Justadude

This is a hilarious Star-Wars related Finals guide: http://bostonblueline.blogspot.com/2009/06...cup-finals.html My favorite is C-3PO

For your amusement, the worst plays of the decade: http://bostonblueline.blogspot.com/2008/12...t-10-years.html The Bruins have been red-hot in the East but they seem too young to go all the way. The Sharks are clearly the dominant team in the West but they lack a history of winning in the playoffs (quite the opposite actually...). Maybe this is a year when someone makes a Cinderella run...

Would the new tax revenue not help the project pay for itself? Clearly construction would be delayed by the economic climate, but it seems that this is an easy opportunity for the city to create the most tax-friendly property in the city out of thin air.

^ Bear in mind that the people who bag your items are under corporate rules, which as far as they are concerned are more important than your personal preferences. They just don't want to deal with their uptight manager chewing them out for not following company rules, and for what they are being paid they're willing to let you leave angry rather than have to deal with the hassle.

For goodness sake, could a casino not find a way to incorporate such visually-striking structures? Silos seem like a perfect starting point for a casino. (sorry for the off-topic)

In Charlotte, the simple fact of survival makes a building historic.

This is excellent news, very forward-thinking to put public meeting places along the line.

Unbelievable!

I would certainly hope they have parking areas at the endpoints. Eastland and Beatties Ford aren't exactly the most walkable areas of town.

The ownership sucks, but at least the team is doing reasonably well this season. Remember it was only 5 years ago they were winning the conference, until they blew up the roster and gambled badly on the post-lockout scenario.

I was getting ready to say the same thing I have a feeling that most interstate through-traffic drivers would never think to get off 77. It would help immensely if there was an effort at education, especially by using the message boards that we all agree are currently underutilized. A simple message: "Congestion Ahead -- Through Traffic Take Exit XX" might be enough to reduce the length of traffic jams.

In an ideal world I think it would be cool to expand I-77 but segment it into specialized lanes: - 2 lanes each way for through traffic -- basically a no-exit expressway from Rock Hill to Davidson. - 2 lanes for local traffic -- what exists now - 1 lane for HOV/bus use This would keep the flow going for true interstate drivers and encourage more efficent local transit. Hopefully that would pull enough cars off the road to keep the locals moving.

This is the idea behind bus/HOV lanes and BRT, which are the types of bus transit that actually work in Charlotte-like suburbs. Again, we have to deal with the reality that bus transit has a major negative connotation in this region... and only part of that has to do with cultural stereotypes. In NYC, you can hop on a bus and get where you're going just as fast as if you drove, and have almost the same level of mobility -- actually, you probably have more mobility on NYC mass transit than if you tried to go to several destinations by car and had to find parking each time. In Charlotte, you would have to a) walk a long distance in the weather to get to a stop, b) wait an absolute minimum of 15 minutes, usually closer to 30 minutes, for the bus to crawl out of traffic and arrive at your stop, c) sit in gridlocked traffic just the same as if you had taken the car but without the luxury and privacy, and d) be almost entirely isolated at your destination because your bus line is the only form of transit within walking distance. The average citizen would never go through the above if they had the financial means to simply drive themselves to their destination. There is no benefit to riding the bus other than cost -- everything else is sacrifice. That's not a strong sell and therefore the middle and upper class avoid buses at all costs (literally). So something has to be improved -- namely, the convenience and speed of bus transit. But in order to improve those things we'd be spending MAJOR money that could go to other projects. All things considered, I don't think that such a dramatic upgrade to bus service is worth the costs.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the bus system should be left to stagnate. It's obviously a major piece of the transit puzzle, and the improvements of the past few years haven't gotten us to a point where we can be satisfied with the overall impact. Definitely lots of room for improvement -- but I don't see it as a major priority to pour millions of dollars into a dense bus network for the outer suburbs where there are enormous physical and social barriers to overcome. I'd rather see a well-established bus network in the central neighborhoods first, where they are more likely to be used and hopefully will generate some ridership from city-dwelling yuppies, and then slowly extend outward after it is established (I felt the same way about the train system but the ship has sailed on that idea). I don't know about Vancouver, but in Charlotte it's usually pointless to take the bus if you have access to a car -- largely because there is no savings in time by taking mass transit. Probably the biggest selling point for the Blue Line is that it takes riders past traffic jams on I-77 and South Blvd. and deposits them within walking distance of Uptown locations without a parking hassle. If the train had to sit in mixed traffic and took 45 minutes to make a single trip, nobody would ride it... and the same principle applies to suburban bus routes. People needing to go up roads like Providence or Colony are not going to see much point in sacrificing their mobility when they have to sit in the same traffic for the same amount of time. Still not saying this is a bad idea, because it's going to be a component of the "master plan" sooner or later; but if the goal is to have a dense network of bus stops all over the suburban neighborhoods, to the point that nearly every resident would be within reasonable walking distance of a bus stop, we would have to pony up for dozens if not hundreds of new routes to make it happen. Buses would have to actually go inside subdivisions and meander around side-streets, because nobody is going to walk 2 miles in the rain to get to a bus stop on a narrow sidewalk next to Highway 51 or Harris Blvd. The efficiency of the system would be just about nil, never mind the enormous extra financial and administrative burden that it would take. Charlotte's suburbs are just not friendly to local buses... an ugly reality that ought to drive change in our zoning and development practices.

The geographic layout of suburban Charlotte makes this nearly impossible to implement. Neighborhoods are not laid out in a way that makes bus transit convenient -- the roads are not interconnected enough to make for linear routes, buildings are spaced so far apart that a stop only serves a limited number of people, and there is no way to separate buses from regular auto traffic. Besides, most suburban bus riders already use park-and-ride service... so they'd be driving to a bus lot in order to avoid the train lot. Not very efficient.