2035 Triangle Regional Transit Vision Plan

[monsoon]

I've been catching up on this topic and I find it fascinating they are proposing electrified light rail now for such long distances. Given that average cost to build a LRT is in the $100M/mile now, I was wondering if anyone has created a realistic funding scenario for a project of this magnitude?

[Jones_]

Backing up a few posts, I just want to emphatically reiterate that the CAT bus system is horribly underfunded and pretty well sucks in its route selection and frequency of service. The stated mission is to provide transportation for those with no cars (or something to that effect). Not to ease congestion, get folks to places along obvious commuter paths etc. Its in plain terms, the difference between public transportation (CAT) and mass transit (what we are trying to formulate with the STAC plan). All this is why our ridership is very low. I tried to use the #1 bus up capital Blvd for a week when my car was in the shop. Peak service is every 30 minutes. Are you kidding? A top five volume corridor with peak service at 30 minutes? Our development pattern does little to help bus utilization as well. Its hard to devise efficient routes when there are hundreds of cul-de-sacs between point A and point B. All the more reason to build rail, was an original tenet in the TTA DMU plan, to shape development patterns. To a regional planner worth their salt, providing for people movement as you recolor a map with new densities is basic nuts and bolts.

[urban980]

First you say the Triangle is not ready for rail (until 2020) and then you say we should back a full one cent tax to build it without federal support.

Allow me to explain. I don't think the Triangle is ready for rail due to the area's multi city layout. I do think Raleigh can support rail in about 10 years as the city grows. Many folks seem to want rail now. That is why I suggested a 1 cent tax to have trains up and running by 2017. Three years premature is not that big of a deal if you ask me. Without a full 1 cent tax, it will be close to 2025 before trains are running.

My position is build the trains now (I like trains better). However, I know the feds will not approve the Triangle for funding right now. I think some of the posts above said it best. Raleigh's bus service needs to improve first before the area even thinks about investing in trains. I think trains often get more credit than the buses. A good bus system can carry millions of people per year. In most cities (with buses and trains), the buses carry more folks than the trains carry. This is why Raleigh must improve the bus ridership before trying to build rail lines. If Raleigh is not patient enough to wait for bus ridership to improve, then I say tax yourselves a full 1 cent and build the trains without the feds' money.

Edited January 30, 2009 by urban980

[ncwebguy]

When gas gets above $3/gallon and/or the weather is nice enough for my .5 mile walk each way to a bus stop at both ends of my commute, I take Triangle Transit. But since I don't ride a CAT bus, (sarcasam) I obviously don't support transit, and a train should never be built here (/sarcasam).

Improving bus service and building a backbone train line is not an either/or proposition, and does not have to happen before a rail line is planned, let alone funded. Also, funding doesn't only have to come from a sales tax. I still think a "TIF/district property tax" on land that directly benefits from the rail line could be enough, combined with a half cent sales tax to do bus AND rail.

Using Charlotte as an option because I went there a few weeks ago and have family in the area, its train "doesn't go to the airport" yet it serves several purposes -- park and ride commutes from south/southeast of town, walk and ride commutes from neighborhoods near the stations, outbound transportation for center city residents, and special event commuting for Panthers, Bobcats, concerts, etc. The same could happen in the Triangle, but never will if we base future projections on how things were 5-10 years ago.

Why should we be taxed at the federal level and then told to expect less of it back every year? All those medium sized cities would be a lot smaller if everyone else wasn't helping them, yet we should never expect anything while we continue to subsidize the road network with gas, property, vehicle sales, and other taxes. This is *urban* planet, is it not?

Since most of the land has already been acquired, I don't think light rail will cost $100M/mile. And there will be "cheaper" miles between the cities -- Raleigh to Cary, Cary to RTP and RTP to Durham. Especially with the cost of raw materials coming down due to the slowing global economy, etc.

From an economic stimulus point of view, a 10% fed investment in a rail system will create a lot more jobs than building and shipping more buses to the area, and the "permanance" of rail makes building/redveloping dense, urban nodes a lot easier to sell to existing land owners. It won't be "every station, right away" but provides a blueprint for managed growth for decades.

[urban980]

^^^One question. If rail existed in Raleigh right now, how many people do you think would ride it a day? If the line was only 10 miles long, I would say about 7,500 passengers a day (if that). My reason for saying this is because 10 miles won't do squat in the Triangle. You need at least 20 miles of rail to take people to major employment centers in the Triangle. Even a 20 mile line would carry less than 15,000 passengers per day. The feds are not going to fund a system that carries less than 1,000 passengers per mile at a cost of nearly 40-60 million per mile to build (the going rate for light rail construction).

Don't think for one minute that I disagree with you. I am with you 100% on building trains sooner than later. I just know that Raleigh is not ready for trains now. If trains existed now, they would be a failure for the next 10 years and would likely never expand due to the public viewing trains as a waste of money. Besides, a good bus system is great just like trains!!!

I maybe alone here, but I think that STAC has got it right this time. Let's improve overall transit usage with better bus service then build rail. That is the way to do it. I know this is "urban" planet, but some times we have to crawl towards urbanity before we can run. In the next 10 years, the Triangle should focus on building up high density corridors for the trains. This will improve ridership. Again, I am not against rail (heck, I use rail everyday). I am just about doing it right.

Edited January 31, 2009 by urban980

[ChiefJoJo]

I think we fundamentally agree on the same principles towards shaping urban land use through sustainable transportation (in this case, rail transit). The execution will be the hard part. Buses and probably some leveraging of targeted TOD sites (Cherokee) will come first to build the foundation of the system so that rail will be successful. This area is more complex to serve with rail, being a poly-centric region, but the principles are the same. The financial models (based on a 1/2 cent sales tax + hiked vehicle registration fee--generating roughly $80M/yr regionally IIRC) are conservative and sound, such that there is little reliance on federal or state funding. Also recall that the previous administration in Washington was in charge of setting the criteria for rail funding, and even Charlotte would not qualify under today's cost/benefit rules. Lesson: just because the feds do not agree to fund it today, does not make it a bad plan... which brings me back to the plan:

The Capital Area MPO has released it's draft long range transit plan. Click here (2 MB pdf). Paired with extensive bus investments, it calls for LRT along the STAC corridor from Triangle Towne Center to the Triangle Metro Center near RTP by 2025... plus commuter rail along the NCRR from downtown to Clayton/Selma by 2025... plus LRT extensions to Wake Forest & Apex by 2035. It's a more ambitious version of the STAC plan, with more extensions into other areas of the county.

[vitaviatic]

I'd like to know how many people discussing rail transit current use existing transit options on a regular basis. I ride the bus to school and back. The reason I ask is because Raleigh's population is about 1/2 of what Charlotte's is but Charlotte's transportation systems carries more than 5 times more passengers than Capital Area Transit. And that's excluding trips on Charlotte's light rail system.....I think the entire topic of rail transit is moot is people aren't even willing to use the options already available. Personally, I feel that there are many people who advocate for rail transit but don't use existing buses because of the stigma that riding the bus carries.

Good point, B. In the old TTA blog, this aspect got discussed ad vomitum, and the recollections from my childhood days riding the bus in Raleigh up and down Glenwood between schools, of comments from people who were absolutely aghast at the thought, brought memories of terms like "welfare wagon" -- most of them racist, most of them classist, and none of them flattering. Where Charlotte differs from Raleigh is progressive thought within the business community. Dating back to the days of NCNB and First Union throwing up office towers at each other, the Charlotteans who lorded over a prospering downtown realized that an effective mass transit would alleviate at least some of the burden from providing parking for one car for every occupant of their buildings -- which in the scale of Charlotte's skyline is a bit more of a daunting task than it is in Raleigh. To be sure, they really didn't care who rode the buses or whatever -- it could be the janitors and cooks -- but it was less parking, thus expense for them (and I say that to dissuade you, dear reader, from thinking that, IMO, it was all high-minded utopian egalitarianism). So, when the titans of commerce in Charlotte began to actually actively support transit there, it began to reduce the stigma of riding transit that you refer to, and does exist, whether they meant to or not. Raleigh business has been effete at best to transit, downright antagonistic at worst. And you are right. A few who support transit do so in the hopes of getting someone else on the bus or train, to clear the road for them. But that is actually pretty rare. Many who support transit don't use it, not because they don't want to, but because -- especially in the case of Raleigh's CAT -- it is literally unusable. With headways measured in hours instead of minutes, as Orulz pointed out, even on major routes, and with a route system that not only runs out the branches of the tree, but all around the fruit as well, wasting huge amounts of time that others find too precious to waste, quite frankly I wouldn't ride it either. And I work in the transit field! Without a major overhaul -- better yet, rebuild -- of the entire transit scheme in the Triangle (which I think most people who read here are craving) you will continue to find this rift between what folks say they want, and what they actually use now.

And Chief, I think I alluded to this before that the "polycentric" nature of the Triangle is not a hindrance to rail at all. It is good fortune like no other in that dense clusters are already in place to make the linear operation viable. In fact, I could make an effective argument for the fact that a Raleigh-to-Durham line would be more successful than the Lynx, for the fact that you have two viable endpoints -- DTR and DTD -- with a whole gaggle of midpoints feeding traffic into the line -- NCSU, the Fairgrounds (especially during games), RTP, and NCCU -- all fairly high density clusters in and of themselves. Once you leave Uptown and slide through Scaleybark in Charlotte, it's pretty much flatscape. The south end of Charlotte is probably changing somewhat to maximize land use given the seat inventory that Lynx provides (I don't know that for sure, but I will find out five weeks from now). But remember those kinds of numbers and nodes already exist in the Triangle.

I hate to constantly be the grumpkin here (although more infrequently so these days). And I know that at least studying something is better than doing nothing. But this STAC plan is akin to a bridesmaid with no bride, groom, priest, or wedding. First, since there is no funding structure in place for it, you have no idea whether you are in the market for a Yugo or a Mercedes. Second, since all effective transit systems develop around what is there and what gets developed in each successive stage, you have no basis for what secondary and tertiary additions should be made, when the spine of the whole thing does not yet exist. And third, cost estimates for a timeline of 20- to 25 years are laughable at best. #

[sax184]

Anything. Anything, even small, is better than nothing. I remember someone poking fun at the Music City Star commuter rail in Nashville once. Well guess what...They're still there.

Here's an article from the fall on the Music City Star. Title: Worth Saving? Music City Star is on the Ropes.

Assuming this train is operational for another year, or into 2011, the underwhelming results have surely dealt a blow to the future of transit expansion in Nashville.

Charlotte and Nashville are both sunbelt cities that built rail projects that had higher costs than projected. Charlotte is perceived as a rousing success, and Nashville is perceived as a failure. The Nashville project was a lower-cost, low-value proposition, and it has probably hit its benefits ceiling for the community. The Charlotte LYNX is a higher-cost, high-value proposition, and with $1.6 billion in development along the line, the ability to extend north, and 15,000 plus people riding each weekday, it is widely considered a success, and has not come close to reaching its benefit limit.

[monsoon]

....it is widely considered a success, and has not come close to reaching its benefit limit.

But success was never defined so it is easy to claim that Lynx was successful since there were never any quantitative goals set down for that system. It is indeed troubling, if one looks into these things objectively, that ridership has been falling every month since the initial 2-3 months of initial support and even more troubling that CATS has justified reducing service during peak times.

The difference between the Nashville system and the Charlotte system is in the reporting. Beyond that, both are afflicted by the same issues except that Charlotte system is a couple of orders of magnitude larger than the one in Nashville because it was built to much higher levels of investment. CATS is also burning through $100M+/year in operational expenses but there are not as many complaints because it is hidden in the dedicated sales tax.

The problem with building transit in the Sunbelt is not in the transit itself. The problem is that we build transit and hope that good development will follow. This is exactly opposite of what should be done which is to zone for good development, restrict development in other areas (against the wishes of the property owners) and then use transit. after the fact to help implement it. This is why almost every system in the South, with the exception of the Metro in DC, cannot make any claims of success relative to any real goals.

[urban980]

The financial models (based on a 1/2 cent sales tax + hiked vehicle registration fee--generating roughly $80M/yr regionally IIRC) are conservative and sound, such that there is little reliance on federal or state funding.

This is my only problem with STAC's plan. $80M/yr won't cut it (hence the reason why they are waiting until 2024 to build the first line). There is no way around a full penny tax in the South. As Monsoon has stated, the South in general needs lots of subsidies to make transit work. Raleigh is no exception to this rule. I feel that STAC has underestimated the cost of building and operating rail. Their plans are quite impressive, but I am 99.9999% sure that 2025 and beyond will cost TTA nearly $100 million per mile to build or better. Even a transit tax that brings in $120 million per year won't build much in 15 years. The Triangle requires rail lines that are longer than most midsized cities. As one poster stated, a line from Durham to Raleigh would be ideal. Such a line should not be light rail (light rail is too slow). DMUs (the most likely choice for such a route) would be better, but I think a 70 MPH heavy rail line should link Durham and Raleigh. Bringing Raleigh and Durham closer together with a high speed electric train would almost make the two "one city" for the pedestrian commuter. I-40 will never make these two cities one. Neither would a slow train. The train must be fast in order to attract more than 15,000 riders per day. Such a line would need at least 30,000 riders per day just to be considered feasible. Edited February 3, 2009 by urban980

[sax184]

But success was never defined so it is easy to claim that Lynx was successful since there were never any quantitative goals set down for that system.

The projected ridership of the Lynx line was widely publicized before opening, at 9100 daily riders at the end of the first year. This is the definition of a quantitative goal. LYNX Ridership is far above this number, and peaked in the 15000-16000 range in the fall. Obviously with the slowdown in the economy and colder weather, ridership is likely to tail off a bit in the first part of 2009.

The second number that is in little dispute is that there has been $1.6 to $1.9 billion in private sector development along the LYNX corridor. I am not sure if Charlotte ever had a goal for this like they had projected ridership, but the impact of the line can be and is being measured.

[monsoon]

weather, ridership is likely to taThe projected ridership of the Lynx line was widely publicized before opening, at 9100 daily riders at the end of the first year. This is the definition of a quantitative goal. LYNX Ridership is far above this number, and peaked in the 15000-16000 range in the fall. Obviously with the slowdown in the economy and colderil off a bit in the first part of 2009.

The second number that is in little dispute is that there has been $1.6 to $1.9 billion in private sector development along the LYNX corridor. I am not sure if Charlotte ever had a goal for this like they had projected ridership, but the impact of the line can be and is being measured.

The 9100 number has been thrown out constantly since the line opened. The thing is, that was never a stated goal for this line and unfortunately this was supposed to be the opening day number and not the number 15 months later where there is nothing stated. In any case the 9100 is a meaningless measurement as it doesn't relate to any real results that transit can be measured against. To state it another way, what is the justification for spending 1/2 billion dollars to build the the transit line? The answer to that question is not so 9,100 people can ride it. However when you get to these details, then one finds that Lynx has a lot of issues.

In regards to that development, I will also point out that development that distance from down has been just as heavy in the corridor where the line is located as in corridors that are not part of the transit system. So while it's easy to take credit for this stuff having been built because of Lynx, there is no indication this stuff would not be there without it. More damning however is where the city did have plans for TOD related specifically to Lynx. One is the Silo project further South. It has come out this project isn't even paying it's property taxes. Further south is where the signature Scaleybark station development was supposed to take place. Once Lynx was running the city found it could not find a developer willing to take on the project and ended up having to finally sell it at a substantial loss to a developer to get it going. Now that developer is telling the city that it is not going to make payments on this property.

The point of this is that Lynx does not drive development. The economy does. I would suggest that if you actually gave CATS a real goal, even retrospectively, you would find that it did not measure up. This topic isn't to debate CATS and Lnyx here, but the point is the problem the Triangle is having in getting a project going is the answer to the question that I posed above. What are the real measurable goals for spending so much money?

[sax184]

The point of this is that Lynx does not drive development.

I'm sorry, we'll have to agree to disagree. Regardless of your view, there is a strong consensus in NC and among national TOD experts that LYNX has driven development in the South corridor, just as I-485 has driven development towards interchanges in the suburbs. That said, this is supposed to be a Triangle thread so I'm not going to argue about Charlotte and CATS any more here. We have a whole thread in the Charlotte forum where these discussions have taken place, and I don't think having this discussion a second time is going to improve the quality of the Triangle thread.

[ChiefJoJo]

This is my only problem with STAC's plan. $80M/yr won't cut it (hence the reason why they are waiting until 2024 to build the first line). There is no way around a full penny tax in the South. As Monsoon has stated, the South in general needs lots of subsidies to make transit work. Raleigh is no exception to this rule. I feel that STAC has underestimated the cost of building and operating rail. Their plans are quite impressive, but I am 99.9999% sure that 2025 and beyond will cost TTA nearly $100 million per mile to build or better. Even a transit tax that brings in $120 million per year won't build much in 15 years. The Triangle requires rail lines that are longer than most midsized cities. As one poster stated, a line from Durham to Raleigh would be ideal. Such a line should not be light rail (light rail is too slow). DMUs (the most likely choice for such a route) would be better, but I think a 70 MPH heavy rail line should link Durham and Raleigh. Bringing Raleigh and Durham closer together with a high speed electric train would almost make the two "one city" for the pedestrian commuter. I-40 will never make these two cities one. Neither would a slow train. The train must be fast in order to attract more than 15,000 riders per day. Such a line would need at least 30,000 riders per day just to be considered feasible.

Politics. As much as some of us who believe wholeheartedly in the value of transit would love to see this happen (more funding), it's not. I am not aware of a region that enacted a full one cent tax prior to building an initial rapid transit line. Based on the "Charlotte model" and the experiences of other regions (Denver and countless others), the public usually needs to see the results of it's initial investment first before re-upping, and rightfully so. Get the funding, show the results, and then ask for more when the public demands quicker implementation of the plan. That approach has worked fairly consistently in sunbelt regions where high capacity transit investments are a relatively new thing (unlike early 20th century legacy systems in the northeast, etc). That is also why the John Locke's and Cato thinktanks of the world fight so hard to turn public opinion against the initial rail investment... from experience, they know that once the region sees the results (if done well), they will want more, and the bizarro libertarian voice becomes completely marginalized. Conversely, asking for what would likely be perceived as too much (one cent) and failing would be a disaster and likely set back transit here for many years.

Also, remember that plans are living documents based on the best information at the time. When rail is successful here, there could be another vote to increase the tax and implement the plan within a shorter timeframe. Other corridors could be added or adjusted to match land use or policy changes. This happened in Charlotte and could happen here. But the bottom line is this is the most studied, well-conceived, politically-backed, extensive regional plan the region has produced and it's time to get behind it. The train is leaving the station, so to speak...

[monsoon]

... there is a strong consensus in NC and among national TOD experts that LYNX has driven development in the South corridor, ....

Sure, I know they do, but it doesn't change the issue that I brought up. If you also ask them about the failures of the transit systems, using even their stated definitions of success, to do this in places such as Jacksonville, Miami, and Burlington, Vt. you won't get much of an answer to that. If Lynx was driving development, then it would not have stopped when the economy went south.

There is an interesting dichotomy here. Using your analogy of 485, when is it that any road in NC is justified, prioritized and funding with the stated purpose of driving development? I've never heard this. If this is the stated goal of light rail, then what what is the quantitative amounts and dates that determine success or failure. See, this question is never asked because transit agencies and their supporters don't want to be held to these kinds of results even though they like to cite them when they are there and then ignore them when they don't happen.

[gman430]

Thought you guys would find this interesting regarding Charlotte's Lynx line:

In addition, private development is under construction along the 9.6-mile line. Since 2005, when the federal government agreed to fund the rail project, developers have announced $1.86 billion in projects along the line, Votaw said. Several pulled back plans amid the credit crunch, however. That figure is now closer to $1.5 billion, with projects expected to be complete in 2011. Nearly 1,200 residential units are already under construction. About 7,000 more are planned.

The rail, however, has done little to increase the overall net development in Charlotte, said Wendell Cox, a national public-policy consultant and principal of St. Louis-based Demographia, which has conducted numerous studies on mass transit.

"The development is the result of subsidizes and incentives. Downtown Charlotte has had development long before the rail came along," he said. "Why waste (money) on the rail, when it's not a necessary piece of the equation? Provide incentives and save the money on rail."

Source: http://www.gsabusiness.com/index.php?optio...7&Itemid=54

Edited February 3, 2009 by citylife

[sax184]

Thought you guys would find this interesting regarding Charlotte's Lynx line:

In addition, private development is under construction along the 9.6-mile line. Since 2005, when the federal government agreed to fund the rail project, developers have announced $1.86 billion in projects along the line, Votaw said. Several pulled back plans amid the credit crunch, however. That figure is now closer to $1.5 billion, with projects expected to be complete in 2011. Nearly 1,200 residential units are already under construction. About 7,000 more are planned.

The rail, however, has done little to increase the overall net development in Charlotte, said Wendell Cox, a national public-policy consultant and principal of St. Louis-based Demographia, which has conducted numerous studies on mass transit.

"The development is the result of subsidizes and incentives. Downtown Charlotte has had development long before the rail came along," he said. "Why waste (money) on the rail, when it's not a necessary piece of the equation? Provide incentives and save the money on rail."

Source: http://www.gsabusiness.com/index.php?optio...7&Itemid=54

Wendell Cox is a well-known paid lobbyist/speaker/hack of right-wing think tanks who wanders the country criticizing rail projects by abusing statistics. His work is not peer-reviewed because it would never stand up to scrutiny. Todd Littman, an international transportation researcher whose work is often published by the Transportation Research Board, the gold standard for transport research under the National Academy of Sciences, has detailed many of Cox's erroneous and misleading techniques in his paper "Evaluating Rail Transit Criticism."

Feel free to download it here(PDF).

[orulz]

I would argue that neither highways nor rails "drive" development. They do, however, affect its location and form.

While that article makes a statement that the rail line did not cause a net increase in development in Charlotte (not sure about the truth of that statement, but it makes sense, and could be empirically proven), it did focus development into the corridor. And in the corridor, zoning is in place to make sure development has an urban form. Similarly, loop highways do not "create" development; rather, they direct it into outlying areas, where zoning and density dictates that it will be suburban sprawl.

Without the light rail, and also without I-485, the Charlotte metro area would probably have just about as many people as it does now. The development that occurred along those corridors would simply be spread elsewhere around the metro area. rather than focused at stations or exits.

I believe that if the city had just rezoned the South Blvd corridor for high density urban development, and left out the light rail, few if any developers would have even looked at it. The presence of light rail turned the public's eye towards the corridor. It's viewed as contributing greatly to quality of life, and for many people makes up for the disadvantages of living in a denser area (let's face it; density has its drawbacks too.)

Even given that light rail does not "create" investment, but simply attracts it from elsewhere in the region, I still think that's a good accomplishment, because that means that the investment is going towards building dense urban neighborhoods rather than towards chewing up forests and farmland for houses, apartment complexes, and townhomes near interstate offramps.

You can't measure the impact of this redirection on development on a time scale of months. You can't build a light rail line and poof, a year later you have London. Particularly when the economy tanks and development grinds to a halt everywhere.

monsoon, I'm curious to know what sort of objective, quantifiable metrics you would use to determine the success or failure of a transit line. Particularly ones that are valid only 1 year after the line was completed. I would say that the US has gotten itself in a lot of the trouble it's in for everything due to an obsession with short-term success. If the Yurikamome line and Rinkai lines in the Odaiba region of Tokyo were judged solely on ridership, even after their first five years of operation, they would have been judged as utter failures. However, as time moved on, and development and travel patterns shifted, 14 years after opening ridership has grown tremendously and both lines are now considered to be resounding successes. It took perhaps 10 years for these lines to turn around and provide their full public benefit - and it wasn't even that much of a stretch to get Tokyo dwellers to ride a new train line. When you're talking about Charlotte, or the southeast US in general, I say we have to think of transit lines as even longer-term investments than that.

I agree that the system hasn't been around for long enough and the 15,000 per day numbers aren't high enough to call the line an unqualified success just yet as some seem to be doing. But I do find its performance to this date to be encouraging. But I will reiterate that there is no such thing as a metric that will tell you whether it is a success or a failure just 1 year out. Demand for immediate accountability like this could sink the transit system before it even has a chance to try and swim.

For an appropriately, quantifiable metric of the line's actual success, I would say take a look at the transit system's ridership 25 years from now. If it's not good, is it unfortunate that we won't be able to hold today's planners and leaders to task for the failure? I suppose, but it's also unfortunate that we can't hold the leaders of the 60s and 70s to task for the horrendous effects of urban renewal and inner city highways. But of course hindsight is and always will be 20/20 - and, as with any investment, there's risk. And that's the risk here.

[monsoon]

......

I believe that if the city had just rezoned the South Blvd corridor for high density urban development, and left out the light rail, few if any developers would have even looked at it. The presence of light rail turned the public's eye towards the corridor, and was perceived as a major amenity that might well make up for some of the disadvantages of living in a denser area (let's face it; there are disadvantages as well as advantages)......

monsoon, I'm curious to know what sort of objective, quantifiable metrics you would use to determine the success or failure of a transit line. Particularly ones that are valid only 1 year after the line was completed. I would say that the US has gotten itself in a lot of the trouble it's in for everything due to an obsession with short-term success. If the Yurikamome line and Rinkai lines in the Odaiba region of Tokyo were judged solely on ridership, even after their first five years of operation, they would have been judged as utter failures. .....

In the case of South End, that kind of development had been proceeding for years, years before there was any mention there would be a transit line there. The 27 story Arlington was first proposed as a 40 story residential building in 1995. The transit tax was not voted in until 1998 and the South LRT didn't start design work until years after that. There is similar construction that preceeded the Arlington. More telling is the real estate around portions of the line that had not developed prior to it's arrival. Those parts of the line are still unchanged. I might add that on routine days, most of the people using that line are either people looking for the free parking at the transit stations, or they were people forced onto the line because existing bus routes were changed to terminate at a train station instead of the downtown transit system. If you subtract out this number, then you have a much more dismal tale.

On the two rail lines in Japan, you hit the nail on the head. The Japanese don't use that as a goal for success or failure. They have a fundamentally different view of transit in that it is the right of the people and a matter of national self sufficiency that each person there have access to transit. By that standard, those lines are a success. Likewise, because you brought it up, in London much of that system was initially built by private companies. A couple of the goals were to get rid of the slums and to make money. The rail lines did the first by moving people out of these slums to the then suburbs to live in new housing. The other of course was make money for the investors building these lines. They did it buy buying real estate which they then ran their lines through, then reselling the real estate at a lot higher prices. In both cases these lines can be deemed a success by these measurements.

Fast forward to NC present day. What similar goals are we trying to meet here with the billions being proposed for these systems? Is it to reduce air pollution, is it to take cars off the road, is it to enable more people to get to work? Of course you will get people that will tell you that transit does all these things. If those are the true goals, then why isn't anyone measuring it? (I can post the answer if interested) This is the issue here, and the lack of real measurable goals is why Lynx and other transit agencies open themselves up to criticism such as that put forth by Wendell Cox. (posted above) Since supporters can't answer the questions, then what happens attempts are made to discredit the messenger instead of the message.

It's this failure to relate the building of transit to the real needs or goals of the community that cause these years and years of delays.

[orulz]

I think there are definitely goals for this and any other transit line, and it should be possible to measure its performance in the long run. Unfortunately as this is not the 1870s and the world is not so cut and dry. There is no clear-cut, single goal for a transit line that can be used to measure success. There are LOTS of hopes resting on Charlotte's transit system, and the fact that they all get lumped together may come across as a lack of purpose or focus, and certainly that makes quantification and metrics difficult, but I think the underlying purpose and reasons are absolutely there.

then why isn't anyone measuring it? (I can post the answer if interested).

I'd be interested to hear your answer, but the point I tried to make that got lost in my extremely wordy post before is that there's no point to measuring it yet, much less trying to come to a "success/failure" conclusion at this point in the game. This is going to take years, decades even, before its full effects will be felt. And even then, I'm sure the results will be mixed in some ways (hindsight is, again, always 20/20 and we'll be able to look back and see what we could have done differently to be more successful.)

I'm certain that plenty of people - transit supporters, detractors, and general pundits alike, will be looking at all sorts of metrics once the system has begun to mature. Things they will look at are:

Transit ridership,

Transportation mode share for all types of trips (walking, biking, transit, driving; shopping, commuting; etc)

Total VMT per person,

Population density in transit corridors,

Cars owned per household,

Change in commercial square footage in transit corridors,

Percentage of all development that happens in transit corridors vs. elsewhere (both before and after the transit line's construction)

Commute time and distance for residents and jobs in the corridors vs. out of the corridor

Commute time of transit riders vs. drivers

Etc, etc.

These sorts of metrics are tracked by transit systems all over the country.

Different people may have different motivations for supporting transit, but does the fact that there is more than one goal and more than one motivation make it any less worthwhile? I, for example, think the end goal should be to create a viable alternative to suburban sprawl and complete auto-dependency where there was none before. That is a multi-faceted, long-term goal that might be difficult to quantify, measure and track, but does that make it pointless? No way!

By the way, my point in bringing up the lines in Japan is that they use ridership as the primary criteria for evaluating transit lines - but even in Japan ridership takes time to develop. A line that was originally lambasted by the Japanese media as a failure actually turned around and became a great success. So in Charlotte, at this point, any attempts to determine if the line is a success or a falure are absolutely pointless.

Sure, it's a good idea to track how things are progressing, and if other transit systems throughout the country are any indication, Charlotte is tracking them too - but we're a decade away from being able to draw any meaningful conclusions whatsoever. If they go ahead and make a big deal with press releases to publish all sorts of statistics now, the media will do what it does best, which is jump to conclusions, and regardless of the conclusions they jump to, everybody loses because they're not looking at the long term picture which is what we need to look at.

[ChiefJoJo]

^ I agree completely. Goals like improving air quality & public health, lowering VMT, etc are all goals that can measured on a region-wide basis, but the gains in these measures linked to transit & TOD cannot nor should not be evaluated in a meaningful way one, ten or even twenty years after a single light rail line opens. Our cities have taken 60+ years to develop in the post WWII (sprawl) era, so why would we expect to see a complete reversal of these megatrends (poor air, congestion, obesity, etc) overnight, especially when most federal govt policies are still heavily skewed towards unfettered road-building? If you are waiting for a magical MOE that will evaluate the short term success or failure of a transit line, you are waiting in vain. I recall a speaker from the John Locke foundation say at a recent talk that the Lynx line had attracted more riders than expected but that it still was not worth the investment. That's like saying the entire interstate system is a failure after the first ten miles were built. Success is measured in generations, not weeks, months or years.

What really matters is that in most cities where transit has been executed successfully, the public has bought in, and they need little more convincing than seeing the proof that transit can work--in whatever way they decide to measure it--in their own backyard. Rather than try to slice and dice these projects after opening day/week/month/year, I would look at it this way. Major transit investments (the ones that shape land use) are like purchasing sustainable generative economic capacity for one's community in a world where resources are increasingly scarce. We got a taste last summer of what the future will be like with high energy prices piled on top of a nation whose infrastructure and real estate was (over)built on a radically different paradigm... and it wasn't pretty. Yes, there are good things we can do without rapid transit, but as a general rule, the sooner communities--especially those who are overly dependent on a cheap oil model, such as the Triangle--decide to invest in high quality transit and complementary land use, they better off they will be.

Now, let's please get back to the plan and reactions folks might have to it.

[urban980]

Politics. As much as some of us who believe wholeheartedly in the value of transit would love to see this happen (more funding), it's not. I am not aware of a region that enacted a full one cent tax prior to building an initial rapid transit line. Based on the "Charlotte model" and the experiences of other regions (Denver and countless others), the public usually needs to see the results of it's initial investment first before re-upping, and rightfully so. Get the funding, show the results, and then ask for more when the public demands quicker implementation of the plan. That approach has worked fairly consistently in sunbelt regions where high capacity transit investments are a relatively new thing (unlike early 20th century legacy systems in the northeast, etc). That is also why the John Locke's and Cato thinktanks of the world fight so hard to turn public opinion against the initial rail investment... from experience, they know that once the region sees the results (if done well), they will want more, and the bizarro libertarian voice becomes completely marginalized. Conversely, asking for what would likely be perceived as too much (one cent) and failing would be a disaster and likely set back transit here for many years.

Also, remember that plans are living documents based on the best information at the time. When rail is successful here, there could be another vote to increase the tax and implement the plan within a shorter timeframe. Other corridors could be added or adjusted to match land use or policy changes. This happened in Charlotte and could happen here. But the bottom line is this is the most studied, well-conceived, politically-backed, extensive regional plan the region has produced and it's time to get behind it. The train is leaving the station, so to speak...

Which brings me to my next gripe with TTA. Didn't they spend close to $120 million on the first plan that never got built? I am not aware of any other transit agency that spent $120 million and got nothing. That money could have built a 4 or 5 mile streetcar network in DT Raleigh. That streetcar line would have been something TTA could have used to sell the public on a one cent tax. Charlotte's pathetic little trolley (that started out being pulled by an ugly green diesel powered rail car LOL) was a $25 million grassroots effort that essentially paved the way for the light rail line. TTA should give DT Raleigh streetcars next year then ask for the penny tax in two years. Edited February 3, 2009 by urban980

[orulz]

Which brings me to my next gripe with TTA. Didn't they spend close to $120 million on the first plan that never got built? I am not aware of any other transit agency that spent $120 million and got nothing. That money could have built a 4 or 5 mile streetcar network in DT Raleigh. That streetcar line would have been something TTA could have used to sell the public on a one cent tax. Charlotte's pathetic little trolley (that started out being pulled by an ugly green diesel powered rail car LOL) was a $25 million grassroots effort that essentially paved the way for the light rail line. TTA should give DT Raleigh streetcars next year then ask for the penny tax in two years.

Most of that $100+ million went to land acquisition, land which they still own and plan to use to build the STAC plan. Some of the money spent on design and engineering is no doubt lost as the plans will have to be heavily reworked, but probably at least some of them can be reused.

Some of that money came from the rental car tax and vehicle registration fees, but quite a bit of that money actually came from federal appropriations as well. I think I also heard that, unless TTA puts the land they bought with to use soon, they'll either have to refund that money to the feds, or else sell the land and use the revenue from the sales to return as much of the money as they can.

[urban980]

Most of that $100+ million went to land acquisition, land which they still own and plan to use to build the STAC plan. Some of the money spent on design and engineering is no doubt lost as the plans will have to be heavily reworked, but probably at least some of them can be reused.

Some of that money came from the rental car tax and vehicle registration fees, but quite a bit of that money actually came from federal appropriations as well. I think I also heard that, unless TTA puts the land they bought with to use soon, they'll either have to refund that money to the feds, or else sell the land and use the revenue from the sales to return as much of the money as they can.

If they have to pay back the Feds, they (TTA) will likely lose money on this transaction. I seriously doubt TTA will get back what they paid in this economy.

It seems to me that TTA should ask the Feds to allow them to sell the land and use that money for a different transit project (ie streetcars in DT Raleigh). That money should not sit invested in a rail corridor that will not come to fruition until 2024.

[monsoon]

.....

I'd be interested to hear your answer, but the point I tried to make that got lost in my extremely wordy post before is that there's no point to measuring it yet, much less trying to come to a "success/failure" conclusion at this point in the game. ....

I have no issue with that, but then it can't be claimed that Lynx was a success or failure.

My answer to this is that transit agencies don't want quantitative measurements as you mention above because it then invites investigations into alternatives and less expensive methods to achieve the same goals. Lets keep in mind that both Charlotte and the TTA have put plans on the table that assume substantial amounts of money coming from non-local sources. When you ask for money like this, the very first thing asked is, what happens if I don't spend it? This is why these plans take years if not decades to implement, if they are implemented at all. It's tough to ask people to wait 30 years for benefits that might not happen at all. There has to be some local commitment to make hard choices to make it happen.

I will point out that in comparisons to other world transit systems that no other country on the planet builds billion dollar rail lines through territory as sparsely settled as that in NC. This is why these lines are so incredibly difficult to cost justify because there really isn't an overriding need to build them, UNTIL the local governments take the very difficult political approach to stop development anywhere except on the transit line.