Charlotte's Light Rail: Lynx Blue Line

[RiverwoodCLT]

And think about 2 years ago, there were people saying no one will ride the choo choo train. Where are they now? Paying almost $4.00 per gallion for gas and wishing they have more trains to ride.

[monsoon]

Against my better judgment, I went with some people down to speed street on Saturday afternoon and we took the train. The train ride itself was fine as CATS was running all doubles and they seemed to be coming around every 10 minutes. (much more frequent than on the typical weekend) We boarded at Woodlawn to go downtown. The trains were packed but not overly so, but I did get the impression that a number of people were not paying for the trip and I did not see any fare inspectors at all.

There were a lot of people on the train that I took, from the comments, had never been on a train before and most were fascinated and liked it. Hopefully they will take the story back to whence they came and maybe support their local efforts at more alternative transit.

The only downer of the trip, was that someone couldn't take the stop and go action of the LRT and threw up in the car.

Oh yea the rail was bad this evening, May 23rd. First my friends and I started at East/West and saw after two trains it was packed to the brim. It reminded me of all those Japan & India videos of jamming people into the trains. After that we said enough and drove to Scaleybark and I was curious at that time to see how much it would be packed only two stations over. Sure enough when the train got there is was completely filled. We found out most of the people were from the 485 station, mostly from South Carolina. We managed to get on and make it to uptown. And on the way back around midnight it was jampacked once again. Here is a picture for all the people to get a feel of how crowded it was. Usually you went from Scaleybark to Arena station without picking up anybody.

(Sorry its a bit blurry but its from a camera phone and I was taking it real quick but it captures how crowded it was, I'm sure they beat a capacity record this evening and I cant even imagine how it will be Saturday evening.)

[atlrvr]

That picture of LRT on Independence seems about right...The Park is STILL under construction

It seems to me that CATS worked well....it took thousands of cars off the road.

That said, I still agree that it was extremely short-sighted to reduce stations to 2 train sets, and I've griped about this for years since they announced the change that this was the worst cost-cutting decision. Due to the fact that they won't run trains any more often than a 5 minute headway due to the lack of grade separation, there is a very finite capacity to the system, no matter how many trainsets are ordered.....3-car platforms allows for an instant 50% capacity increase.

Boston on the other hand, only runs 2 train sets, but due to complete grade separation once the four spurs merge, they run at about 1-minute headways.....even this though is incapable of adequately moving people from Red Sox games....the corollary being even though its not adequate, it reduces the amount of vehicle traffic significantly, which is still one of the primary benefits.

[RiverwoodCLT]

I hope the Federal Transportation dept. that oks the LRT plans read this forum. They will find out that the Lynx is running at capacity more often than projected.

CATS needs to make some adjustments for special events and have buses ready to take the extra over load. This does not surprise me the number of people using the South Blue live. What is CATS going to do when all those new projects near the line get finished and all those people who plan to use the line?

It may happen that CATS needs to go back and make the station ready to use a 3 car train. This would also requried getting a larger fleet of trains cars.

[monsoon]

.....

It may happen that CATS needs to go back and make the station ready to use a 3 car train. This would also requried getting a larger fleet of trains cars.

I just don't see this happening prior to other lines being built given the significant cost to make the alterations. There is simply no money to do this unless the Charlotte city council wants to pony up the cash (outside of the transit tax) to do it. I do think if they extend the line to UNCC they need to make it an independent line and go to 3 car platforms there.

[mad_park]

I just don't see this happening prior to other lines being built given the significant cost to make the alterations. There is simply no money to do this unless the Charlotte city council wants to pony up the cash (outside of the transit tax) to do it. I do think if they extend the line to UNCC they need to make it an independent line and go to 3 car platforms there.

what if they just made 7th street, Tyvola, and pineville 3 car stations? then clearly mark the cars and platforms to notify passengers.

[monsoon]

what if they just made 7th street, Tyvola, and pineville 3 car stations? then clearly mark the cars and platforms to notify passengers.

This isn't possible. For a number of reasons if CATS operates a 3 carriage trainset, then all platforms will have to handle 3 carriages. Since there are no pullouts, express service, where they skip stations, is not possible.

[atlrvr]

Well...one exception is the South Ferry terminal on the 1 Line in NYC.....the station can only accomodate half of the 10 train set, so if you want to get off, you better be sitting in the right coach....that said, its no way to plan stations, especially one that have no site constraints.....it goes back to the old adage, if you're going to do something, do it right.

If CATS is going to expand the platforms (and I think they should), they need to do all platform. I think the savings was $22M for not going with 3-trainset platforms to start with. I'm sure the cost up upgrading them would be higher than that.

I can be convinced that its probably not the best bang for the buck, but at the same time, the city has an awful habit of planning to bare minimum standards, and growing pains could easily be avoided if they would sometimes look to the future...and yes, this does often run counter to best serving the public's "money", the Catch 22 of politics.

[monsoon]

......

I can be convinced that its probably not the best bang for the buck, but at the same time, the city has an awful habit of planning to bare minimum standards, .....

In the case of the South LRT I think it was more of an issue of lack of planning and bad management. They spent way way too much money on aesthetics and not nearly enough on functionality. Case in point the very elaborate and very expensive shelters (if you can call them that) don't offer any coverage from the weather but I do admit they look good. They could have done like Houston and gone with something far less expensive and more functional and possibly saved enough money to have kept the 3 car platforms.

[uptownliving]

I was just in Houston and rode their Metro train while there. I would say their platforms are much more polished and high tech feeling than ours. Their platforms consist of steel and frosted glass. The entire roof is frosted glass panels. If I could snap my fingers and trade in our platforms for theirs I would. That being said I don't think they paid less than we did for ours. For all the glass that is in their stations they have to cost more...unless some glass company gave it all to them for free. Houston does have the exact same ACS Ticket Machines that LYNX does and they are just as slow in Houston as they are in Charlotte...however their system is much more simplified since they have moved to smart cards. Your only ticket option is a One Way Train Only ticket.

One thing I hope we dont copy Houston on and that is running the LYNX in the street right of way. Once the train starts running in the streets it really slows things down. Even though the train in Houston has signal priority there are still some intersections where the train had to come to a full stop and wait for the signal to change...this was not just downtown but further out as well. I hope this is not the plan for the N Tryon Extention. Hopefully instead of signal priority they can make them gated intersections like along the South line.

[AuLukey]

I just think this whole issue with SpeedStreet blowing the line away is great evidence for the NE line to be built if only to further take a huge burden off the roadways between Concord/Northern commuters to SS and Charlotte. Imagine how many people drove from the speedway lots all the way to uptown for this. They could have driven the short distance to the northern 485 station and taken the train down. This would've taken a huge load off of 85 and 29 in University and further south. IMO, it would seem more people would be taking the train from the speedway area people than south of Charlotte.

While I know this isn't enough on it's own, it does severely help the idea. And I do agree with monsoon about the three-car platforms, but while it being a separate line would make more sense, would it be necessary? Couldn't they just build the three car stations and hold off on using three cars until the entire line was built to handle it? Also, what would it take to extend the platforms to handle a third car? Would you necessarily have to build stands or just extend the platform itself?

[uptownliving]

While I know this isn't enough on it's own, it does severely help the idea. And I do agree with monsoon about the three-car platforms, but while it being a separate line would make more sense, would it be necessary? Couldn't they just build the three car stations and hold off on using three cars until the entire line was built to handle it? Also, what would it take to extend the platforms to handle a third car? Would you necessarily have to build stands or just extend the platform itself?

I don't think that making the Northeast Line 3 cars and keeping the South Line 2 cars is a realisitc option mainly because of the location of the Vehicle Maintenance Facility. The 3 car trainset from the North would have to transit through half of the South Line to get back to the VMF near New Bern station. Building a seperate maintance facility for the Northeast line is not going to happen because the current VMF was already built to handle the expansion. If we are going to move to 3 car trainsets it is going to have to be for the entire line. All in or nothing.

CATS already owns the property where the extra 100ft of station platform would go on the South Line. They just have to put in the approximately 3000 sq ft of concrete at each station to make that a reality.

Something to put this all into persepctive...Houston's METRORail carry's twice as many people as LYNX and uses the exact same Siemens 2 car trainsets. So I am not expecting the 300 ft platforms and 3 car trainsets to arrive anytime soon.

[monsoon]

I was just in Houston and rode their Metro train while there. I would say their platforms are much more polished and high tech feeling than ours. Their platforms consist of steel and frosted glass. The entire roof is frosted glass panels. If I could snap my fingers and trade in our platforms for theirs I would. That being said I don't think they paid less than we did for ours. For all the glass that is in their stations they have to cost more...unless some glass company gave it all to them for free. Houston does have the exact same ACS Ticket Machines that LYNX does and they are just as slow in Houston as they are in Charlotte...however their system is much more simplified since they have moved to smart cards. Your only ticket option is a One Way Train Only ticket.

One thing I hope we dont copy Houston on and that is running the LYNX in the street right of way. Once the train starts running in the streets it really slows things down. Even though the train in Houston has signal priority there are still some intersections where the train had to come to a full stop and wait for the signal to change...this was not just downtown but further out as well. I hope this is not the plan for the N Tryon Extention. Hopefully instead of signal priority they can make them gated intersections like along the South line.

Nice info. I thought I ran across something earlier that indicated the simple design of the Houston stations cost less than what they put up in Charlotte. They do make the stops look more like stations. The only thing that I can definitely cite is that Houston built their system for $300M whereas the one in Charlotte cost $450M+ (more if you include the capital costs from the trolley project since it paid for things like the I-277 bridge) They kept their costs down yet their system is easily carrying more than 3x the number of daily riders than CLT. Something kinda doesn't add up here in terms of the money that CATS spent vs their perceived ability to handle people.

On the other point, why would a 3x train preclude use of the VMF?

[Durhamite]

Nice info. I thought I ran across something earlier that indicated the simple design of the Houston stations cost less than what they put up in Charlotte. They do make the stops look more like stations. The only thing that I can definitely cite is that Houston built their system for $300M whereas the one in Charlotte cost $450M+ (more if you include the capital costs from the trolley project since it paid for things like the I-277 bridge) They kept their costs down yet their system is easily carrying more than 3x the number of daily riders than CLT. Something kinda doesn't add up here in terms of the money that CATS spent vs their perceived ability to handle people.

On the other point, why would a 3x train preclude use of the VMF?

Are you sure you comparing apples to apples? Wasn't Houston's line built a couple years earlier therefore you have to factor in inflation and wasn't the line shorter 7.5 and miles versus 9.6 miles. Not for certain, but my intuition would also ascert that the Houston line runs along a much more populated area (since we're making assumptions).

[palmetto75]

As much as I would like to see the 3 car set and was dismayed upon learning the scale down, I think we are a jumping the gun a little bit in wondering if the current line inadequate. When it was planned for the 3 car set and at minimum intervals the line was projected to have the total capacity of L.A.'s main line. Can't remember the daily numbers that were presented, but I think they were well into the 40 thousands. Events like this wknd will definately be exceptions to the rule.

I'm personally much more concerned about parking rather than train capacity. Have heard from severa friends that park at 485 that the garage is now full by 8:15/8:30 on weekdays and they are having to park further up the line. While good for filling up the more underutilized lots, this poses somewhat of an immediate shortcoming.

[monsoon]

Are you sure you comparing apples to apples? .....

Well yes in the context in which it was brought up. I think the biggest reason that Charlotte can't handle the traffic vs Houston is that the majority of users are getting on/off at 485 and getting off/on at the CTC & 7th Street. In other words, because it is being used primarily as a vehicle for free parking and bus xfers, all of the traffic is being concentrated at a very small number of stations and thus, the practical limits of the system are quickly reached.

I have not been to Houston so this is an assumption, but based on your comments and others, Houston's more urban system is being operated as a true alternative to the automobile and because of that, much of its traffic is getting around the city and not commuting/bus xfers. This would have the effect of spreading the traffic over a larger number of stations and thus they are carrying 3X the people.

[atlrvr]

^ An interesting point....essentially you are saying it is functioning in the roll of a commuter rail...not that I disagree.

To that point, I would really like to see true commuter rail extended to Rock Hill, and have this a shared station (as well as either Archdale or Tyvola).....not only would it allow deeper penetration into suburbia, hopefully picking up more riders, and reducing car vehicle miles travelled, it would reduce the LRT's concentration of commuters. As development occurs along the line, people who are living more urban lifestyles (i.e. South End) might not be able to find room on the train as they will be among the last to board before downtown. This would defeat the purpose of this technology choice.

[DCMetroRaleigh]

This is a general question. In 1970. Atlanta had 1,761,575 people in its metropolitan area. Atlanta's heavy rail subway system began operations on November 9, 1971. In July 2007, Charlotte had an estimated 1,651,568 people in its metropolitan area, similar to the population of 1971 Atlanta's metropolitan population. Yet, almost no one today thinks Charlotte can support heavy rail or a subway system. I know part of the difference is more stringent federal standards for funding public transportation, but I think that the growth trajectory of Charlotte today is similar to Atlanta's decades-long ascendancy, which means heavy rail should not be ruled out. Also, with a new administration coming in in a few months, is there a chance that Charlotte would qualify for a more extensive multi-line light rail or heavy rail system than the very modest one now proposed? To me, it seems like we are planning Charlotte's rail system based on the frozen demographic snapshot of today, instead of realizing that two decades from now, Charlotte-Mecklenburg will be a much larger and denser metropolitan area, likely with nearly 3 million people.

Edited May 28, 2008 by DCMetroRaleigh

[uptownliving]

They kept their costs down yet their system is easily carrying more than 3x the number of daily riders than CLT. Something kinda doesn't add up here in terms of the money that CATS spent vs their perceived ability to handle people.

On the other point, why would a 3x train preclude use of the VMF?

It adds up if you look at the differences between the systems. Houston built their system mostly in city street ROW, meaning their property acquastion costs were very low compared to LYNX. Also Houstons system does not have any gated intersections...again much cheaper to build...but that means that the train will have to stop at some intersections to let cars pass by and the trains run at a slower speed. Very little of their system is elevated, big cost savings there. Also their line is 2 miles shorter than ours (about $80M in cost savings with just that item alone)

Personally I would chose the LYNX way of building Light Rail over the Houston way anyday...even though it is more expensive to build. The LYNX operates at a much faster speed than Houston and I think is safer by operating in its own ROW with gated intersections. Reality seems to have played that out.

With regards to the 3x train precluding use of the VMF...I never said that...my point was that the Northeast line will be using the current VMF at the New Bern Station. So if you are going to have the NE line be 3 car and the South line to remain a 2 car system that means that the 3 car trains would have to skip all the downtown stations down to New Bern when they head back to the VMF at the end of the rush hour. It also means that people riding in from the NE would have to disembark at the 9th St station...meaning they would have to walk a good 6 blocks to get to the heart of downtown. It just seems to me that would be a highly ineffiecent way of running an LRT system.

If they are going to make the NE line 3 car stations then they need to make the entire system have 3 car stations so that it could be run as one line instead of 2 seperate lines.

[uptownliving]

I think one of the main reasons that Houstons system carrys more people is due to the Texas Medical Center. Whereas LYNX really only goes to the heart of 1 major employment center... the Houston line goes through the heart of 2 major employment centers. And at the Texas Medical Center the METRORail is used as an easy way to get from the remote parking lots to the actual buldings which are one stop apart. The busiest stop on the Houston line is at the Texas Medical Center...not downtown. Quite frankly I was surprised to see how not full the trains were in downtown Houston at rush hour. If they had run the LYNX down Park Rd instead of South Blvd then perhaps more workers at SouthPark would have used the system and thereby serving 2 employment centers instead of 1.

[mad_park]

With regards to the 3x train precluding use of the VMF...I never said that...my point was that the Northeast line will be using the current VMF at the New Bern Station. So if you are going to have the NE line be 3 car and the South line to remain a 2 car system that means that the 3 car trains would have to skip all the downtown stations down to New Bern when they head back to the VMF at the end of the rush hour. It also means that people riding in from the NE would have to disembark at the 9th St station...meaning they would have to walk a good 6 blocks to get to the heart of downtown. It just seems to me that would be a highly ineffiecent way of running an LRT system.

If they are going to make the NE line 3 car stations then they need to make the entire system have 3 car stations so that it could be run as one line instead of 2 seperate lines.

why skip all of the stations? just serve them with the front two cars. play a warning message at 9th street (and a couple of stations before) that the 3rd car doors will not open after 9th street...either disembark or be prepared to ride to pineville and back.

[Sabaidee]

I think one of the main reasons that Houstons system carrys more people is due to the Texas Medical Center. Whereas LYNX really only goes to the heart of 1 major employment center... the Houston line goes through the heart of 2 major employment centers. And at the Texas Medical Center the METRORail is used as an easy way to get from the remote parking lots to the actual buldings which are one stop apart. The busiest stop on the Houston line is at the Texas Medical Center...not downtown. Quite frankly I was surprised to see how not full the trains were in downtown Houston at rush hour. If they had run the LYNX down Park Rd instead of South Blvd then perhaps more workers at SouthPark would have used the system and thereby serving 2 employment centers instead of 1.

To add on to what you said, Houston's METRORail runs through areas with more attractions than our LYNX does. Those areas are the Museum District and Hermann Park, the Museum District itself has 15 musems ranging from the arts to science exhibits, Hermann Park is probably what Central Park is to New York. Unlike Charlotte, Houston's arena, stadium and convention center are not located in Downtown but at the opposite end of the the METRORail line. Charlotte has seen high ridership when there are events in Uptown on top of commuters during the weekdays, the complete opposite of Houston's when there are events going on in Reliant Park (where the sport complex and convention center are located,) event-goers and commuters are not coming from the same areas. Reliant Park does have parking for 26,000 spaces, and I'm ASSUMING those parking spaces can be use for METRORail users.

[New Name]

why skip all of the stations? just serve them with the front two cars. play a warning message at 9th street (and a couple of stations before) that the 3rd car doors will not open after 9th street...either disembark or be prepared to ride to pineville and back.

An interesting idea. It would make the back car (not serviced by the 2x platforms) something of an "express" car. Not in the sense that it would go any faster than the others, but in the fact that a rider could move into the back car if they knew they were going to be traveling to the terminus of the line, therefor they wouldn't be trampled, stomped, or shifted around by the onloading/offloading of travelers from the in-between stops. I don't think it would work...but that could be the angle.

Edited May 28, 2008 by The Escapists

[monsoon]

^ An interesting point....essentially you are saying it is functioning in the roll of a commuter rail...not that I disagree......

Indeed. CATS stacked the deck for this kind of traffic by doing 2 things:

1. They offered up a great deal of free parking. In fact I would say they sacrificed other functions in order to pay for this parking.
   
2. They changed some of the bus routes so that bus riders have to get onto the LRT in order to reach the CTC to make a transfer to another bus.
   

As I mentioned earlier this direction has had the effect of concentrating all of the traffic onto 3-4 stations which can get quickly overwhelmed since LRT isn't the best technology for commuter rail purposes. This is particularly disturbing since many of the stations usually have nobody at them. This could be mitigated by introducing a parking fee at the park and ride lots, and changing some of the bus routes to go directly to the CTC. This would remove the bottle necks, but then I think the ridership would fall off to levels that would subject the agency to criticism. It would however let the system start growing to serve it's intended purpose with was to provide local transit between stations.

[Andyc545]

Indeed. CATS stacked the deck for this kind of traffic by doing 2 things:

1. They offered up a great deal of free parking. In fact I would say they sacrificed other functions in order to pay for this parking.
   
2. They changed some of the bus routes so that bus riders have to get onto the LRT in order to reach the CTC to make a transfer to another bus.
   

As I mentioned earlier this direction has had the effect of concentrating all of the traffic onto 3-4 stations which can get quickly overwhelmed since LRT isn't the best technology for commuter rail purposes. This is particularly disturbing since many of the stations usually have nobody at them. This could be mitigated by introducing a parking fee at the park and ride lots, and changing some of the bus routes to go directly to the CTC. This would remove the bottle necks, but then I think the ridership would fall off to levels that would subject the agency to criticism. It would however let the system start growing to serve it's intended purpose with was to provide local transit between stations.

Why would it be logical to deter a wide range of riders from using LYNX just for the facts of seeing how LYNX performs strictly for TOD and wealthy riders (who can afford to park their cars). Isn't a strategical business perspective taught on many functions to gain citizenship towards a new system, even if it comes at a financial loss initially in the hope to gain patronage. Gaining a strong group of riders now will mean it will be more stable in the future, also cater to them to incorporating LYNX into their daily life, and help improve and fund what will hold for the future. Again- this system is 6 months old, has come with great scrutiny, and has only a minuscule amount of the TOD projects actually completed that have come with this line, so why is its purpose to act as such system as described instead of catering to Charlotte 2008 (which admittedly is made up of a majority citizens in suburbia and other neighboring counties). The time will come when LYNX will be used as a source of getting your groceries, going out to eat, and moving around all parts of where it serves, but that time is not now- but it will gradually fade more and more that way- at least I predict with the growth and TOD projects that have occured.

Edited May 28, 2008 by Andyc545