Charlotte looks at 3 new rail lines, including a downtown subway
Will Charlotte take the next big step?
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I would say connect the airport and avoid a subway line to increase passenger counts and to keep costs down and then expand it from there once you get the residents hooked.
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Can't help but wonder if the cost of tunneling is one thing that broke Transit Nashville's back ?
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Koch brothers casting aspersions at anything mass transit with their near unlimited money is what kills many votes. It's almost like they want to keep people using as much oil/gas as possible.
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I don't think it's the cost of the subway that makes or breaks these things. There are not going to be many voters who honestly think "Hm, this $7 billion proposal is too much to approve, but I'd totally vote for a $6 billion version." People base their votes on the big idea, not on the 17% cost difference between $6B & $7B.
Remember, a few years before Nashville voters rejected the big subway plan, they also rejected a cheap BRT starter corridor. It's not about the money, even if many of the people who would be opponents no matter what publicly cite the money as a reason for their opposition. |
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That would likely pass with ease and then go from there. Otherwise, it becomes a little bit of an "all in" type situation. If voters reject it, then it'll take a few years to come back with a scaled down version anyways. E] There probably aren't too many people that would vote NO because the plan is not big enough, but there are definitely many voters that would rally to vote against something that seems too big [with or without outside money funding the opposition -- especially if a tunnel is involved]. Los Angeles knows all about those evil tunnels. |
Maybe Charlotte should focus on improving their bus system, which has suffered 24% ridership decline since 2012, wiping out most of the ridership gains since their first light rail line opened in 2007.
2002 Bus 14,319,100 2007 Bus 17,877,900 Light Rail 517,200 2012 Bus 20,858,100 Light Rail 4,950,300 2017 Bus 15,960,700 Light Rail 5,228,500 Charlotte is an urban area of only 1.2 million people and yet it already has 34km of light rail. In comparison, Edmonton (urban area population 1.1 million) has 24km of light rail but six times more transit ridership (138 million boardings annually). It doesn't seem like rail expansion should be such a huge priority for Charlotte. Nashville's system gets 9.1 million boardings annually with an annual budget of $85 million and a fleet of 135 buses (cost approx $400,000 each). Does a system like that really need $5.2 billion? I think places like Nashville and Charlotte are looking at transit expansion the wrong way. There are much cheaper ways to get people using transit, and more people using transit will make them more likely to support more spending on transit. |
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Nashvillians simply didn't want it. |
There was a recent discussion on how Kingston, Ontario, population 175,000 doubled transit ridership in just 5 years. The answer: Make bus routes more efficient so that riders get to their destinations faster and increasing service frequency. Yes, it cost money, but part of the increased cost is offset by increased fare recovery from the substantial increase in ridership.
This is a lesson that can be learned by many cities. Better service is the key. Incidentally, Kingston ridership is not that far behind that of Nashville, for a city 1/10 the size. |
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They *can* do more with buses. Unquestionably. But they also have to serve large populations that cannot be well-served by buses on existing streets, which are crucial to getting voter approval for transit spending. The population is too far out and the streets are too twisty and nobody lives directly along the few big radial roads, which forces transit into a model using park-and-rides along express non-arterial rights-of-way. So while I'm sympathetic to your position and agree with it up to a point, it really is more complicated in these cities than "just start by running more buses." They can't effectively run them in many of the places they would need to run them to get the support they need to get. They have to either abandon 90% of their service area as unservable, or have to spend big on express rights-of-way. They could build busways instead of rail, but it would be just as expensive and less sexy to voters. |
While this sounds cool, in theory, in practical terms makes as much sense as the Nashville proposal (which is to say, none).
There are very few places in the U.S. that could use a "downtown subway". Charlotte would not be one of those places. |
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What metropolitan area in the US has the highest bus ridership per capita? It's New York, the metropolitan area with the most rail transit. New Yorkers rely on buses more than anyone else in the US. When Calgary first built light rail in 1981, its annual ridership was 53 million (linked trips). Today, the ridership is 103 million, representing 94% growth. Their population grew from 592k to 1.24 million during that time, representing 109% growth. So Calgary built light rail not because it was lacking transit riders, but because it had too many riders. The high ridership came first, not the light rail. Charlotte just finished building a 31km light rail line a few months ago, they are still building a 16km streetcar line, and their ridership is in a downward spiral. An additional $7 billion more rail doesn't seem like the answer, and it might even be a distraction. They should focus more about incremental ridership growth instead obsessing over these big, sexy new rail projects. |
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The reality is that buses are more often than not transit for the lower-working-class/poor even in Europe/Asia. Bus ridership is tanking in the US because believe it or not the US economy has been on a tear since 2010/2011 and it's causing the working classes to ditch transit for cars/ride sharing even here in NYC. People are not going to build a transit culture around buses if there are other options available. Building rail is about attracting choice riders who will be far more loyal and vested in the transit of the city. An example is what's going on in Washington DC: As Metro has cratered the people still sticking it out are the upper middle class base on the Virginia/Red Line segments while the working class PG/DC residents are leaving the bus system like it's on fire. If it wasn't for Metrorail, DC would see it's "transit culture" unraveling too. |
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What happens in Nashville may or may not happen in Charolette. Nashville did not have an operating light rail train line, Charolette does, and it has been recently expanded. Outsiders (Koch brothers included) will not be able to bamboozle voters with misconceptions and fears, the voters can already ride the trains and experience it themselves.
It seems cities with good existing transit in place are more willing to pass referendums for more transit, if the proposals are deemed worthy by the taxpayers and previous projects had been built on time and under budget. So I recommend not proposing pie in the sky projects, keep them real and cost effective, and there’s a great chance it will pass. |
Walker style bus redesigns are normally a failure. ie Houston, the one Baltimore just did is a disaster etc
Then again transit in the US is just generally terrible. We have the worst efficacy per dollar spent of any rich country |
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