Charlotte's Light Rail: Lynx Blue Line

[staffer]

when the Northeast line is completed, the 36k ridership does NOT mean triple current ridership from I-485C to Center City. The same seat could be occupied by different patrons I-485N to UNC-C, University City to 9th St, 7th Street to East/West, I-485 S to Convention Center and 36th St to UNC-C all during a morning commute. That's five riders. As mentioned above as business and residential build out, the entire ridership will NOT be Pineville area to Center City.

[monsoon]

when the Northeast line is completed, the 36k ridership does NOT mean triple current ridership from I-485C to Center City. ....

The 36K that we are discussing the theoretical effective limit of the South LRT as it is designed today, not the combined ridership of both the NE and S line. This was in regards to whether the system should be converted to 3 carriage platforms as originally designed, but had to be cut back when Tober overran the budget.

[tozmervo]

CATS fliers for June 2 route changes are hitting the streets, and LYNX is increasing weekend service. According to the flier, "The Saturday and Sunday schedules will be improved to a 15-minute frequency in the middle of the day." Elsewhere, a slew of bus routes are getting minor adjustments to provide better connections to LYNX (again).

[Andyc545]

CATS fliers for June 2 route changes are hitting the streets, and LYNX is increasing weekend service. According to the flier, "The Saturday and Sunday schedules will be improved to a 15-minute frequency in the middle of the day." Elsewhere, a slew of bus routes are getting minor adjustments to provide better connections to LYNX (again).

This is great news. 1) It shows the demand for light rail is increasing and being used on off commute days and during non-event times at the arena. 2) Those 20 to 30 minute peaks seemed forever for a wait if you missed a train due to delays getting tickets. The 5 to 10 minutes is a huge difference when standing around waiting for a train. 3) This is an effect of our great ridership numbers as well as change in mentality of Charlotteans, switching from wasting gas in their car to jumping onto mass transit as a more efficient, cost effective, and enviornmentally friendly means of getting to uptown and surrounding areas.

[monsoon]

^It's what they should have done in the first place. It's already been discussed above that all of Charlotte's peers with light rail already offer at least this frequency of service on the weekends and most are even better than this. Sunday ridership is rather dismal which would be an indication that the LRT is not being used for local travel, but mostly by people looking to get downtown so they don't have to pay to park or they are doing bus xfers. Not what we want to be seeing.

[QueenCityLegend]

^It's what they should have done in the first place. It's already been discussed above that all of Charlotte's peers with light rail already offer at least this frequency of service on the weekends and most are even better than this. Sunday ridership is rather dismal which would be an indication that the LRT is not being used for local travel, but mostly by people looking to get downtown so they don't have to pay to park or they are doing bus xfers. Not what we want to be seeing.

I still wish they would extend the light rail for an hour later on friday and saturday nights. Have the last train depart 7th street station at 2am instead of 1am. As far as the low ridership on Sundays, the reason is simple, Uptown is dead on Sunday. Nothing going on, no reason to ride uptown. Well except Amateur Night at Uptown Cabaret!

Deano

[Bikeguy]

uhhh... has anyone tried to ride Lynx tonight... Northbound has been running delays since 7:00. To many people.... not enough cars... and a lot of pissed of customers...

Did CATS not realize that may be some folks ( a lot of them) who maybe would want to ride the light rail tonight ????

Holy JC there was almost a riot at East & South Blvd...because people could not get on due to already packed cars...!

[Andyc545]

uhhh... has anyone tried to ride Lynx tonight... Northbound has been running delays since 7:00. To many people.... not enough cars... and a lot of pissed of customers...

Did CATS not realize that may be some folks ( a lot of them) who maybe would want to ride the light rail tonight ????

Holy JC there was almost a riot at East & South Blvd...because people could not get on due to already packed cars...!

OK just got home from Speed Street/Uptown and utilized LYNX. I must say I have never been in such chaos in my life. Trains were running 500% capacity, I think I may have broke my arm (just joking but seriously, i was like a rock the whole time, couldn't move). There was a lady in a wheel chair with people trampling over. To paint a picture, it was like the streets of Speed Street crammed into a car.

Quick summary: Tried to board at E/W Blvd Station at about 8:30pm. By the time trains made it to this station, they were jammed pack. I let 3 cars go by before I got in my friends car and headed down to Scaleybark. Trains were full by this point also, but we managed to charge and squeeze in the train (with a miracle). Most were left behind waiting for the next train. All trains were double that I saw. On the way back, this is at midnight, trains were the same way. I think our ridership numbers may be at the highest ever somewhere upwards of opening day. It got to the point where police had to control the chaos and crowds at the stations. A lot of people complained because trains were stopping at stations when full. Also many complained when the train sat down at 7th Street waiting for their assigned time when trains were already at capacity. Again- it was pure chaos. A big learning experience for CATs. Honestly though- I don't know how else this could have been handled given the amount of options CATs has at this point. Obviously a more expansive system and more train cars would have helped, but that's not an obvious option now. Maybe they should have run busses the route that LYNX traveled like they did opening day. Obviously this doesn't happen everyday, but these events are going to have to be handled better somehow, else we're going to see a lot of negative feedback from people that are visiting not understanding the system is new and not made to handle these types of numbers. Overall, I made it there and back after a lot of time invested and body disformations from the cramp cooridors. What are you gonna do... at least this is incredible for CATs ridership numbers, CATs themselves, and the city of Charlotte. We hosted a wicked party in uptown tonight...

[DjStedali]

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.)

[monsoon]

It comes down to 1 of 3 things:

1. More people than the practical capacity of the current system.
   
2. CATS did not adjust train schedules for this weekend's events and was running far too few trains.
   
3. There was some unknown problem somewhere on the line that was delaying the trains.
   

This is probably first real big event downtown since opening day of the system. One where the weather is nice enough that lots of people are out milling around so this really could be an issue with #1. Does anyone down there know if they were running more trains that normal for that time of the evening?

[eastsider]

Yes, the 485 station was over capacity, at 9:00 last night they were turning cars away and giving people maps to other park & ride lots. It appeared that a lot of people were parking at Carolina Pavilion at crossing South Blvd to get to the station. Sharon Road West Station was also jam-packed, so we ended driving into town rather than dealing with the obvious long waits that it would take to get aboard a train.

[easzman]

The trains were just as packed Friday afternoon when I left work at 3:00pm. After, just missing a single car train at the CTC station, I hopped on another single car train going north to 7th street to ensure I had a spot. It was frustrating to see back-to-back single car trains come through and fill up so quickly. When will those new trains be put into service?

Funny how many people will just wait on a southbound platform and risk not getting on when they can walk to the other side and hop on as the train unloads.

For daily commuters who typically gets on at the 3rd St / Convention Center, walk down to the CTC/Arena station (about 200 yards). This will give you a better chance to get a spot.

When leaving events like Speed Street, get on the northbound train at the CTC/Arena station and wait for it to switch directions at 7th St.

[DjStedali]

When leaving events like Speed Street, get on the northbound train at the CTC/Arena station and wait for it to switch directions at 7th St.

Thats exactly what we did last night and it worked, sucked you had to stand there and wait for the train to leave in the sardine can but we got on. The trains were running double the entire evening but the waits at the end of the lines were completely uncalled for. For such a big event like this they should have switched it up and once the train is full which happened in a matter of 30 seconds, you shut the doors and leave. No point waiting for the schedule it was completely off anyways.

[easzman]

DjStedali...How long was the wait at 7th street? Did it seem like they were running the trains at "rush hour" frequency? I agree with you that they should proceed once it's apparent that train is full rather than waiting to stay on schedule. However, if they were running all the trains, the wait was needed to ensure the trains were spaced along the line appropriately. They definitely should have considered running buses from the 7th street station directly to the 485 station to handle some of the extra riders. Game days this fall will be a big test for the system. With the 485 station having only 1100 spaces, it's likely the parking deck will fill up very early.

[monsoon]

Probably not many surprises here as this isn't a heavy rail system. Given the constraints that CATS has placed on itself by reducing the system to 2 car platforms, and only having 16 trains (singles) to operate, the system really can't handle big bursts of people. If it is basically picking up people and delivering them from one end of the system to the other, then we are talking about a limit of 4000 people/hour in each direction with them running everything they have.

We discussed this math before on a theoretical level before the system was built and now that theory seems to be borne out in the inability of this system to handle large events.

[krazeeboi]

Two friends and I took the train from the Tyvola station. We saw one northbound train which was really packed, so we took the southbound train all the way to I-485 and took it to Uptown. We didn't have a problem finding space on the southbound train from the 7th Street station. I thought the trains were packed opening weekend; that didn't hold a candle to Speed Street.

[QueenCityLegend]

Same here. Got to the 485 Station around 9pm and cops were directly us to other stations. I decided to just drive down to the Woodlawn station knowing it would be less crowded, well it was less crowded but not by much. 1st train came by, couldn't get on. 10 minutes later, another train that was full. 15 minutes after that I managed to sqeeze on the 3rd train and take it all the way uptown. I'll try riding Woodlawn southbound, if Northbound is full. I'll leave earlier tonight too! Only good thing about last night was the last train, didnt leave till 1:30am. I'm surprised there hasnt been any media coverage of all the light rail traffic! I still think CATS should have planned this much better, and had trains running until 2am or 2:30am. Hopefully they will learn for Taste of Charlotte in less then a month.

Deano

[Andyc545]

Same here. Got to the 485 Station around 9pm and cops were directly us to other stations. I decided to just drive down to the Woodlawn station knowing it would be less crowded, well it was less crowded but not by much. 1st train came by, couldn't get on. 10 minutes later, another train that was full. 15 minutes after that I managed to sqeeze on the 3rd train and take it all the way uptown. I'll try riding Woodlawn southbound, if Northbound is full. I'll leave earlier tonight too! Only good thing about last night was the last train, didnt leave till 1:30am. I'm surprised there hasnt been any media coverage of all the light rail traffic! I still think CATS should have planned this much better, and had trains running until 2am or 2:30am. Hopefully they will learn for Taste of Charlotte in less then a month.

Deano

I was unimpressed with CATs last night. A) The downfalls were Security, Organization (they should have formed a line so everyone had a fair chance getting on b/c it was a mad rush squeeze to get on any station; survival of the fittest if you will), and they should have ran buses that imitated the LYNX line. With that said, I am generally impressed by CATs, although some would disagree. The way they handled the Silos mishap couldn't have been handled better, yet last night was the opposite. We have several events year round of this magnitude and/or chaos level so this needs to be taken as a learning experience and built upon and improved with a high capacity special events plan, which is difficult with our resources vs. abnormal sized crowds. Obviously trains can't increase the capacity anymore since they maxed out last night, but they could run trains more strategically- on an off schedule basis, possibly run more single trains every 5 minutes just so it kept a momentum going. On events this large, they need to also advertise greatly, I mean large signs at every station when the last train leaves, and also should consider running trains later on events like this. The general public would have had no clue when the last train leaves and imagine how full that last train would be. A lot of unhappy customers could be left behind finding an alternative. We had discussed this last night about the fears associated with it, so much that we decided to leave at 11:30pm instead of 1am in fear of the crowds at the end and missing a last train. They should also consider running and staging trains at the end of the line at the wee hours for events, possibly after 10pm.

Scaleybark was pretty much at 95-100% capacity last night as far as that P&R. On a side note, I saw a huge number of people utilizing the bus system- large groups waiting at stops throughout S. End particularly, and a great amount of pedestrian movement along S. Blvd and E Blvd. God bless ya if you are going tonight, because I know I changed my plans to avoid all that again.

[tozmervo]

Probably not many surprises here as this isn't a heavy rail system. Given the constraints that CATS has placed on itself by reducing the system to 2 car platforms, and only having 16 trains (singles) to operate, the system really can't handle big bursts of people. If it is basically picking up people and delivering them from one end of the system to the other, then we are talking about a limit of 4000 people/hour in each direction with them running everything they have.

We discussed this math before on a theoretical level before the system was built and now that theory seems to be borne out in the inability of this system to handle large events.

Now let's be fair here. I thought the LYNX handled the basketball tournaments very well, despite the lack of trains. What we're talking about here is the city's single largest event. Do you really want to see our transit systems designed to handle the absolute maximum level of people they would be expected to handle once a year? Then the complaint would be that they're overbuilt the other 51 and a half weeks of the year.

[easzman]

For special events like Speed Street and Panthers Game, the ridership will definitely spike and utilization of the system will be close to 100%. What bothers me is how it seems like the managers were caught off guard with the large number of riders. It's crazy that riders had to resort to riding south to have a spot on a northbound train.

Someone mentioned to me yesterday that it took them 90 minutes to go from the Scaleybark station to Uptown after watching three full trains go by (20 mins apart!) and resorting to riding the local bus to the CTC (after transferring to a second bus at East/West Blvd.) I asked why didn't they just drive and park Uptown since it is only a 5 minute drive. The response was that they had already purchased their passes and didn't want to waste the money.

Would it have been possible to announce to people arriving at the station that the system is running at capacity and expect significant delays? I know it seems silly for CATS to deter ridership at peak times but you wonder how many times will people go through ordeals like this before they deem the trains as useless for special events. CATS will get their money anyways. I'm asking for a better effort by the managers to show flexibility in using all resources available (buses, announcements, etc) to minimize delays for riders.

[Bikeguy]

Please don't quote the entire previous post if you are only going to respond with one line.

CATS was airing an announcement almost every 3 min. noting significant delays due to unusual demand..

Edited May 25, 2008 by monsoon
removed redundant quote

[RiverwoodCLT]

I think it will only get worse as parking spaces uptown are developed and more people use the south line every day. For special events there will be little flexibly to the system. CATS will have to go back and enlarge the stops to take 3 train units and buy more trains. The 3 CATS have ordered, I do not think that will be enough. They may have to get a 32 trains to do the job.

[MZT]

You are all making me SOOO glad that I stayed home this weekend, and didn't try to go uptown and "pop into work for a few hours".

[Sabaidee]

I know Thursday night wasn't quite as bad as Friday or Saturday, but I think the light rail did its job for that night. It seems like it was running every 10 mins around 11 PM. Around 11:20 a double train came out from the 9th Street Trolley station to pick up the crowd at 7th Street station, I guess it was waiting there to ease the crowding.

[palmetto75]

We tried to head uptown around 7 pm on Fri from the Archdale station. After seeing 2 sets pass by completely full, seeing the msg warning of delays, and there being about 40 people on the platform that were "technically" in front of us we decided to go back to the car and drive uptown. Hated to to do it but was glad I did. Every station we passed had at least 30-40 people waiting on the NB side. I've ridden opening day, ACC tourney, Panthers/Cowboys and other big events, but none of them seemed to compare. Gotta give credit to the CATS PR machine. From the Observer, to the radio, to all the annoucers uptown the word was out for people to use Lynx to get uptown... and it looks like the people listened