Charlotte Center City Streetcar Network

[nakers2]

13 hours ago, southslider said:

^One step forward, and two steps back.

But with even more toll lanes funded along Independence Blvd, Elizabeth should get used to the dis-connectivity.

My brother drives a Ford, and their sat-nav system really shows how much Independence destroyed the grid between Plaza Midwood and Elizabeth, I wish I could screenshot it, but it does more justice than Google Maps and other apps in showing the literal tear in the fabric of that grid. 

[videtur quam contuor]

When it was the six lane road there were traffic lights at Hawthorne, Pecan and Morningside. The side streets also connected though only for right turns due to the median. That is just the section from the rail overpass to BoJ coliseum I am referring to.

[archiham04]

RE: bridge building: So it is my understanding that the light rail, if it were to be built in the express lanes, would not have clearance under the bridge.  It seems like they could dig down, but from my limited knowledge of traffic design, there are wide ranging implications to adjusting the elevations of high speed routes. 

Edited August 28, 2019 by archiham04

[NOLA2CLT]

1 hour ago, archiham04 said:

RE: bridge building: So it is my understanding that the light rail, if it were to be built in the express lanes, would not have clearance under the bridge.  It seems like they could dig down, but from my limited knowledge of traffic design, there are wide ranging implications to adjusting the elevations of high speed routes. 

is a 50 MPH road considered high speed?  

If the rail goes down that corridor, it seems like the Hawthorne Lane bridge would be the least of their worries.  277 interchanges/bridge over Pecan seem to be more of an issue.

[stiluvclt]

This is a highly interesting topic. Do you (all UPers) mean to say that after this Hawthorn bridge began reconstruction it subsequently had to be reconstructed again (because of design mistakes) and they still haven't taken the Silver Line into consideration ?? Isn't there usually one particular managing engineer for each of these projects that can address this important overlooked issue? I'm not trying to be facetious. That sounds like a fourth rebuild!

[DEnd]

6 hours ago, stiluvclt said:

This is a highly interesting topic. Do you (all UPers) mean to say that after this Hawthorn bridge began reconstruction it subsequently had to be reconstructed again (because of design mistakes) and they still haven't taken the Silver Line into consideration ?? Isn't there usually one particular managing engineer for each of these projects that can address this important overlooked issue? I'm not trying to be facetious. That sounds like a fourth rebuild!

Quite possibly it could need to be rebuilt again.  When it (this rebuild) was originally designed the silver line was envisioned as Bus Rapid Transit, with a possible conversion to rail.  The state then switched the BRT lanes into HOV lanes (making BRT less viable) and eliminating the possibility of rail.  There is space under the bridge to squeeze in light rail.  However doing so would cause the road there to not meet current standards (exceptions have been made before so this isn't an absolute requirement to be met), and may require hybrid light rail cars.  

[southslider]

^There isn't space for rail under the bridge.  There isn't even space for more tolled lanes, which is actually funded, unlike rail.

 

[archiham04]

On 8/28/2019 at 10:42 AM, NOLA2CLT said:

is a 50 MPH road considered high speed?  

If the rail goes down that corridor, it seems like the Hawthorne Lane bridge would be the least of their worries.  277 interchanges/bridge over Pecan seem to be more of an issue.

By high speed I mean the cars and and specifically all the "at speed" turns and transitions.  Ramps, hills, and transitions for cars traveling at a 50-70mph design speed have to be smoothed out a very far distance back.  While they will be building rail, the will be impacting the road grade somewhat  and once you lower one piece, it impacts everything.  They likely didn't want to spend the money at this time paying for all of these car related changes so they punted the costs for that to the future (undecided and possibly never built) rail line.

[DEnd]

1 hour ago, southslider said:

^There isn't space for rail under the bridge.  There isn't even space for more tolled lanes, which is actually funded, unlike rail.

 

Between the HOV lane and shoulders there is over 60' of space there.  There not being room there is solely because of design requirements for shoulder lanes.  There is also another lane available (~25') if they redo (or eliminate) the Charlottetown- Eastbound Independence ramp.   More space can also be gained by redoing the 277 merge, which may require redoing the Central Ave bridge.  The point is there are options  besides redoing the Hawthorne Ln bridge again, those options may be unacceptable to the various stakeholders but they are there.  

[southslider]

^Federal funding won't allow you to eliminate shoulders. And good luck building rail without federal funding.

[navigator319]

I have been noticing this scrap as they dig up Trade St. It comes from under the road. Looks like old rail tracks that was paved over.

Did Trade use to have a street car running down it?

[kermit]

1 hour ago, navigator319 said:

I have been noticing this scrap as they dig up Trade St. It comes from under the road. Looks like old rail tracks that was paved over.

Did Trade use to have a street car running down it?

Yup, most of the wide streets in town. Tryon, Trade, Central, Plaza, East, several of the Queens, Beatties Ford, Morehead and a few others.

Not the best map: https://www.behance.net/gallery/68110543/Official-Streetcar-Map-of-Charlotte-NC-(1935)

 

Edited September 4, 2019 by kermit

[NOLA2CLT]

11 hours ago, kermit said:

Yup, most of the wide streets in town. Tryon, Trade, Central, Plaza, East, several of the Queens, Beatties Ford, Morehead and a few others.

Not the best map: https://www.behance.net/gallery/68110543/Official-Streetcar-Map-of-Charlotte-NC-(1935)

 

makes you wonder if the Gold Line will have a similar fate in 100 to 200 years...at least we can count on the Hawthorne Lane Bridge being rebuilt for the Silver Line!

[archiham04]

The crazy thing about the streetcar to me is how short lived it was if you think about it.  We all think about the light rail and the current street car as being something that will be here for 100 years, but the original system was mostly built in the 20s (some predate but mostly) and then dismantled in the 50s. Really, as a system it only functioned for like 20-30 years!  ...and 10 of those years were in a depression, and 4 a World War.

[DMann]

You can thank the auto industry for subsidizing municipalities to get rid of streetcars.

[videtur quam contuor]

Electric streetcars replaced cars drawn by animals (1880s to 1892 here) and the gasoline vehicles replaced electric streetcars (in 1938 here.) If you can create an antigravity power source or some new motive energy machine that replaces electricity and petroleum then streets will be quite different.

40 minutes ago, archiham04 said:

The crazy thing about the streetcar to me is how short lived it was if you think about it.  We all think about the light rail and the current street car as being something that will be here for 100 years, but the original system was mostly built in the 20s (some predate but mostly) and then dismantled in the 50s. Really, as a system it only functioned for like 20-30 years!  ...and 10 of those years were in a depression, and 4 a World War.

 

[lit]

On 9/4/2019 at 11:56 AM, tarhoosier said:

Electric streetcars replaced cars drawn by animals (1880s to 1892 here) and the gasoline vehicles replaced electric streetcars (in 1938 here.) If you can create an antigravity power source or some new motive energy machine that replaces electricity and petroleum then streets will be quite different.

 

I like to think of what’s going on now with bike/ped/scooter changes as the wave of the future, probably the same way pedestrian and horse people felt when we redesigned all of the streets 100 years ago to accommodate automobiles.

[JacksonH]

On 8/28/2019 at 10:28 AM, stiluvclt said:

This is a highly interesting topic. Do you (all UPers) mean to say that after this Hawthorn bridge began reconstruction it subsequently had to be reconstructed again (because of design mistakes) and they still haven't taken the Silver Line into consideration ?? Isn't there usually one particular managing engineer for each of these projects that can address this important overlooked issue? I'm not trying to be facetious. That sounds like a fourth rebuild!

This Hawthorn bridge fiasco boggles my mind.  Here in San Diego there is a $2.1 billion light rail extension project in progress right now that is adding eleven miles to our blue line.  With mountains and valleys and canyons and cliffs, the topography here is very complicated.  The picture below is a portion of this extension currently being built.  It's a bridge, at least 1.5 miles in length (!!!).  It crosses over the freeway to a couple future stops on the campus of UC San Diego, then it crosses back over the freeway and over to UTC Town Centre Mall.  I pass by there every couple weeks and it's a sight to behold.  This massive bridge includes 142 girders, up to 80 feet long and weighing up to 95 tons.  They were pre-cast and shipped here from 75 miles away.  It's just incredible.  But in spite of the gargantuan challenge, this projects seems to be moving along without a glitch.  So I look at that, then I look at the Gold Line construction and what's happening with the Hawthorne bridge, which is nothing in comparison to this, I wonder, how that mess could happen.  Ultimately it's the fault of the contractor, but the city does have oversight responsibility and they did hire this contractor.  Does anyone know the background of this contractor and whether they have done similar bridge work before (i.e., building freeway bridges for light rail)?

[tozmervo]

19 minutes ago, JacksonH said:

This Hawthorn bridge fiasco boggles my mind.  Here in San Diego there is a $2.1 billion light rail extension project in progress right now that is adding eleven miles to our blue line.  With mountains and valleys and canyons and cliffs, the topography here is very complicated.  The picture below is a portion of this extension currently being built.  It's a bridge, at least 1.5 miles in length (!!!).  It crosses over the freeway to a couple future stops on the campus of UC San Diego, then it crosses back over the freeway and over to UTC Town Centre Mall.  I pass by there every couple weeks and it's a sight to behold.  This massive bridge includes 142 girders, up to 80 feet long and weighing up to 95 tons.  They were pre-cast and shipped here from 75 miles away.  It's just incredible.  But in spite of the gargantuan challenge, this projects seems to be moving along without a glitch.  So I look at that, then I look at the Gold Line construction and what's happening with the Hawthorne bridge, which is nothing in comparison to this, I wonder, how that mess could happen.  Ultimately it's the fault of the contractor, but the city does have oversight responsibility and they did hire this contractor.  Does anyone know the background of this contractor and whether they have done similar bridge work before (i.e., building freeway bridges for light rail)?

I don't know who the subcontractor is, but the general contractor is Balfour Beatty, one of the largest contractors in the world. 

When it comes to public construction work, like municipal and state work in NC, public bidding rules are very strict. Unless there's a clear and provable impropriety, the low-bidder will win, every time. Even when a contractor is know to be terrible, there's effectively nothing a public entity can do to prevent them from winning a job with a low bid. This is a consequence of very strong anti-bribery laws and the like. 

 

[archiham04]

It was a design-build contract so the story is that the contractor is responsible, but I think the initial design criteria might be in dispute.  If the owner's supplied design criteria was faulty, I would imagine there would be room for (at minimum) distributed responsibility.

[NOLA2CLT]

45 minutes ago, archiham04 said:

It was a design-build contract so the story is that the contractor is responsible, but I think the initial design criteria might be in dispute.  If the owner's supplied design criteria was faulty, I would imagine there would be room for (at minimum) distributed responsibility.

I emailed the city about this a few months ago, the person who sends out the weekly emails on the Gold Line progress for Hawthorne Lane told me that the contractor 100% screwed up the girders.  Of course he did not mention the city's role in the issue, but his words led me to believe that the city had provided correct specs and the contractor just mucked up...

[XRZ.ME]

track finished across Polar st. Not much progress in the summer. Track grading front on tryon st. Not the utility work this time I guess.

Trade open to cars north of graham st, but almost nobody is using them. People are so used to the new normal.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[kermit]

1 hour ago, XRZ.ME said:

Trade open to cars north of graham st, but almost nobody is using them. People are so used to the new normal.

Close Trade street to through traffic! No one will miss it!

[southslider]

^leave it open to traffic, but force turns every other block, and then, it'll be effectively closed to through traffic 

[JacksonH]

On 9/10/2019 at 6:53 PM, tozmervo said:

I don't know who the subcontractor is, but the general contractor is Balfour Beatty, one of the largest contractors in the world. 

When it comes to public construction work, like municipal and state work in NC, public bidding rules are very strict. Unless there's a clear and provable impropriety, the low-bidder will win, every time. Even when a contractor is know to be terrible, there's effectively nothing a public entity can do to prevent them from winning a job with a low bid. This is a consequence of very strong anti-bribery laws and the like. 

I've been doing some government contracting work, and while I'm no expert, I know enough to know that for projects of this size, scale and importance, awarding a contract based on price alone, without giving significant weight to technical capability and past performance, is terrible policy.  If that's the way NC is awarding contracts, then they can expect more of this in the future.