southslider

All of this focus on Uptown, while NCDOT is quietly trying to take up all remaining space along 74 for cars, leaving virtually none for Silver Line around Hawthorne. The recent funding swap approved by CRTPO ensures another highway widening in Elizabeth will happen well before any rail transit project.

Exactly why the LPA fails, given its travel time penalties to Blue Line and CTC.

Trade St won't become devoid of cars, though a block of Elizabeth at CPCC may. There also won't be any control gates or crossing arms, just curbs, bollards, or raised delineation, along with more complex signal timing. Entire stations will be eliminated, while remaining stations will be entirely reconstructed. Tracks in curb lanes Uptown will be rebuilt to the curb, while tracks already in the middle will still be reconstructed just to take slight curves out. >>>Add all these changes to Trade St up, and there's no way Shared Gold Line costs less than Shared Blue Line, which already has traffic separation, plus two of its stations extended to three-car platforms.

We need some realistic cost comparisons. Unless they come back with substantial cost savings soon, Charlotte will be lucky to see any bit of Silver Line in a regional tax.

Just wait until you see Trade St at Charlottetowne, Kings, McDowell, Caldwell, College, Church, or Graham with Silver Line. Not cheaper than not investing another dime on Gold Line. North Mecklenburg voters, South Charlotte voters, and especially surrounding counties' voters would rather see Charlotte not spend so much on streetcars phase after phase after phase.

Strange that the biggest complaints against interlining Blue Line with Silver Line are 1. missing Gateway and 2. traffic impacts, when 1. Gold Line would still serve Gateway, and 2. if Silver Line interlined with Gold Line, then every intersection of Trade St would have those same traffic impacts, compared with far fewer Blue Line crossings.

But that's exactly my point. Silver Line needs to operate more like Blue Line through Uptown. So rather than invest a lot more cost in rebuilding Gold Line to operate like Blue Line, just use the already perfectly built Blue Line.

Leave it to Levine Museum to transform more of First Ward than Levine the "developer."

Yep, equally dividing funding by 7 regions and 14 divisions that all follow County boundary combinations, regardless of their populations and economic needs is absolutely flawed and failing NC. Spending transportation dollars on geography, instead of people and jobs, only creates more useless miles to maintain, instead of helping move more people and grow more jobs.

Gold Line option still requires too much reconstruction of relatively new tracks, including entire blocks between Caldwell and Pine Streets. The tracks between College and Church Street would need to be rebuilt to the middle of Trade Street. Overhead electric lines would need to go across Tryon Street and the Square. Silver Line would have fewer stations than Gold Line. Operationally, Gold Line would also have to yield to a more reliable Silver Line at their junctions whenever Gold Line was delayed by parked cars or other mixed-traffic problems on its outer segments to French St and Sunnyside. For similar reasons, stations only served by Gold Line wouldn't be an option where the two lines overlapped, thus those would be consolidated and farther spaced when rebuilt in Uptown. Finally, for all the traffic impact concerns with interlining Blue Line at the limited grade crossings, Gold Line would remain entirely at grade with a lot more grade crossings for motorists to be stopped for trains.

This shot shows the potential to head west at Carson over to Wilkinson. So why is that not an option for a continuous Silver Line, as part of the Shared Blue Line Alternative?

3-car trains on just the Blue Line likely makes this existing yard's expansion necessary. Gold Line also needs more cars for better frequencies. The site is landlocked between LYNX and NCRR, hindering any TOD. A large new park is already planned just north of here.

Don't forget Charlotte couldn't have wires crossing their parade / festival street for Gold Line. Any vertical elements to truly protect bike lanes along Tryon, so as not be a delivery truck lane, would face the same challenge.

Like running from the altar before your "I dos"

Call it Atherton Station but build it closer to Publix.

The Silver Line will be able to travel much higher speeds than BLE just by not being in the middle of a road, but rather running along the side of expressways and on new alignments completely removed from slower speed roadways.

^3 free lanes works as an urban-minded maximum inside Mecklenburg, or at least inside of 485. I'd even support reconfiguring existing expressway segments of 4 or more free lanes to instead be reconfigured to 3 general purpose lanes ("free") and 2 express lanes ("toll").

What if NCRR replaced Silver Line to Airport on new tracks for commuter rail separate from Norfolk Southern? If Silver Line no longer runs through Uptown east-west, maybe the western half should be split up between commuter rail to Airport (and Gaston), plus Gold Line spur to West Charlotte. NCRR could follow the LPA from Gateway Station to Belmont, while Gold Line could return to Wesley Heights, as well as other west corridors with stronger TOD potential.

^I agree express lanes are here to stay but don't think they work for larger freight trucks. As a regular 77 Express Lanes user, I have encountered trucks improperly using the lanes multiple times, and each of those times, it felt very unsafe. The merging distances and sight lines for the access points and bollard posts aren't designed for trucks. The higher speed limits and operating speeds of the Express Lanes also don't work well to mix slower vehicles. It's already a bit awkward to encounter slower moving buses, but of course, buses have important public benefit. Ideally, through freight should use a bypass, and localized freight should use smaller vehicles, like Amazon Prime vans. Many smaller commercial fleets from repair services to deliveries regularly use the lanes.

Notice all but 2 of 100 NC counties grew in housing, despite only 49 of 100 growing in population. With most household sizes becoming smaller, any population growth requires significantly more housing.

Thankfully, Charlotte is becoming a large city when development more naturally happens around transit. In this way, Charlotte is blessed with timing, or to have not built out too much until development trends also shifted to be more urban. Still, Charlotte is also coming of age, when highways are not expanding as quickly and funding harder to come by. I think this policy context means that transit should be designed around ridership first and minimize cost, while still incorporating good station area planning second.

Overlapping with Blue Line in Uptown both lowers cost and boosts ridership.

Part of the hesitancy in buying an EV isn't just vehicle range, but also the inconvenience in figuring out which charging station works for which EVs. Americans want the convenience of charging stations to match the versatility and abundance of gas stations.

For teardowns of a single-family home to build a mini-mansion, I couldn't agree more with preserving even smaller trees. But for true urban infill that helps build the ten-minute neighborhood, just add some street trees.

Given higher housing costs and a volatile job market, my guess would be travel time to work has been increasing almost everywhere. Telecommuting may have spread out peak travel and even reduced the number of commuter trips (certainly not freight), but the distance and duration of home-based work trips seem to be still likely going up.