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Charlotte's Light Rail: Lynx Blue Line


dubone

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11 minutes ago, southslider said:

Monthly project progress reports, which are public record, haven't shown an August completion date for some time now.  But based on those, it shouldn't be March next year either.

I used to know where those were on the website - can you post a link? 

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3 hours ago, cjd5050 said:

The timing of the 'Big Bang' idea and the announcement of this delay is a bit of a head scratcher.  Borderline incompetence from a CEO honestly.  

Hell, he could have spun this negative into a positive and rolled the two announcements together.  Something like:

The Blue Line is currently under budget but is delayed due to difficulties with 3rd parties outside of the control of CATS.  Because of this, the development team needs to slow down what they can do and wait for these items to be addressed.  This will eat into the budget and possibly cause project overages, in addition to, delaying the line opening by several months.

Which is why Charlotte needs to consider doing the next 3 lines at the same time rather than just 1 as the next step beyond this extension.  This will allow the project team to shift resources between each line in the event of an inevitable delay when taking on such a project like this.  In turn, it will allow CATS to deliver all 3 lines much faster and cheaper to Charlotte and this is before you get into the savings in financing all 3 lines at the same time.  

 

This goes back to what I was saying about CATS and their seeming lack to PR common sense. I went to an information meeting at UNCC and the people they had there knew very little outside of the powerpoint. Not to mention they said the line would be open on time, no doubt, and this was only like two months ago. Its like they manage to find the best possible way to piss people off. IE the "CityLynx Gold Line is running every 30 minutes, sorry for the inconvenience" tweets. 

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37 minutes ago, UPNoDa said:

I was wondering when anyone was going to get around to that. IIRC, wasn't BL first leg was delayed several times?

yup. I can't remember the full extent of the delays but I believe it was nearly a year late. It was also double its pre-construction budget.

I am more than a little torqued by this announcement. I had planned to sell my car and ride the BLE to work daily. A delay to March is cost my family several thousand dollars -- I could have avoided some of that expense if I had known earlier. #firstworldproblems

This does make me realize that even the prospect of saving a couple thousand dollars is not enough to make me ride the bus for an hour plus each way each day.

Edited by kermit
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^ I agree 100%. As a Panther's season ticket holder, I was really looking forward to saving that $50.00 parking fee on the 10 home games by taking the BLE to uptown in lieu of tailgating. I know $500 for Panther season parking is an insignificant amount to some, but a substantial amount to me just the same and thats just the parking, Now add in beer, food and the other tailgating requirements and your looking at a rather hefty investment. I would rather not contribute to the already burdened traffic congestion thru uptown getting to and from the stadium when I can simply pay $4 for a R/T from NoDa. 

They say they are currently under budget, but I agree with the other UPer's, as a tax payer, seems our vote has landed on deaf ears or the funding has somehow simply been allocated elsewhere.

 

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On 2/20/2017 at 9:30 PM, tozmervo said:

For aesthetics they probably chose to give the more visible overpasses a more finished look. Those bridges also got the fancy leafy railings, the Craighead bridge just has basic tube guardrails.

FWIW, Craighead will close eventually, so maybe they didn't see the need to make it look nice?

 

On 2/27/2017 at 10:31 PM, tozmervo said:

They're blaming utility relocation for the delay, and if the extra money to accelerate the project had not been approved they would be looking past March 2018.

That implies they are saying utility relocations are responsible for up to a year on schedule delay. That sounds like total BS to me. Total BS or an abundance of incompetence by the contractors and/or CATS project management.

This is insulting as a taxpayer and really humiliating for CATS and public transit.

Utility delays are a very real issue in all transportation projects. The core of the problem is that the City or CATS has to work with Duke/Time Warner/AT&T to get them to move their lines, and those companies more or less do things when they get around to it. There are many road projects around town (see Beatties Ford Rd Widening, Oakdale Rd FTM, etc.) that have been delayed for two years for the same reasons. 

Why AT&T and Duke don't hire more people when there is clearly a need for it blows my mind. But the private sector is infallible so clearly the government is at fault even when it does everything it needs to do to deliver a project on time and under budget.

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2 hours ago, HopHead said:

CATS is partnering with local mobile payment software firm, Passport, to build a mobile app for light rail ticket payments. Should be available later this year.

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/politics-government/article137684533.html

No more missing the train b/c someone is fumbling to feed cash into the ticket machine!

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1 minute ago, HopHead said:

Like any software platform, they'll give a run at LYNX first. Then probably expand to the bus system.

Actually I wouldn't be surprised if the reverse is true. Busses have already been outfit with new fare machines that are NFC-capable.

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Excellent pics! From my experience driving up most of the corridor in the past month, I can almost see how a delay is possible, if unjustified. Certain poles, embankments near the street seemed very barely erected of late, so no telling how far along all the individual buried lines and such are. Plus it does take longer to test and initiate these it sometimes feels like, excusing the subjectivity.

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There's been a fatal accident involving the light rail at Hebron Steet. http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/article138841088.html

I know early on there were a couple of deaths that were ultimately suicides, and certainly some minor car accidents along the way, but is this the first serious incident in the blue line's 9.5 year history?

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4 minutes ago, tarhoosier said:

I cannot see the building pictured at the Observer photo when I check StreetView

Its the backside of the original mattress co. building. Looks like the truck got dragged about 200 feet.

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19 minutes ago, ricky_davis_fan_21 said:

Its the backside of the original mattress co. building. Looks like the truck got dragged about 200 feet.

Just hammers home that a light rail isn't exactly "light". I remember going to a Panthers game and seeing people at the 485 station crossing the tracks in front of the approaching train like jaywalkers, complete with the holding their hands out in a "stop" motion and then "thanking" the train operator for not running their asses over. 

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14 minutes ago, nakers2 said:

Just hammers home that a light rail isn't exactly "light". I remember going to a Panthers game and seeing people at the 485 station crossing the tracks in front of the approaching train like jaywalkers, complete with the holding their hands out in a "stop" motion and then "thanking" the train operator for not running their asses over. 

They would have just been erased each car is 97,200 lbs empty

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1 hour ago, tozmervo said:

There's been a fatal accident involving the light rail at Hebron Steet. http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/article138841088.html

I know early on there were a couple of deaths that were ultimately suicides, and certainly some minor car accidents along the way, but is this the first serious incident in the blue line's 9.5 year history?

That's amazing if Charlotte has only had a few serious incidents with light rail. When I lived in Los Angeles, the Blue Line there was infamous for accidents. In its 26 year operating history it has had over 1,100 accidents and killed over 130 people. 

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