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Charlotte's Light Rail: Lynx Blue Line


dubone

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On 3/31/2018 at 5:58 PM, nmundo said:

EDIT: The last few trains I’ve seen between University and Tryon have been packed. I really wished they had better midday/Saturday frequencies. Even 12mins would be a great improvement.

 

My cow-orker who  lives near 36th station, yet pays no attention to BLE news/details, was super-excited at his new-found ability to hop on the train and get lunch, get a haircut, get some groceries.....just THRILLED.  Then I mentioned the 15-minute trains on Sat and 20 minutes on Sun, and he was VERY disappointed.....couldn't believe that was intentional.  It was an interesting data point for me outside the UP crowd.

 

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31 minutes ago, carolinaboy said:

What's wrong with waiting 15 or 20 minutes for a train? Better than no train at all, right?

I have an hour lunch break, if I leave a few minutes too late because someone held me up as I was leaving or getting my food to slightly longer than usual, if both of those happen that's a full 30mins out of my break sitting around waiting for a train, not counting the walk to/from the station and the actual time spent eating and on the train. At that point I might as well just drive and for that I need to have taken my car to work. I'm personally willing to put up with some of those inconveniences but most people are not.

Another example, on Saturday night some friends and I decided to go to NoDa at the last minute. We got to the train station just as the train was leaving, driving to NoDa was heavily considered as that would have been 15mins vs 20mins waiting for the train and then another 20mins on the train.

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With 15-20 minute headways, the app needs to be free imo.  I haven't used the most recent app, but I've used the free one years ago.  So helpful in locating your closest station and times of arrival.  I loved being able to stay at the bar/inside your apt/house/etc until you know when the next train is arriving.  Does anyone have any experience using the new app?  Haven't gotten it yet bc of some of the reviews online, but hopefully, they have ironed those wrinkles out.

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1 hour ago, grodney said:

My cow-orker who  lives near 36th station, yet pays no attention to BLE news/details, was super-excited at his new-found ability to hop on the train and get lunch, get a haircut, get some groceries.....just THRILLED.  Then I mentioned the 15-minute trains on Sat and 20 minutes on Sun, and he was VERY disappointed.....couldn't believe that was intentional.  It was an interesting data point for me outside the UP crowd.

 

I very much agree with your co-worker here.  I use it during the week for work because we only have one parking spot and I prefer to work hours slightly different than peak hours.  I'll still take it, just have to know the schedule after being barely late a couple of times.

On the weekend, forget about it.   Much easier to drive.

Trains are full enough that they should just increase the frequency. 

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1 hour ago, CharlotteWkndBuzz said:

Does anyone have any experience using the new app?  Haven't gotten it yet bc of some of the reviews online, but hopefully, they have ironed those wrinkles out.

When it works (most of the time), it works great.  They still should have a single app for buses and trains to track real time schedules and for payment on both type of vehicles.  But, for what it is, it's only let me down once.

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2 hours ago, CharlotteWkndBuzz said:

With 15-20 minute headways, the app needs to be free imo

In Google Play store there are only 2 apps readily available, "Ride CATS" and "CATS Pass" both of which are free.

What is this new "paid" app called?

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3 hours ago, carolinaboy said:

What's wrong with waiting 15 or 20 minutes for a train? Better than no train at all, right?

Exactly.  New York may be an exception (I'm not sure though) but I don't know of any city that runs their trains at the same frequency on weekends as they do during weekdays.

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11 minutes ago, JacksonH said:

Exactly.  New York may be an exception (I'm not sure though) but I don't know of any city that runs their trains at the same frequency on weekends as they do during weekdays.

MARTA has a train in the central stations every 10mins during the day on weekends. Not as good as their ~5 min on weekdays but still way better than 20mins in the middle of the day.

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17 minutes ago, JacksonH said:

Exactly.  New York may be an exception (I'm not sure though) but I don't know of any city that runs their trains at the same frequency on weekends as they do during weekdays.

This is true, however few 'real' transit cities ever intentionally have headways that exceed 10 minutes at any time other than after midnight. There is a huge change in usability and rider friendliness that happens when wait times go beyond this level. This is doubly true when scheduling and real time app data is crappy (like with the Blue Line at the moment).

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42 minutes ago, JacksonH said:

Exactly.  New York may be an exception (I'm not sure though) but I don't know of any city that runs their trains at the same frequency on weekends as they do during weekdays.

Out here in Denver the vast majority of the schedule is 15 min headway 7 days a week. The only time it's not is before 4:45am and after like 9:30pm weekdays and 10pm weekends (1 hour weekdays/30 min weekends).  It really isn't an inconvenience and is always pretty packed.  The H line, which I use most frequent, runs 4 cars per train 90% of the time.

EDIT: Here is a link to their schedules.  Right now I think Denver has 10 lines or so, with another 3 under construction.

Edited by queensguy06
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I'm dissapointed with the status of access to the Sugar Creek Station. The Station and facilities themselves look nice, but you cannot get to them from the Southeast side of the BLE. The newly rerouted #4 Bus (Belmont) will gladly drop you off on the far side of the construction site and you can walk to the pedestrian bridge, but this is not an ideal situation. I've read that the construction at Sugar Creek is scheduled to be completed by September. Any ideas as to whether or not that is on track?

Sent from my 2PS64 using Tapatalk

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Extension has been pretty busy at most hours.

 

i was surrounded by first time riders and tourist today at around 2:40pm. All unrelated, all ages, out of town and local. I felt bad for some as they would ask “which one is park road mall.” And I was like “Do you mean park road shopping center? That was Woodlawn. I would just get off and get an Uber.” Now I wonder if they meant SouthPark mall. They had a nifty map of CLT.

 

Overall ridership seems to have increased a lot. More and more students seem to be using the train for commutes to south Charlotte

 

Edited by AirNostrumMAD
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4 hours ago, queensguy06 said:

Out here in Denver the vast majority of the schedule is 15 min headway 7 days a week. The only time it's not is before 4:45am and after like 9:30pm weekdays and 10pm weekends (1 hour weekdays/30 min weekends).  It really isn't an inconvenience and is always pretty packed.  The H line, which I use most frequent, runs 4 cars per train 90% of the time.

Same here in San Diego, every 15 minutes, even during weekday rush hour.  Then on Sunday, only every 30 minutes!

Edited by JacksonH
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Is the South line always so bonkers-packed at the morning rush?

Meanwhile the extension is still struggling at peak periods. The new month has not changed the park and ride situation (about 20 cars at Sugar creek, 100 at old c and about 30 at UC) and my train car only had 12 riders at UC station just before 9

Edited by kermit
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My train car (left UNCC at 7:20) was pretty full all the way through to 3rd St. I would say ~90% of the seats were full and there were some people standing. Enough that it felt crowded but not packed. Still not at the same level as the south line but I've definitely seen steady increase in people riding in the past 2 weeks.  

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Are there Lynx signs on I85? Maybe there needs to be more visibility for JW & UC initially and really push the northern folks to hop on there (and let the others fill up more naturally). Ridership would be much higher I bet had it reached 485

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58 minutes ago, AirNostrumMAD said:

Are there Lynx signs on I85? Maybe there needs to be more visibility for JW & UC initially and really push the northern folks to hop on there (and let the others fill up more naturally). Ridership would be much higher I bet had it reached 485

Hopefully that is true, as it could help justify building that last bit to 485.   However, just like Pineville's portion of the south corridor, once it is omitted, it is very hard to imagine them adding it until a future generation considers it. 

I also think the original Tryon @ 485  is not somewhat less ideal to carrying east to 485 @ UC Blvd, which would capture some additional student riders from all the apartments at UC Blvd, as well as connect in with with the NCRR corridor which is the defacto commuter rail north east.  There seems to be an obvious corridor to the east and they can deal with right of way from the UNC System and the NCRR which are both publicly owned.  It would only be 1.33 miles to 485 at UC Blvd.  It is the same distance to 485 @ Tryon, but most of the dense student apartments are already there at UC Blvd.   They may even be able to put the "485" station at the UC Blvd / Mallard Creek Church / NCRR area just a mile east of the current terminus.  That would capture a lot of the current student apartment district, 485 commuters, 49 commuters (with 29 commuters parking at JW Clay), and a possible connection to the Piedmont train for the Kannapolis / Raleigh connection.    

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On 3/29/2018 at 7:46 AM, grodney said:

Obligatory pseudo-on-topic content:  Since the new schedule started, the guy driving the 6:28am northbound always leaves the doors open (a solid 8-10 minutes) when he switches ends at 485.  Hopefully we're nearly done with the freezing cold mornings, as this behavior is super-annoying and horrible customer service, not to mention a waste of energy.  I have complained to, errrr brought it to the attention of, CATS, but to no avail (and no surprise).

 

Update:  CATS finally responded and said: "Going forward, in extreme weather conditions, at the end terminals operators will be notified to keep the doors closed.".

Well there you go.  Guess I'll write about the weekend headways next!

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