jtmonk

Haha, such a tease. Gets me excited to see the real thing.

oh nice, can you elaborate a little bit on what was said at the city council meeting?

As nice as that would be, it's probably a long ways away. There are other larger markets out there that will get Asia service before Charlotte such as Philadelphia, Phoenix, and Miami (and when I say Asia , I mean Ease Asia/Asia-Pacific since Miami and Philadelphia technically have Asia service via the Middle East). There is also a Brookings Institute study from 2011 that showed Raleigh having more pax to Asia than Charlotte did. Basically the study showed that 16.8% (134,350) of international pax into and out of RDU in 2011 were traveling to developing and developed Asia-Pacific, while in CLT that number was 9.7% (102,054). Now that was 7 years ago so that might have changed but it gives you some perspective of the amount of Asia pax in CLT. The only way I see CLT getting Asia service in the next 5 years is if the airport and/or business community offers AA or JL a lot of money to start a flight. Here's a link to the Brookings Institute study. https://www.brookings.edu/interactives/global-gateways-international-aviation-in-metropolitan-america/

Quick question, and sorry if this was answered already. The article states that United, Southwest, JetBlue, Frontier and Air Canada are moving to the new Concourse A expansion, what about Delta? Are they going to stay in the old A Concourse and share it with American? If so, will Delta get a few additional gates? I also find it interested that the City is going to keep two gates to themselves in the new Concourse A expansion and lease them on an as-needed basis to various carriers. This could be a good bargaining tool to get a low cost European carrier here since the City has control of two gates.

I actually always liked the way Blumenthal looked along Tryon Street as it is but this does look pretty fancy. My main question is are they going to make the 5th street side going towards College Street any more appealing? It looks as if they're adding a few things but not much.

I'm not too versed on Charlotte's UDO but I'll try to tackle this for you since they all pretty much work the same in every city. A UDO, or Unified Development Ordinance, is a set of regulations that guide growth and development in a city, almost every city has one. Along with the UDO you have zoning districts within a city that are also used to guide growth and development. The UDO sets specific regulations on each zoning district, so for instance, for areas in Charlotte that are zoned TOD-A, you will have requirements that promote walkable, mixed use, transit friendly developments, because that is typically what you want around transit stations. I wish I could go more into this but since I'm at work I only have so much time, I'm actually working on updating the UDO for the City I work for as we speak. You can also go to charlotteudo.org and there is a lot of information on there that's helpful.

Looking good today, working on the 18th floor.

Nope, that's actually Alexandria VA, Old Town to be exact. The restaurant on the far left is Bugsy's Pizza, Also, if you google the Fish Market Alexandria VA, one of the first pics on google is the one JacksonH posted. It does resemble parts of Wilmington though.

Crazy how the first building has already reached the top floor! I know there's a lot more work to be done but it gives you a good idea of the impact this development will have.

Yeah, I could see that working out, and I bet Crescent would have considered that if they didn't have so many projects going on at the moment. By that I mean Crescent wouldn't want to put another use here, such as office space, because it would compete with other Crescent projects, namely Tryon Place right up the road. But that's just my assumption, I'm sure there's more to it than that.

Apartments

Why does that wall art give me a 90's nickelodeon vibe?

Yeah, I was just about to say that. I think the 401 S Graham tower got brought up in another thread when discussing Duke and that's where the confusion came in.

haha true, and sorry for going off like that, bad day yesterday but that doesn't excuse me calling you a child (I think I need to apologize to Cadi40 too in another thread, the way I responded to his post made me sound like I was talking down to him) I do see you side of the story and understand the frustration, hopefully you guys do get some sort of rail up the North Meck sooner rather than later. I just want CATS to be smart about the next line they choose to build and not screw up the chances of other lines being built.

Can you please post a source where CATS promised all of this? Was is a pinky swear? Maybe they had their fingers crossed behind their backs? Sorry, I would have more sympathy for you if you weren't acting like a child. You're basically saying "if i don't get mine next then nobody else gets any." I understand that CATS has a lot of issues they need to work out and they should not "promise" things, if that is indeed what they did. You should also realize that 20 years ago when CATS was planning these lines, there was no Great Recession and the State hadn't cut a lot of their funding towards these rail projects. Because of these factors plus others, plans and timetables change. Take a breath and relax.

Oops, actually I took my number from total pax and not just AA pax. Using just AA pax, you get 9,108,000 O&D, then add the other carriers (4,600,000) and you get 13.7 million O&D, still very good. Am I right, I've only had one coffee this morning and am feeling lightheaded, someone tag me out please.

I can sympathize with you to an extent on this but saying that the Red Line should be next is where you lose me. CATS needs to target specific lines that are actually going to generate ridership and development and prove to be successful before building a line to appease a few people. If they go ahead and build the Red Line and it turns out to be a failure then you can go ahead and cross out any other lines ever being built.

First thing I want to say to you Cadi40 is please do not believe everything you read on the internet, I appreciate your post on here but many of your statements seem to be based off of things you may have read from other peoples post, and/or outdated and unreliable sources that are not 100% factual. Luckily on here, we strive to give as accurate information as possible and we will kindly answer any questions or correct any statements that may not be completely accurate. To your first dislike, yes, being a hub has it ups and downs. I hear the argument that being a hub can make ticket prices more expensive and there's some truth to that but I will say that when I fly (which is often), ticket prices out of CLT tend to be on par, if not cheaper than PTI or RDU most of the time. Plus with CLT, I can get to almost anywhere in the lower 48 without connecting at another airport. As for your second dislike, I also hear this a lot, mainly from CLT haters saying that the city has low O&D numbers (meaning people starting or ending their trip in Charlotte). Yes, we do have way more connecting passengers than O&D, however, our O&D numbers are on par, if not greater than many of our pier cities. For O&D number, Dec Lee, American's vice president for Charlotte hub operations, stated in a Forbes article just a few weeks ago that 78% of CLT passengers connect. If you take that percentage and the number of passengers out of CLT last year (45,909,899), you get 10,1000 O&D passengers for the airport last year, that's more than the total number of passengers for many airports in cities Charlotte's size.

Any idea of what it will look like?

Trade and Tryon

Agreed, but the interstate referenced in the article (i-285) has been on the books for a long time and was built decades ago, they only had to upgrade a small section in Lexington to interstate standards in order to have the whole section designated an Interstate so it's not like the state is throwing a lot of money at this that would otherwise be used for an interstate elsewhere in the state.

Yeah, I agree with you about the target market and that expanding the Blue Line to Pineville and points south could be beneficial, I was just saying that a station strictly for Carowinds would not be smart.

Should also take into account that many people that go to Carowinds will sometimes bring a change of clothes and like to bring a cooler of food because food at the park is so expensive. Don't think you would want to carry all of that on LRT, also wouldn't want to ride LRT after a long day of walking around in summer heat and most likely wet from many of the rides.