CATS Long Term Transit Plan - Silver, Red Lines

[tozmervo]

Sharpen your pens, folks. How the heck do we get mass transit to South Park that would be effective and have community support

[go_vertical]

Pneumatic tubes.....you know, since it won't become a reality until 2099.

Edited February 25, 2016 by go_vertical

[tozmervo]

Ah, the idea of getting sucked everywhere.

[Silicon Dogwoods]

45 minutes ago, go_vertical said:

Pneumatic tubes.....you know, since it won't become a reality until 2099.

The Elon Musk Hyperloop?

[go_vertical]

Seriously though, I doubt there is the political fortitude to get transit to SP. The only semi-affordable option would be down fairview/tyvola to the blue line like others have suggested here but I imagine if serious talks regarding this were to get underway a direct route uptown would be the most desired. Anything other than the tyvola route would have to be entirely elevated or tunneled, both of those being prohibitively expensive.

[SgtCampsalot]

I don't think a new transit line will happen in the south charlotte wedge until the rest is built out, making the south charlotte property values less expensive by comparison. I know south charlotte isn't a monolith, but there doesn't seem to be the will to do much to get away from the suburban experiment. 

Edited February 25, 2016 by SgtCampsalot

[tozmervo]

I've been pondering if it would be possible to engineer a route down Park Rd from Uptown with single-tracking for part of it to preserve a tight ROW. That kind of route would pick up CHS, Dilworth @ East, Park @ Woodlawn, Montford and the rapidly densifying corridor along there. In a perfect world we would road-diet the thing, but the traffic volume and politics would make that a non-starter. 

[Third Strike]

It's hard to think of a decent transit route to SouthPark. Yeah, you could run a spur from the Blue Line there, but would it still be quicker to just take a bus directly to Uptown? You could also run streetcar lines there, but I don't think there is enough density along the route outside Uptown to support it. Other option is an underground line, but that would be extremely expensive. SouthPark should definitely be the last place in Charlotte to get rail, only because of the lack of ROW options. 

[kermit]

Yeah, ofher than the inditect route on Tyvola to the Blue Line rail to SP is basically politically impossible. Taking traffic lanes on Park makes sense, but people would raise hell about 'a war on cars.' Cut and cover tunneling along Park could be a viable option, but the presence of water mains down the middle of the road would juice costs to appaling levels. An elevated line could solve the 'war on cars' issue but we all know how whiny South Charlotte NIMBYs can be (remember the imbroglio about adding the sidewalk on Park rd?). 

meh, they made their bed...

[tozmervo]

55 minutes ago, kermit said:

(remember the imbroglio about adding the sidewalk on Park rd?).

omg I had forgotten about that insanity

[southslider]

Not only are there anti-urban NIMBYs along Park Rd, but also Sharon Rd, Colony Rd, Barclay Downs Rd, and even Fairview Rd. In other words, every possible approach to South Park.

I say add a Sprinter-style bus via Metropolitan and Queens University to South Park and call it done. Sure, the anti-urban types dislike bus as well, but at least, their streets aren't reconfigured for rail.

Edited February 26, 2016 by southslider

[ah59396]

I'd be curious to what the demographics and density of Buckhead looked like when they got their subway line.  I know we live in different times now, but Southpark and Buckhead carry many parallels.  I don't think it's an impossibility that we will have rail transit to south park.  Quite frankly I consider it a greater priority than the line down Independence.  Southpark and Park rd are getting denser everyday.  More apartments.  More office space.  Taller buildings. 

 

If money wasn't a problem:

 

1.  Finish BLE

2.  Red Line

3.  Blue Line Ballantyne Extension

4.  Southpark

[cltcane]

42 minutes ago, ah59396 said:

I'd be curious to what the demographics and density of Buckhead looked like when they got their subway line.  I know we live in different times now, but Southpark and Buckhead carry many parallels.  I don't think it's an impossibility that we will have rail transit to south park.  Quite frankly I consider it a greater priority than the line down Independence.  Southpark and Park rd are getting denser everyday.  More apartments.  More office space.  Taller buildings. 

 

If money wasn't a problem:

 

1.  Finish BLE

2.  Red Line

3.  Blue Line Ballantyne Extension

4.  Southpark

Completely agree these should be our transit priorities, although I would argue that a SouthPark line should be as high as #2.  I also think a Morehead/Wilkinson airport line should be ahead of phase three of the Gold Line.  Extend the latter to The Plaza (or just past it) and be done.  I'm still in the camp that the streetcar is too slow to really be useful to move people from one side of the city to the other (or at least not more useful than a bus), and development on the far east and west sides is going to take a REALLY long time, IMO.  The Gold Line can be effective as an short-distance urban transit option, and I think this, not diverting high-density bus traffic to fixed-rail transit and/or future TOD, should be the priority of the streetcar line.  And, if we don't serve high-density (office and residential) areas of the city and attract new riders, how are we going to continue to pay for expansion of our transit system and (hopefully) remove some cars from the roads?

[DMann]

I see a spur coming off the current line and running elevated down 3rd to about Davidson, where it goes underground.  Continues underground up Providence all the way to the Arboretum.

[HopHead]

I wholeheartedly agree that some kind of mass transit solution to Southpark should be one of the top priorities after the BLE is completed. I pretty much avoid SP area now unless I have to go there (e.g. Cowfish) because it's such a cluster to get in and out of -- surely I'm not the only one.. It just seems like it will be such an expensive and political hot potato that it may not get done any time soon. I still think the line to the airport should be higher up the priority list despite the fact it wouldn't have the same ridership numbers as the Blue Line. Given that a majority of it would be along Wilkinson Blvd, would the line really be that expensive? Is it truly dependent on the Gateway Station? I agree with cltcane that it should be light rail and not streetcar because you should have higher speeds. 

Edited February 26, 2016 by HopHead

[kermit]

1 hour ago, ah59396 said:

I'd be curious to what the demographics and density of Buckhead looked like when they got their subway line.  I know we live in different times now, but Southpark and Buckhead carry many parallels.  I don't think it's an impossibility that we will have rail transit to south park.  Quite frankly I consider it a greater priority than the line down Independence.  Southpark and Park rd are getting denser everyday.  More apartments.  More office space.  Taller buildings.  

While they are demographically similar Buckhead and SP are complete opposites from an engineering perspective. Marta to Buckhead was run in the median of GA 400 which was built at the same time as the MARTA line (GA 400 was financed with tolls btw). In addition to not having any ROW (or NIMBY) issues, Buckhead MARTA was the first stop on the way to some significant population centers in North Fulton (Alpharetta etc.). Thanks to Charlotte's sprawl there is nothing resembling a cluster (Arboretum is the lowest density strip center in the Western Hemisphere) once you get South of SP - so no real reason to build beyond SP.

I don't think we should fret about SP transit, residents don't want it, and visitors / shoppers will not need to get there when the luxury retail moves to S Tryon and Southend.

Transit dollars are scarce so we should only spend them in neighborhoods where residents want transit.

Edited February 26, 2016 by kermit

[ah59396]

1 hour ago, kermit said:

While they are demographically similar Buckhead and SP are complete opposites from an engineering perspective. Marta to Buckhead was run in the median of GA 400 which was built at the same time as the MARTA line (GA 400 was financed with tolls btw). In addition to not having any ROW (or NIMBY) issues, Buckhead MARTA was the first stop on the way to some significant population centers in North Fulton (Alpharetta etc.). Thanks to Charlotte's sprawl there is nothing resembling a cluster (Arboretum is the lowest density strip center in the Western Hemisphere) once you get South of SP - so no real reason to build beyond SP.

I don't think we should fret about SP transit, residents don't want it, and visitors / shoppers will not need to get there when the luxury retail moves to S Tryon and Southend.

Transit dollars are scarce so we should only spend them in neighborhoods where residents want transit.

I would argue we should spend transit dollars where they are merited.  

[11 HouseBZ]

Uneducated opinion here, but what about a half arc that goes from blue line tyvola to south park up Sharon to cotswold following Sharon amity to eastway up to wt Harris to the ble in university? My guess would be that this picks up multiple high density corridors and makes multiple transit connections. Thoughts? 

[kermit]

1 hour ago, ah59396 said:

I would argue we should spend transit dollars where they are merited.  

Yea, I don't disagree at all. But (IMO) there are lots more routes that have merit than dollars to fund them so the second winnowing device of 'resident desire' (which is almost always correlated with suitability of landuse) is handy.

Sorry about my grumpiness related to this, six years of teapublican BS has given me a reflexive 'screw the suburbanites' attitude when it comes to transportation. Since there has not been a single effort to make SP more transit friendly over the past 20 years I think they deserve a posistion at the back of the line. I do understand that non residents may want to get there to shop, but luxury retail is going to look totally different -long- before a SP rail line can get built. Its gonna be much easier for hundreds of thousands of Charlotteans to change their shopping habits than it will be to build a rail line though South Charlotte.

[Silicon Dogwoods]

22 hours ago, tozmervo said:

I've been pondering if it would be possible to engineer a route down Park Rd from Uptown with single-tracking for part of it to preserve a tight ROW. That kind of route would pick up CHS, Dilworth @ East, Park @ Woodlawn, Montford and the rapidly densifying corridor along there. In a perfect world we would road-diet the thing, but the traffic volume and politics would make that a non-starter. 

That sort of duplicates the existing Blue Line, so I doubt it.

[kermit]

8 minutes ago, Silicon Dogwoods said:

That sort of duplicates the existing Blue Line, so I doubt it.

I don't think it duplicates the blue line at all. If you think about transit from a walkability perspective they serve completly different markets for the full length of the route.

[Silicon Dogwoods]

4 hours ago, kermit said:

Yea, I don't disagree at all. But (IMO) there are lots more routes that have merit than dollars to fund them so the second winnowing device of 'resident desire' (which is almost always correlated with suitability of landuse) is handy.

Sorry about my grumpiness related to this, six years of teapublican BS has given me a reflexive 'screw the suburbanites' attitude when it comes to transportation. Since there has not been a single effort to make SP more transit friendly over the past 20 years I think they deserve a posistion at the back of the line. I do understand that non residents may want to get there to shop, but luxury retail is going to look totally different -long- before a SP rail line can get built. Its gonna be much easier for hundreds of thousands of Charlotteans to change their shopping habits than it will be to build a rail line though South Charlotte.

Kermit, your MARTA/Georgia 400 history is a bit incomplete.

There was a huge battle over building Georgia 400 starting in the 1970s and it was in court for years because it would destroy a significant chunk of Buckhead-area neighborhoods. So there were considerable NIMBY and ROW battles over that road.

By the time the court battles were settled, Atlanta had exploded and MARTA was up and running so it was easy to conceive of and place MARTA in the middle headed north to Perimeter, Alpharetta, etc.

I can't give you exact population counts for the nodes-Arboretum v Alpharetta, for example-but Fulton and Mecklenburg each have about 1 million people, Fulton slightly fewer people than Mecklenburg. And Fulton is actually a few square miles larger than Mecklenburg.

I would love to have LYNX Metro (underground) run Uptown-Myers Park-Park Road/Montford-SouthPark-Arboretum-Weddington. That would sort of mirror MARTA's north (red) line. But the political will isn't there. Rush hour commuters would rather crawl along in their cars.

3 hours ago, kermit said:

I don't think it duplicates the blue line at all. If you think about transit from a walkability perspective they serve completly different markets for the full length of the route.

They're too close together. That's what I meant. And I think of transit as not necessarily creating TOD, but also serving what already exists. I'd rather offer transit options to suburbanites than punish them for living in single family houses in the 'burbs.

 

Edited February 26, 2016 by Silicon Dogwoods

[kermit]

^ thanks for the input. I did blow the timeing, but I was trying to say that the MARTA line generated little NIMBYism since it used a preexisting ROW. This is a luxury that no line in South Charlotte can hope to have. 

I also didn't mean to imply that no one lives in South Charlotte, merely that there are no medium density nodes that make sense to serve with transit. At least N Fulton had a few old town centers and hospitals that made some sense to connect (see the recent Merceedes relocation to N Fulton).

Edited February 26, 2016 by kermit

[DMann]

1 hour ago, kermit said:

Sorry about my grumpiness related to this, six years of teapublican BS has given me a reflexive 'screw the suburbanites' attitude when it comes to transportation. Since there has not been a single effort to make SP more transit friendly over the past 20 years I think they deserve a posistion at the back of the line. I do understand that non residents may want to get there to shop, but luxury retail is going to look totally different -long- before a SP rail line can get built. Its gonna be much easier for hundreds of thousands of Charlotteans to change their shopping habits than it will be to build a rail line though South Charlotte.

Bingo!

[orulz]

A branch of the blue line would be the way to serve South Park rather than a whole new line. The question is routing:

• Scaleybark/Woodlawn/Park via Park Road Shopping Center. This could go underground, in mixed traffic, or have near "apocalyptic" property impacts
• Direct routing via Tyvola. Could go at grade with very manageable impacts to residential areas of approximately a dozen single family home property takings, half of which are rentals anyway, and include a significant upgrade/modernization of the streestcape and design of Tyvola.

Dilworth I could see more as a branch of the streetcar, via Kings/Midtown/Kenilworth/CMC turning around at East Blvd, rather than a whole new light rail line. That would put two branches on either end (Airport/Beatties Ford - Dilworth/Central) feeding into the Trade-Elizabeth spine.