utility work is now at college st
Track work currently is going beyond railway bridge
Repaving already finished site is a bit slow

If the streetcar arrived way before gold line open. Can they just run on blue line to increase frequncy temporarily?


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[tozmervo]

4 hours ago, XRZ.ME said:

Utility work is now at college st
Track work currently is going beyond railway bridge
Repaving already finished site is a bit slow

If the streetcar arrived way before gold line open. Can they just run on blue line to increase frequncy temporarily?


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I'm fairly sure the light rail cars have a higher platform than the street car, so they wouldn't be cross compatible. Could be wrong tho.

[Guest]

I'm fairly sure the light rail cars have a higher platform than the street car, so they wouldn't be cross compatible. Could be wrong tho.

That’s correct


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[videtur quam contuor]

That is correct as Clayton and Patrick said. When the trolley cars ran on the light rail line as weekend excursions they had to stop short of the platform because the light rail has seamless level from platform to floor level of car while trolley has step up from street to car. I worked the trolley and we had to shout to people waiting at the light rail station and wave for them to come to us before we could proceed.

[Nick2]

I'm happy to have this transit line moving along but man it gets a ton of hate from non-urban planet geeks. Like a LOT of hate. Many uniformed people see it as useless and a waste of taxpayers money. I'm not referring to news sources giving it a bad rep but just what I've heard people say about it.

CATS should find a way to improve the image before opening phase two or ridership will likely be hugely disappointing.

[CLT>]

27 minutes ago, Nick2 said:

I'm happy to have this transit line moving along but man it gets a ton of hate from non-urban planet geeks. Like a LOT of hate. Many uniformed people see it as useless and a waste of taxpayers money. I'm not referring to news sources giving it a bad rep but just what I've heard people say about it.

 CATS should find a way to improve the image before opening phase two or ridership will likely be hugely disappointing.

The best way to improve the image is to run it at frequencies and schedules that make it useful, and not a giant piece of moving street art. 30min headways and closing down 2-3times a week is no way to run a transit line.

[kermit]

12 hours ago, Nick2 said:

CATS should find a way to improve the image before opening phase two or ridership will likely be hugely disappointing.

meh, the haters aren't going to ride regardless of the Gold line's image. As CLT> says, ridership will be entirely determined by how frequent, reliable and convenient the line is.

The Blue Line had even more haters back in 2007, they faded away pretty quickly when it became clear that people were riding.

Edited April 20, 2019 by kermit

[atlrvr]

I too am surprised with the bifurcation I see between people that support LRT expansion and DON'T support the streetcar.  The typical comment is usually something like "what a waste, what they should be doing is actually expanding light rail to (usually airport but sometimes get South Park)"....

That comment above is consistent and comes from all political backgrounds and both urban and suburban residents.

[15895]

The DC Streetcar never has anyone in it. Everytime I see one go by, it had at most 2 people. More times than not, there has been 0 people on it. 

The revitalization/development has been phenomenal, but no one rides the freakin’ thing lol. 

Hopefully, the educational institutions will pump riders onto CityLynx. I just think the US streetcars - and some light rail systems - got it wrong by using streetcars in mixed traffic.  

Atlanta streetcar had to stop during the Super Bowl because there was so much traffic. I think this needs to be the final and last extension of the streetcar (with an exception of an extension further into Plaza.).

 

Edited April 20, 2019 by AirNostrumMAD

[kermit]

9 hours ago, AirNostrumMAD said:

The DC Streetcar never has anyone in it. Everytime I see one go by, it had at most 2 people. More times than not, there has been 0 people on it.

I don’t mean to start an anecdote battle but (FWIW)  I have ridden the DC streetcar 6-8 times (I like Ben’s Chili Bowl), every time it was more than half full. Less anecdotally ridership numbers indicate that the DC streetcar gets slightly more riders per mile than the Blue Line does.

Its not impossible for mixed traffic streetcars to work really well: The Kansas City streetcar gets almost 2,600 daily riders per mile while our Blue Line gets less than 1,500.

(KC has roughly 80,000 people working downtown and around 23,000 residents — roughly equivalent to Uptown Charlotte)

Edited April 20, 2019 by kermit

[CLT704]

5 hours ago, kermit said:

The Kansas City streetcar gets almost 2,600 daily riders per mile. The Blue Line gets less than 1,500.

(KC has roughly 80,000 people working downtown and around 23,000 residents)

When I rode the KC streetcar it was packed and they had surveyors asking people why they took the streetcar: responses included that it was free, goes from the market (half 'tourists'), goes through downtown, its fast etc. The KC streetcar is the model we should aspire to, the CityLYNX has the potential to emulate that success; although, we do need to implement a whole host of 'improvements', such as signal priority and free fares. 

[15895]

3 hours ago, CLT704 said:

When I rode the KC streetcar it was packed and they had surveyors asking people why they took the streetcar: responses included that it was free, goes from the market (half 'tourists'), goes through downtown, its fast etc. The KC streetcar is the model we should aspire to, the CityLYNX has the potential to emulate that success; although, we do need to implement a whole host of 'improvements', such as signal priority and free fares. 

Isn’t the KC Streetcar the most successful though?  It definitely seems to me to be an outlier 

9 hours ago, kermit said:

FWIW I have ridden the DC streetcar 6-8 times, every time I was on board it was more than half full.

Its not impossible for mixed traffic streetcars to work well: The Kansas City streetcar gets almost 2,600 daily riders per mile. The Blue Line gets less than 1,500.

(KC has roughly 80,000 people working downtown and around 23,000 residents)

I never rode the thing because it’s slow and useless for me.  I’m usually down there past 7pm at a bar and watch it travel it’s avg. speed of 5.6 MPH lit up with no one on board, car after car. Maybe at different hours it’s more full. I feel like it could add up to 20/30 minutes or more on to my trip to go from Union Station down a few stops over any other mode of transportation. In 20 minutes, I could just drive from my place back and forth round trip. Add in walking to metro (fine), taking metro to union (fine) then the streetcar experience.... starts to get to be too much time. 

I feel like citylynx could be more successful ridership wise than the average because of educational institutions. Without dedicated lights, higher frequencies, dedicated lanes. I just don’t know why residents of uptown would bother themselves regularly spending 30 minutes to go a mile and a half down the road. Including possibly waiting over 15 minutes as the headway’s are 20 minutes long... Hop on a scooter or drive or take one of a few buses, etc. When I worked at BoA CC, I started out taking streetcar daily. But so many times I just missed it and it was faster to walk there or back to Elizabeth with none passing by me. 

 

But people want to live near it. So it does have the potential to gentrify areas. I’m just thinking from a mode of transportation perspective. They need to, but won’t, have ways to enhance the service reliability wise and speed wise. 

That said. I’m a supporter of it. 

Edited April 20, 2019 by AirNostrumMAD

[DCtransplant]

Testing out the new streetcars. They are crappy.

[lit]

On 4/21/2019 at 12:49 PM, DCtransplant said:

Testing out the new streetcars. They are crappy.

I hopped aboard one of these around 3am Saturday night after my trip to Halal Cart turned ugly, I was the only person so I was able to stretch my legs out a bit. It was surprisingly clean inside. 

[XRZ.ME]

track approaching graham st
hopefully we can see it connects to old gold line by end of summer?


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[tozmervo]

50 minutes ago, XRZ.ME said:

track approaching graham st
hopefully we can see it connects to old gold line by end of summer?


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Doubtful, they haven't started new track work between CTC and Poplar. (Utilities were relocated, but no primary track work) 

[SpiritOf76]

Yesterday by hawthorn pizza

[SpiritOf76]

Same area by Hawthorne pizza 

[Hushpuppy321]

Going to be amazing having StreetCar Service through this area - I just hope it ends up being reliable (for Transit) and useful (sparking development).  StreetCars have such checkered results in cities across the country.

[southslider]

^From Hawthorne and Central, one can take the bus route (9-Central) with the highest level of frequency in the entire Charlotte system. Or you can wait for the fancy tram with the lowest frequency in the rail system. Once aboard the latter, you'll have a seven-station ride to the CTC, making all stops. Or take the bus for only seven stops, but skipping some, since only stopping where needed.  Both will cost the same local fare. Both operate in mixed traffic.

[QClifer]

around the Bojangles on the westside of the street car, they spent atleast thursday and friday all day busting up all the newly poured concrete for the rail on the line headed away from town/west, Must be out of place Im guessing. It was about 100yards worth of track and rebar they were busting up.     Somebody wasent paying attention

[DH17]

56 minutes ago, QClifer said:

around the Bojangles on the westside of the street car, they spent atleast thursday and friday all day busting up all the newly poured concrete for the rail on the line headed away from town/west, Must be out of place Im guessing. It was about 100yards worth of track and rebar they were busting up.     Somebody wasent paying attention

This project is quickly turning into a nightmare for someone who lives a block away from Trade near 77. I don't mind construction if there is tangible progress and a good end result, but this is quickly turning into a mismanaged s*$%show. The city better not be paying for all of these mistakes by the contractor, and better have language in the contract to hold them accountable as the errors and re-work piles up. I wouldn't be surprised if they blow through all (extended) deadlines too.

[Desert Power]

21 minutes ago, DH17 said:

This project is quickly turning into a nightmare for someone who lives a block away from Trade near 77. I don't mind construction if there is tangible progress and a good end result, but this is quickly turning into a mismanaged s*$%show. The city better not be paying for all of these mistakes by the contractor, and better have language in the contract to hold them accountable as the errors and re-work piles up. I wouldn't be surprised if they blow through all (extended) deadlines too.

Welcome to Charlotte!  All of these projects get very delayed

Edited May 5, 2019 by Desert Power

[kermit]

I want to do this soooo badly

 

 

 

Edited May 5, 2019 by kermit