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Charlotte's Light Rail: Lynx Blue Line


dubone

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30 minutes ago, kermit said:

Super...

(Blue Line speed reductions due to negligent maintenance)

Good news on the upgraded security though.

image.png.7d6b4ccd50f480962ef337b537927823.png

I wonder what that means for adding minutes to the trip or whether regular commuters would notice the 35MPH speeds? It seems quite slow but maybe it’s negligible. Car has to be faster at this point than light rail - maybe people prefer it to avoid parking deck fees? 

Blue Line, I think it’s time for indefinite 12-15 peak and 20 minute off peak frequencies with additional service between Old Concord and New Bern every 20 minutes with trains stopping at CTC of schedule adjustments are needed as most people don’t travel through uptown (though I did Arrowood to UNCC.) I’ll be a broken record and say I’d be perfectly happy with we could just get 10 minute frequencies in the core and 20 outside of the core. 

Some of you are in the loop and have connections to CATS & extensive knowledge and personal relationships so y’all are experts. Is something like that possible? Commuting and special events are important to the system but CATS really needs to shift more service towards the core for additional riders. Park & Ride Stations don’t deserve the frequencies of dense urban stations (unless we have plenty of resources). That seems like a good post-pandemic solution for Lynx but. I naturally assume if it was a good idea, they would have done it already. 

 

Edited by AirNostrumMAD
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Yes Brent Cagle is very capable after running the airport.  But this is the problem until there is  leadership at CATS in my opinion the transit plan goes nowhere.  It is like a ship without a captain over there now.  And this problem with the train cars is just another setback.  CATS and the city council can't expect to find all this support for a much expanded transit system until these problems at CATS are fixed and there is leadership.  I wish they would just name Brent Cagle the head of CATS and be done with that so the rebuilding of top people can begin.  Where is city council on this?  why are they not pressing CATS to find or name a permanent leader?  

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6 minutes ago, KJHburg said:

Yes Brent Cagle is very capable after running the airport.  But this is the problem until there is  leadership at CATS in my opinion the transit plan goes nowhere.  It is like a ship without a captain over there now.  And this problem with the train cars is just another setback.  CATS and the city council can't expect to find all this support for a much expanded transit system until these problems at CATS are fixed and there is leadership.  I wish they would just name Brent Cagle the head of CATS and be done with that so the rebuilding of top people can begin.  Where is city council on this?  why are they not pressing CATS to find or name a permanent leader?  

Would Marcus Jones be the person to name the new CATS CEO?  Would City Council?  Or these various Boards and Committees that oversee CATS?  I'm assuming it's Marcus Jones given he brought in the 3rd party consultant to figure out what we were all seeing.

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8 hours ago, CLT2014 said:

What are the steps needed to make CATS a regional authority? Is a vote needed at the county level to form it or can government form it without a vote?

It would start with a consortium vote of both the City of Charlotte City Council and Mecklenburg County Board of Commissioners.  Both have fiduciary calls on the process because of the way the Mecklenburg County transit sales tax is set up.  There would also have to have an organizational strategic plan that would need to be composed and implemented to roll it off.  The ball would begin to roll afterwards.  

Edited by kayman
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Real time tracking on the app seems to work for some trains, but not the ones I have been riding . Exactly zero of the 14 trains I have ridden in the past two weeks have shown up on the tracker. I might suggest a half working app is worse than none at all.

(Screenshot shows my blue dot while riding an invisible train)

 

F6F299B0-1823-4537-90AF-D902C57AD499.png

Edited by kermit
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18 minutes ago, AirNostrumMAD said:

Weird that it’s black and the streetcar has extra portions that I’m not sure exist. 

it’s not irrational to have been annoyed by it either. It’s super inconvenient to not have mass transit lines on the map - especially when seemingly every other transit system has it. 

Yeah there are a few weird kinks in the streetcar, and also the Blue Line appears to magically hop to a different track for a short stretch between Uptown and NoDa lol. I wonder if such errors are fairly normal for a newly added line and will be fixed in the near future?

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Weird that it’s black and the streetcar has extra portions that I’m not sure exist. 
it’s not irrational to have been annoyed by it either. It’s super inconvenient to not have mass transit lines on the map - especially when seemingly every other transit system has it. 

Not Sure why Google took so long.
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Seeing the Blue Line on Google Maps like that shows the sobering reality of how little of Charlotte is walking distance to a station.... and how many nodes will indefinitely be car dependent even if the Silver Line is built.

Can’t serve everyone, but trying to serve as many as possible is the goal.
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  • 2 weeks later...
On 3/19/2023 at 6:51 PM, Reverie39 said:

Some small but good news: Charlotte rapid transit now shows up on Google Maps! Both the Blue and Gold lines. I was irrationally bothered before that they weren't shown lol, and I know we had discussed it a few times. Seems like Google finally took notice somehow.

Not sure why, but both lines just appear as black for me though. 

 

Screenshot 2023-03-19 184914.jpg

Not sure when exactly it happened, but there were improvements in Google Maps's capturing of both Blue and Gold lines between then and now. They seem accurately represented now, no weird track jumping or extra loops like before. So seems like this is indeed a step-by-step process for Google (for whatever reason) - hopefully the next step is adding the actual colors lol.

Screenshot 2023-04-01 133332.jpg

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