CATS Long Term Transit Plan - Silver, Red Lines

[Deleted.]

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/transportation/article/Sound-Transit-releases-draft-25-year-transit-7044751.php

Why can't we have a clear and realistic transit plan like Seattle? 

[kermit]

7 hours ago, Piedmont767 said:

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/transportation/article/Sound-Transit-releases-draft-25-year-transit-7044751.php

Why can't we have a clear and realistic transit plan like Seattle? 

Seattle has:

1) a well developed long-range plan for transit (something we have not had since the recession);

2) a very well developed sense that continued reliance on cars was impossible (most residents can see that increasing capacity on the only north south artery, I-5 is impossible) and

3) just last weekend opened two more light rail stations which have been -packed- with riders.

all this means the public can see a clear need to speed up their already well developed plan.

Charlotte has none of this.

While we might have #3 going for us next year, we do not yet have conditions 1 and 2 in place. Our long range plan is both stale and undeveloped and we still have tons of people who don't yet see the futility of cars. Without a planning director, reasonable countywide zoning, and a coherant -regional- transit plan we have no hope (IMO) of moving foward at Seattle's speed.

Edited March 26, 2016 by kermit

[LKN704]

Traffic here is bad, yet I don't understand why we don't see commuters demanding better access to transit. Its quite interesting. In any case, Seattle's transit system has always been interesting. They really lagged behind on rapid transit/light rail, with the first line only opening 7 years ago, and its basically exploded since then. Seattle is also interesting (at least to me) that many expansion projects for light rail are being tunneled with subway stations.

IIRC, Seattle lost out on a regional metro system to Atlanta back in the 70s.

Anyway, in the 70s/early 80s, it was common for the Federal government to fund almost all of local transit projects. Where would Charlotte be today if the Federal government was willing to fund the majority of our expansion?

[DEnd]

4 minutes ago, LKN704 said:

Anyway, in the 70s/early 80s, it was common for the Federal government to fund almost all of local transit projects. Where would Charlotte be today if the Federal government was willing to fund the majority of our expansion?

We would have lost out to funding expansions in LA, the DC area, and NYC.  Our ability to raise enough local and state dollars to allow us to leverage federal funds is what got us light rail. As is the Feds paid something like 50-51%, the move away from full funding is what allowed us to compete favorably with more transit friendly (in terms of pop density and layout) cities. 

[Spartan]

Question re: Silver Line on Trade St...  I thought that the streetcar tracks weren't designed to hold the weight of light rail vehicles. Is that not the case?

[Deleted.]

3 minutes ago, Spartan said:

Question re: Silver Line on Trade St...  I thought that the streetcar tracks weren't designed to hold the weight of light rail vehicles. Is that not the case?

You are correct, I assume that if the Silver Line shares the tracks on Trade, that we would use the Siemens S70 Streetcar version instead- which is lighter and shorter than the LRV version used on the Blue Line. 

[Spartan]

Thanks. How does that affect capacity? Can the S70 trains run at similar speeds to the LRVs?

[tusculan]

22 minutes ago, Spartan said:

Question re: Silver Line on Trade St...  I thought that the streetcar tracks weren't designed to hold the weight of light rail vehicles. Is that not the case?

This is one of several reasons I don't like this option for the silver line.

1: redoing work already done or using less than optimal vehicles for the route

2 how are silver line Vehicles going to pass the streetcar? Or do we expect them to make all the stops? If this is the case, is the silver line just an extended streetcar route, more than a comparable to the blue line?

2: how are you supposed to get to the airport from w trade? Go down Wesley heights?

3: what good is a network that only has two lines? Sure, you can make a mistake and have a big network with not enough frequency--- see the Houston bus reorganization. But you at least need several routes. 

There are some places that use one downtown transit corridor: Dallas is a prime example. I would like to see ridership numbers and satisfaction figures

[Deleted.]

17 minutes ago, tusculan said:

This is one of several reasons I don't like this option for the silver line.

1: redoing work already done or using less than optimal vehicles for the route

2 how are silver line Vehicles going to pass the streetcar? Or do we expect them to make all the stops? If this is the case, is the silver line just an extended streetcar route, more than a comparable to the blue line?

2: how are you supposed to get to the airport from w trade? Go down Wesley heights?

3: what good is a network that only has two lines? Sure, you can make a mistake and have a big network with not enough frequency--- see the Houston bus reorganization. But you at least need several routes. 

There are some places that use one downtown transit corridor: Dallas is a prime example. I would like to see ridership numbers and satisfaction figures

1) The Siemens S70 Streetcar and LRV versions are so similar, that any differences are minimal

2) Scheduling the Silver Line at different times to the Gold Line would resolve this problem. 

3) Go down Graham/Mint to Morehead 

4) How do you propose we route the Silver Line through Uptown?

Edited March 27, 2016 by Piedmont767

[cltbwimob]

1 hour ago, Spartan said:

Question re: Silver Line on Trade St...  I thought that the streetcar tracks weren't designed to hold the weight of light rail vehicles. Is that not the case?

Spoke with the head engineer for the Gold Line.  He stated that the Gold Line tracks are capable of supporting the full weight of the standard S70-the same vehicle used in the Blue Line.

 

39 minutes ago, tusculan said:

This is one of several reasons I don't like this option for the silver line.

1: redoing work already done or using less than optimal vehicles for the route

2 how are silver line Vehicles going to pass the streetcar? Or do we expect them to make all the stops? If this is the case, is the silver line just an extended streetcar route, more than a comparable to the blue line?

2: how are you supposed to get to the airport from w trade? Go down Wesley heights?

3: what good is a network that only has two lines? Sure, you can make a mistake and have a big network with not enough frequency--- see the Houston bus reorganization. But you at least need several routes. 

There are some places that use one downtown transit corridor: Dallas is a prime example. I would like to see ridership numbers and satisfaction figures

1) No need to rework tracks (see above). No need to bypass either as optimized scheduling should minimize conflicts. The light rail would probably function more like a multi-vehicle streetcar between Charlottetowne and Gateway Station.  The rest of the route both to the airport and to Matthews will likely have its own right of way (either street medians or grade separated) so no I don't expect that it will be like an extended streetcar.

2) There is an abandoned siding (was used by the Charlotte Observer) next to the NS route that goes behind BofA stadium.  They should be able to use that ROW in downtown then run parallel to the NS route past Charlotte Pipe, cross over the tracks and into a median ROW in Wilkinson.

3) Not sure what you mean here.  There will be two light rail lines, a streetcar line, and probably a BRT line to Lake Norman.

[Third Strike]

48 minutes ago, Piedmont767 said:

4) How do you propose we route the Silver Line through Uptown?

There's running the line down 5th street, which was the original plan for the Silver Line back in 2006. You could easily diet the street to just two lanes, and it would also connect with the non-revenue portion of the Gold Line to connect to the Blue Line. Utilizing the ROW around 277 to the Blue Line, north or south, is also another option. Though, I really don't have a problem with using the tracks down Trade, either.

[kermit]

Re feasibility: having watched the streetcar construction closely I can say that the streetcar tracks are not constructed to the same standard as the Blue Line (the streetcar tracks have only 1/4 of the attachment points (the equiivalent of ties on ballast) as the LRT). While it might be capable of supporting an LRT vehicle the tracks would wear quickly.

Re planning: I am not a fan of two routes sharing a corridor through downtown. While it might be more efficient, it will seriously limit capacity (something Dallas is struggling with now), flexibility (in the event of construction or service disruption), and limits access to different parts of uptown. I would much prefer we bite the bullet and pay for a secondary E-W route through town for the Silver, it will avoid much pain later.

Re scheduling: given the streetcar's mixed traffic nature I am not cnfident it can stick closely enough to a schedule to make interlining painless. Hell, it can't even stick to a schedule now and it just runs a mile and a half.

Edited March 27, 2016 by kermit

[Deleted.]

9 minutes ago, Third Strike said:

There's running the line down 5th street, which was the original plan for the Silver Line back in 2006. You could easily diet the street to just two lanes, and it would also connect with the non-revenue portion of the Gold Line to connect to the Blue Line. Utilizing the ROW around 277 to the Blue Line, north or south, is also another option. Though, I really don't have a problem with using the tracks down Trade, either.

How would it work along 5th? While I haven't gone down 5th in ages, Google makes it look very narrow, so would it work as a mixed traffic streetcar, dedicated streetcar with stops like the Gold Line or dedicated light rail with stations like the Blue Line? 

Edited March 27, 2016 by Piedmont767

[Spartan]

5th St east of the arena is quite wide, so it would be easy to take away a couple of lanes to install tracks, and hook into the blue line using the street car tracks on 5th. 

[Third Strike]

14 minutes ago, Piedmont767 said:

How would it work along 5th? While I haven't gone down 5th in ages, Google makes it look very narrow, so would it work as a mixed traffic streetcar, dedicated streetcar with stops like the Gold Line or dedicated light rail with stations like the Blue Line? 

Dedicated line. The road is currently four lanes, with one way traffic heading southeast. You could diet the road down to two lanes, and the Silver Line would have its own right of way. This is E 5th street south of the Blue Line. The original plan had the Silver Line running all the way up 5th to the Gateway Station. I'm actually not sure how that would have worked, as 5th becomes very narrow past Tryon. I'm guessing they were planning a transit mall for that stretch?

[SgtCampsalot]

5 minutes ago, Third Strike said:

Dedicated line. The road is currently four lanes, with one way traffic heading southeast. You could diet the road down to two lanes, and the Silver Line would have its own right of way. This is E 5th street south of the Blue Line. The original plan had the Silver Line running all the way up 5th to the Gateway Station. I'm actually not sure how that would have worked, as 5th becomes very narrow past Tryon. I'm guessing they were planning a transit mall for that stretch?

That 5th St alignment would be a great idea (E 5th St isn't the most interesting corridor right now) especially if they made the rest of it a pedestrian transit mall, though that may bugger some fourth ward residents, maybe; they might love it. You could  easily meet it up with the blue line on via those spurred streetcar tracks, but the only trick would be getting it going west again, which could only reasonably be done at MLK/2nd St, since you'd have to build a bridge on the others, but even on MLK it's a tight curve. Even if you could, it would be a few blocks from Gateway.

[cltbwimob]

1 hour ago, kermit said:

Re feasibility: having watched the streetcar construction closely I can say that the streetcar tracks are not constructed to the same standard as the Blue Line (the streetcar tracks have only 1/4 of the attachment points (the equiivalent of ties on ballast) as the LRT). While it might be capable of supporting an LRT vehicle the tracks would wear quickly.

Re planning: I am not a fan of two routes sharing a corridor through downtown. While it might be more efficient, it will seriously limit capacity (something Dallas is struggling with now), flexibility (in the event of construction or service disruption), and limits access to different parts of uptown. I would much prefer we bite the bullet and pay for a secondary E-W route through town for the Silver, it will avoid much pain later.

Re scheduling: given the streetcar's mixed traffic nature I am not cnfident it can stick closely enough to a schedule to make interlining painless. Hell, it can't even stick to a schedule now and it just runs a mile and a half.

While the number of attachment points may be less than is on the blue line, this is not likely to be an issue.  Like I said before, I spoke directly to the chief engineer for the gold line and he said that the line was designed specifically for the S70 ultra-short vehicle (which, by the way, is only slightly lighter than the standard vehicle-93,000 lbs vs 99,000 lbs for the standard length) and is more than robust enough to handle the standard length vehicles.  The only thing he said that could prevent CATS from using a standard S70 on the gold line is some of the turns along the line are too tight.  Given that and the fact that the study listed interlining the Gold and Silver Line as a primary alignment, I suspect there will be no issues with running LRVs on the line.  I imagine if there was, this option would have been eliminated.

As for scheduling, there would have to be some improvements such as signal prioritization for both lines to help maintain schedule reliability.  But given the fact they will likely run on well-spaced headways, I doubt there will be much conflict between the Silver and Gold Lines.  If they were on 2-5 minute headways it would be a different story, but I imagine even at their peak operating times each would probably be running on 10 minute headways.  As such they should be able to schedule the two to where they do not affect each other.  Perhaps in the long term if both become capacity constrained, you could shift the Silver line to a different ROW (4th street would be my personal choice as it would still touch both CTC and CGS and would not require some of the same headaches of constructing the 5th street alognment), but for now I think it's unecessary.

[Deleted.]

I'm still having a hard time envisioning actual light rail (like the Blue Line) running through Uptown for the Silver Line, without using tunnels. Many streets either can't be closed (like Trade) or seem too narrow (5th). It seems to me that it will likely see streetcar-style service with stops in dedicated lanes rather than large RoW like the Blue Line. 

At the meeting, did CATS touch on how they were planning to route the Silver Line into Uptown?

[kermit]

1 hour ago, cltbwimob said:

As for scheduling, there would have to be some improvements such as signal prioritization for both lines to help maintain schedule reliability.  But given the fact they will likely run on well-spaced headways, I doubt there will be much conflict between the Silver and Gold Lines.  If they were on 2-5 minute headways it would be a different story, but I imagine even at their peak operating times each would probably be running on 10 minute headways.  As such they should be able to schedule the two to where they do not affect each other.  Perhaps in the long term if both become capacity constrained, you could shift the Silver line to a different ROW (4th street would be my personal choice as it would still touch both CTC and CGS and would not require some of the same headaches of constructing the 5th street alognment), but for now I think it's unecessary.

Ok, if the emgineer said it then I really do believe it. But gezzz, to this untrained eye, the streetcar tracks are built very differently than the LRT tracks. Shrug.

while I agree that with our currently anticipated scheduling interlining should not be a problem, we need to build for the possibility of much higher transit demand. Increasing headways is not the only risk to strained capacity. If we decide to branch the streetcar or silver line at some point (streetcar branch to Midtown / CMC? Streetcar branch to Sevireville? Silver line branch to Cotswalk / Southpark? headways uptown will be cut in half (or more if we have more branches) without an increase in frequencies outside of uptown. Dallas is about to spend $600 million to fix the same kind of problem due to the need to accomodate new branches. CTA is also in the process of spending $600 million for a flyover for the brown line becuase they were unable to increase frequencies to meet growing demand. These sorts of remedial capacity enhanchment projects cost more than the original Blue Line did! 

we are now well past the point of wondering if transit will work in Charlotte -- clearly it will be embraced. While we are a long way from needing to be concerned about capacity I think we should plan for a transit intensive future, not a value-engineered token effort.

Edited March 27, 2016 by kermit

[tusculan]

4 minutes ago, kermit said:

Ok, if the emgineer said it then I really do believe it. But gezzz, to this untrained eye, the streetcar tracks are built very differently than the LRT tracks. Shrug.

while I agree that with our currently anticipated scheduling interlining should not be a problem, we need to build for the possibility of much higher transit demand. Increasing headways is not the only risk to strained capacity. If we decide to branch the streetcar or silver line at some point (streetcar branch to Midtown / CMC? Streetcar branch to Sevireville? Silver line branch to Cotswalk / Southpark? headways uptown will be cut in half (or more if we have more branches) without an increase in frequencies outside of uptown. Dallas is about to spend $600 million to fix the same kind of problem due to the need to accomodate new branches. CTA is also in the process of spending $600 million for a flyover for the brown line becuase they were unable to increase frequencies to meet growing demand. These sorts of remedial capacity enhanchment projects cost more than the original Blue Line did! 

we are now well past the point of wondering if transit will work in Charlotte -- clearly it will be embraced. While we are a long way from needing to be concerned about capacity I think we should plan for a transit intensive future, not a value-engineered token effort.

I agree entirely. We could argue about silver line placement, but without a systemic vision it will develop significant crunch points that have to be reworked every time we want rail expansion. And that re-working will be pricey, laborious, and annoying.

[tusculan]

Sorry to post again. But the questions we ought to ask are how many lines should come in from the southeast/east side of uptown and where from. 

In a full system, There should be at minimum also a providence Rd or Randolph line. Also maybe queens RD and the plaza. All this to me advocates the silver running on Charlottetown to stonewall. Lines from providence area could run the opposite way on Charlottetown creating an east side transfer point at cpcc.

[Norm2]

The best thing to do would be to build tracks above the roads in uptown for the silver line. the cost would be very prohibitive though I am sure.

[LKN704]

I still personally believe that tunneling would be the best opinion, with a setup similar to the light rail in St Louis or Pittsburgh. (LRT in the downtown cores in both cities is in a subway).

[Nick2]

Looking at Seattle's plan and how they want to pay for it gives me hope. Especially considering how minor their tax increases seem. .5% sales tax increase. .8% motor vehicle excise tax increase and 25 cents per assessed 1,000 dollar value. I personally wouldn't mind at all and very few people would even notice the increases if it wouldn't get lampooned by certain anti-transit politicians.

Then again that 50 billion price tag would be more than enough to scare the general population away from it here.

[Dcarnys]

1 hour ago, Nick2 said:

Looking at Seattle's plan and how they want to pay for it gives me hope. Especially considering how minor their tax increases seem. .5% sales tax increase. .8% motor vehicle excise tax increase and 25 cents per assessed 1,000 dollar value. I personally wouldn't mind at all and very few people would even notice the increases if it wouldn't get lampooned by certain anti-transit politicians.

Then again that 50 billion price tag would be more than enough to scare the general population away from it here.

This is Charlotte. The Observer comment section types would lose their collective minds.

Edited March 28, 2016 by Dcarnys