New Urban Village Near Scaleybark Light Rail Station

[uptownliving]

For anyone that is interested the 2004 CDOT traffic counts for South Blvd at Clanton Rd is 31,200.

That is 31,200 cars in a 24 hour period on a weekday. This is comparable to Providence Rd.

[MZT]

Is the council keeping the option on the table for CATS to just build the deck, and the land simply be sold? There have been some members earlier indicating they favor that.

[uptownliving]

Is the council keeping the option on the table for CATS to just build the deck, and the land simply be sold? There have been some members earlier indicating they favor that.

[monsoon]

In Houston they have stations in the middle of the street for there LRT. I did not see any problems there of people getting to the station.

[nowensone]

Houston is not a fair example for comparisons, and collisions with cars don't have much to do with the discussion of pedestrians. But Houston in terms of the car and sprawl is truly unparalleled. It will take ages for the corridors it's rail line passes through to be "cleansed" of the automobile mentality. Houston has bred a traffic culture in which red lights are commonly ran just to keep the system moving, and since half of it's vehicles are not insured and are often driven by unlicensed drivers I'll argue that it is not populated by good/responsible drivers anyway. But the blame lies partially on the routing of the line as well. The line curves across intersections and bridges, switches back and forth between street center and street side alignments, following a path that is insane to say the least. The accidents are practically unavoidable. It also does not connect areas properly, such as residential to retail/industrial/commercial, being routed from downtown to the medical district/stadium.

So while Houston does have some street center stations, it is not a good comparison to what CLT is doing as these center stations are not truly the problem.

[dubone]

Pulling away from the controversies mentioned of the Houston environment, I think a major difference is that this is not in mixed traffic, but rather is a dedicated rail corridor with street/railroad crossings. Does anyone know of a light rail system that does not have street/railroad crossings? My belief is that they are less accident prone than street to street intersections because of the volume, and less accident prone than street to freight rail crossings because light rail vehicles can stop in the case of emergency.

There will be street crossings with many major streets with this system. I would say it would be a terrible choice if there are no crossing arms (does anyone know if these will have them?). But with crossing arms, and rail crossing lights, and busses stopping, and with coordinated traffic lights in the area, this will be less of an impact than the many other intersections with South Blvd that already exist.

There will almost certainly be accidents with the light rail, but there are also accidents with busses and trucks and bikes and pedestrians and cars already. It is the hazard of motion.

[atlrvr]

I'm not certain, but I believe DART in Dallas is completely grade separated.

[orulz]

I'm not certain, but I believe DART in Dallas is completely grade separated.

[atlrvr]

Ahhh....I was under the impression that a good bit of it was underground...is this not the case? I know much of Denver's suburban lines are grade separated, but it too runs down a pedestrian mall.

[ChiefJoJo]

I am still amazed at what they got for $800 million and what we're getting for $463 million. They have a 12-mile line, all utilities along street frontage were buried, 6 miles of Hiawatha Aveune were rebuilt, each station features substantial art work, and brick and precast concrete sound barriers were built where the line runs adjacent to pre-existing single-family. At the MSP airport, twin tunnels take trains underground for nearly two miles to reach the Lindbergh Terminal station, the only stop that is totally underground-70 feet below the surface. Perhaps the FAA funded some of that work, I'm not sure. But answer me this: how is it that for just under a third more, they got all that?

[monsoon]

......in the last 3 years or so, most of which proably did not affect the Hiawatha line at all... so in 2002 dollars, you are probably looking at a better comparison of $800M vs ~$280-320M for the CATS LRT--in that sense Minneapolis got 3 times the value on their project for less than twice the cost mostly due to budget inflation alone.

[MZT]

The presentation to the city on Jan 22 is posted on CharMeck now. Skip to about 3:05 in the clip.

http://www.charmeck.org/Departments/City+C...etings/Home.htm

It sounds like the staff will press the council to choose one of the two developments - over just letting CATS build the surface lot. The tax revenue is one big reason. Another one, is that the existing budget assumed they would not need to pay for building the lot. They'd have to back that out, and come up with money for it.

[ChiefJoJo]

I have wondered myself why they South LRT has ended up costing so much especially when compared to the lines being built in Denver.

[monsoon]

^Indeed that is why I choose Denver. They are currently building their system.

[uptownliving]

Help me understand why you consider Denver's LRT costs to be "good" and CAT's LRT costs to be "full of waste". Yet when you look at the cost of these LRT systems on a per mile basis they are within 5% of each other. Those 2 things don't jive with me.

Denver Southest LRT: $879M / 19.1 miles = $46M per mile

CATS South LRT: $462M / 9.6 miles = $48M per mile

[dubone]

The presentation to the city on Jan 22 is posted on CharMeck now. Skip to about 3:05 in the clip.

http://www.charmeck.org/Departments/City+C...etings/Home.htm

It sounds like the staff will press the council to choose one of the two developments - over just letting CATS build the surface lot. The tax revenue is one big reason. Another one, is that the existing budget assumed they would not need to pay for building the lot. They'd have to back that out, and come up with money for it.

[monsoon]

Help me understand why you consider Denver's LRT costs to be "good" and CAT's LRT costs to be "full of waste". Yet when you look at the cost of these LRT systems on a per mile basis they are within 5% of each other. Those 2 things don't jive with me.

Denver Southest LRT: $879M / 19.1 miles = $46M per mile

CATS South LRT: $462M / 9.6 miles = $48M per mile

[uptownliving]

Ok, so if you add in the $40M spent on the Trolley that brings the total up to $502M for the CATS LRT.

But to be fair, the Denver Southeast LRT constrution contracts were signed back in 2001, 4 years before CATS got theirs signed. So if you take into consideration 5% inflation per year, that would bring Denver Southeast LRT to $1.07B in today's costs. So here are the revised numbers:

Denver Southest LRT: $1.07B / 19.1 miles = $56M per mile

CATS South LRT: $502M / 9.6 miles = $52M per mile

There is no denying that CATS South LRT has had problems that could have been avoided to save us some money on the project, but when you put it in perspective of the other LRT projects in this country its not so bad. But what Denver RTD really has that CATS doesn't have at this time is a good reputation. Since the RTD has a history of building projects on time and on budget they were able to get voter approval to double the transit Sales tax there to 1%. Something like that would not be politically possible in Charlotte.

[Miesian Corners]

Walked the LRT Scaleybark area Friday at rush hour. It was really no big deal. I crossed the street with no problem (without having a crosswalk or crossing light) and looked at some of the issues being discussed here. Traffic was travelling around 35mph. Upon measuring the distance between the platforms and the curbs on South, I found the planting strip is just under 8ft on the north-bound side and 6ft on the south-bound side.

What I don't understand is how such a project is going to sell to the consumer. While the TOD development might be nice, what you are forced to look at across the street (east side of the line) is dismal: the Carousel strip club, an AutoZone, JB's junk store, and two highly unattractive strip centers. What is being said about all of this? Does the city simply expect the "market" to take care of it? If so, how long will that be?

[monsoon]

Ok, so if you add in the $40M spent on the Trolley that brings the total up to $502M for the CATS LRT.

But to be fair, the Denver Southeast LRT constrution contracts were signed back in 2001, 4 years before CATS got theirs signed. So if you take into consideration 5% inflation per year, that would bring Denver Southeast LRT to $1.07B in today's costs. So here are the revised numbers:

Denver Southest LRT: $1.07B / 19.1 miles = $56M per mile

CATS South LRT: $502M / 9.6 miles = $52M per mile

There is no denying that CATS South LRT has had problems that could have been avoided to save us some money on the project, but when you put it in perspective of the other LRT projects in this country its not so bad. But what Denver RTD really has that CATS doesn't have at this time is a good reputation. Since the RTD has a history of building projects on time and on budget they were able to get voter approval to double the transit Sales tax there to 1%. Something like that would not be politically possible in Charlotte.

[uptownliving]

What I don't understand is how such a project is going to sell to the consumer. While the TOD development might be nice, what you are forced to look at across the street (east side of the line) is dismal: the Carousel strip club, an AutoZone, JB's junk store, and two highly unattractive strip centers. What is being said about all of this? Does the city simply expect the "market" to take care of it? If so, how long will that be?

[uptownliving]

Forgetting that your sums and hence figures on Denver are wrong, Denver is a build as you go system, just like CATS. the difference is they were able to anticipate the costs were going to be more expensive instead of CATS which took a $300M system to a $500M system in less than 1.5 years. That would be the inflation to calculate.

You also left out the bridges, the special construction in the convention center to accommodate it, the ROW they already owned, similar construction costs in the Westin, etc etc. Much of this was done in years past as well.

[monsoon]

I would recomend you do some research next time before you label someone's posts as being "wrong", when in fact it is your post that is wrong.

[uptownliving]

It was you who inflated Denver's costs 5%/year and incorrectly compounded the interest "rate". From that you went on to change Denver's cost from what is stated to some new number that isn't found anywhere except in your calculator and justified it by without offering any proof beyond the assumption that since they started in 2001 their construction costs have to be lower. Never mind they were on exactly the same schedule as Charlotte whose LRT was supposed to have opened at the same time as Denver.

The fact of the matter is that Denver has done a very good job at managing their light rail projects, especially when considering the cost of all of their lines vs mileage and CATS could learn a lot from them. It amazes me that CATS has wasted so much money on this project and the broken Scaleybark designe is yet another example of that.

[monsoon]

The South LRT will be in mixed traffic downtown just like in Denver. But I am glad you present that photo because that line was built for less than $20M/mile. A good lesson for CATS in how it should design a system of reasonable cost.

Furthemore, calculations for inflation are not the same as calculations for interest as you compounded the rate as well. In addition you assumed that Denver's total costs would have been more than 20% higher than CATS which is simply incorrect when inflation is running more like 1% and construction materials have not been rising at that rate. (nor do they make up all the cost)

The fact of the matter is that CATS is building a line that is unusually expensive and putting pedestrians in the middle of South Blvd is a brain dead idea that cost a lot of money and there is simply no benefit to the people that might use it.