Charlotte's Light Rail: Lynx Blue Line

[monsoon]

Did anyone happen to notice how the trains handled the big Obama rally yesterday?

[nonillogical]

Did anyone happen to notice how the trains handled the big Obama rally yesterday?

I rode for my first time yesterday after the rally, but we waited a good half hour, maybe the bulk of the crowd had already gone through. From Trade/Arena to Bland St. was still pretty full though, not packed. I enjoyed it too, don't know why it took me this long to find a reason to ride. Eeeeveryone was just chatting about the rally.

[tozmervo]

I came north on a double car train round about 12:30 and it was packed very full, mostly with people headed to the rally, but also had a good number (like myself) headed to bars for some football.

It would also be worth mentioning that Festival in the Park's shuttle from E/W Blvd Station seemed to be a little overwhelmed. I was in the area twice to see it forced to leave people behind because it filled up.

[uptownliving]

I noticed that most people coming into the event were getting off at the 3rd St Station to attend the Obama Rally. I wasn't on the train but did observe that the dwell time at 3rd St seemed to be longer than normal to allow everyone to disembark.

On another note I also noticed a good amount of people using the Festival in Park Shuttle at the East/West Lynx Station.

[monsoon]

A short video that includes a view of inside the Lynx train that was taken by someone using it to try and see Obama.

[Andyc545]

August ridership numbers are now available:

• LYNX ridership went down slightly from July although it's still substantial: 16377 is the daily ridership
  
• Overall CATs Ridership is up from July: 2.335 million
  
• Saturday and Sunday ridership is up: Sat was at 15,838 which is huge, although I think a lot of that comes from the ECU/VT game that flooded uptown streets, from 10,994 in July
  
• It's expected that last Sunday for the Obama Speech that there exceeded 11,000 riders, which is not as much as I'd expect for a 30,000 person crowd for Obama's speech, considering you have to account much of the 11,000 riders were typical Sunday riders (about 5,000). Football season has begun so I'd expect Sunday ridership will begin to surge like it did last year. We should see this begin to reflect in the September ridership numbers.
  

So does anyone think we'll be able to hit the 2025 numbers before year end, 18,100 riders? I'm skeptical that it will be reached, because that is looking for another 2000 riders a day in just a few months without any major events that would exceed the typical that took place so far while LYNX has been operating. I believe next year we could see this hit personally, once TOD's begin to have pedestrians frequenting the line. Also a slice of riders will be reflected depending what happens with gas prices.

[uptownliving]

With the current gas mess....and with September being a month that most people return to work and summer vacations come to an end...I am expecting a jump for the September numbers....I would expect somewhere in the 17,000+ range for weekday. It is certainly possible if gas prices stay high that we could hit the 18,100 number by December.

[Mobuchu]

Are there any new developments along the line that are planned to open before year end? Only one I can think of that is remotely close is Ashton, but that still seems a good 6 months off. Especially to get a full house of renters in.

Add the Bobcats and Checkers weekday games to help with riders. But I still think 18,100 by the end of the year to be tough to get to.

[atlrvr]

Southborough has been delivering some units, but I don't think many more will be online by the end of the year.

Also, The Block at South End still has a dozen or so units that should be wrapping up soon.

Still, not much going on by the end of the year, and I agree that as far as average weekday ridership goes, it will be tough to hit.

Next year should be much better.....bowling and movies will be open as well as 1,000 or so new units. Perhaps more importantly will be how fast CATS expands their parking lots at the southern end.

[tozmervo]

With the current gas mess....and with September being a month that most people return to work and summer vacations come to an end...I am expecting a jump for the September numbers....I would expect somewhere in the 17,000+ range for weekday. It is certainly possible if gas prices stay high that we could hit the 18,100 number by December.

I don't know about the other riders on the board, but my impression was a clear spike in ridership in the few workdays just after the Ike gas hikes.

[InitialD]

I don't know about the other riders on the board, but my impression was a clear spike in ridership in the few workdays just after the Ike gas hikes.

And Saturday afternoon on the 13th was packed! Blues, Brews, and BBQ was that weekend.

[kermit]

today's O has a story about the additional funding request CATS is making to the feds. To my surprise the article mentions that expanding the South line platforms to accomodate 3 car trains is one of the budget items in the request.

Hope they get that $$$, the value engineering of the line still really irks me.

[MZT]

Some of the stations are going to be tough to expand for 3 trains. Stonewall comes to mind. Maybe they won't do it at every station... Stonewall is pretty lightly used.

Edited September 27, 2008 by MZT

[monsoon]

Hmm. Sounds like he is going to try and get the same kind of deal the Feds gave to SLC. I wish him luck but that was when the GOP controlled everything and Orrin Hatch pulled a lot of strings to get that project approved. I am not aware that we have anyone of similar influence looking out for CLT these days.

[atlrvr]

Great news.....this has been my biggest complaint, the fact they value engineered the 3-train platforms out of the original plans.

The line was fully designed with 3-train sets in mind, so I'm sure it is feasible, but I'm sure will cost more money to retrofit than the savings they will recieve.

One caveat, they don't have the number of trainsets at their disposal to fully take advantage of the longer platforms. It could be useful for special events when they have several trains staged, but during rushour they are maxed out, and are talking about running single train sets at a higher frequency.

[dubone]

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/local/story/218930.html

The article I see doesn't mention asking for federal help on the $50m, but I guess it would make sense for it to be requested in part by the feds. From what I understand, it is the federally mandated model which caused such an underestimation of ridership in the first place, so it follows that they should help expand capacity now that we are decades ahead of schedule for ridership.

That $50m would include expanding the platforms as originally designed, ordering new cars (I presume beyond the rest of the option, which the city already authorized), and while the article doesn't say so, I also assume this will also include budget to expand the 485 deck.

[tozmervo]

I don't know how else to say it. Commuting on the train this morning sucked. I am not squeamish about getting up close and personal with other commuters, but I still had to let one train go by. I managed to get into the second one, but saw lots of equally frustrated people at E/W Blvd and Bland Street who had also let the prior train(s) go by and still couldn't get on.

Oh, and did I mention, CATS wasn't running all the trains this morning. Two of them were clearly sitting idle in the yard.

/biking tomorrow

[Spartan]

I'm pretty sure they have to keep a couple of them in reserve incase they have a malfunction on the ones they are running.

[MZT]

Normally the dual trains alternate with singles. I often let a single go by, and wait for the next one. It's only 7 minutes during rush hour, what the hey.

(There does seem to be an exception to this around 4:30 to 5:00 when they put more doubles in sequence to handle rush hour.)

[Spartan]

The article dubone posted also says that CATS is considering/studying a move to 6 minute peak hour headways to increase capacity.

[monsoon]

I'm pretty sure they have to keep a couple of them in reserve incase they have a malfunction on the ones they are running.

I don't think that is the case. They can always remove people from a broken train via 2-3 city buses. On the other note, the upper spec limit of the current design are 5 min headways.

[Spartan]

I will be interested to see how much capacity is added by increasing the headways by 1.5 minutes.

[orulz]

I will be interested to see how much capacity is added by increasing the headways by 1.5 minutes.

Well, 7.5 minute headways is 8 trains per hour; 6 minute is 10 per hour. That's a 25% increase if the train length stays the same (which evidently it won't, but that's another issue...)

[tozmervo]

My biggest problem with that plan is that it assumes even loading throughout the course of an hour. As it is now, they can (and do) bias double trains to deal with those peak periods of rush hour.

[Spartan]

It also depends on how they distribute the cars, since they will have more single trains.