New Urban Village Near Scaleybark Light Rail Station

[Conformity]

My..........that's some spirited debate. You could sell tickets to some of these exchanges. Regardless of who's right, wrong or otherwise, I appreciate the passion and knowledge members bring to this forum. It's great. Whatever their position, UPers give a damn....I wish everyone did.

[uptownliving]

The South LRT will be in mixed traffic downtown just like in Denver.

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)

[uptownliving]

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.

[monsoon]

You failed to mention that line was built 15 years ago. Good luck on trying to find someone today who would build that line for the same cost. For a better example of what LRT is costing these days in Denver I would look at their proposed West line which is in Final Design. The current projected cost is $593M for this 12.1mile line... or $49M per mile. It is expected for that cost projection to increase before the FFGA is signed.

[Mobuchu]

That is a crossing, not mixed traffic (5th or 6th). At no point anywhwere on this line is the LRT in mixed traffic.

[rolltide35401]

And this looks like mixed traffic to me. This is the reason the train is limited to 15mph downtown.

[monsoon]

Well actually, you either operate in the ROW or you don't. The Charlotte LRT does operate in the ROW and it really doesn't matter if the rails are built on the actual streets or not as automobile traffic does cross the tracks in numerous places and accommodations have to be made for that. This is as opposed to a system that is completely grade separated from the highway.

In any case this is a distraction from the main issue that CATS has built a station right in the middle of South Blvd which means that people are going to have to cross two very busy lanes of traffic to get to the small platform put in the space. They spend a huge amount of money to relocate several blocks of highway to do this and in the process lost the opportunity to integrate the station into some kind of transit center complex. It boggles my mind that people thought this was a good idea because, as I said above, it offers no advantages to anyone. And items such as this are why the LRT in Charlotte is more expensive than it needs to be especially when compared to better designed and more pragmatic systems such as that found in Denver.

[origin.clt]

I would be inclined to agree with your argument, metro, if the blue line was splitting I-77 at grade and people were expected to cross 3 lanes of 70 mph traffic. But we aren't talking about high speed automobile corridors. In the end, the goal of this light rail is to create a viable urban environment from around the Scaleybark station to Uptown. This in my mind forces South Boulevard to become a pedestrian friendly street with lower traffic speeds. Specific to the Scaleybark station, I am reserving judgement until I see it in operation, but here are a couple things the designers probably considered.

Placing the station and track on the west side of South Boulevard creates as many problems as it "solves". Primarily, there is inadequate road infrastructure existing on that side of track for development, meaning that in all likelihood another road would have to be built creating the exact same condition that we are discussing now (except now there would be a minimum of 6 traffic lanes and 2 rail lines, not including parking and turn lanes, to cross to get from urban edge to urban edge). The main culprit in this case is 2 fold, initial businesses will not be able to survive only on the rail line infrastructure, and fire trucks will need access to all sides of new development. The weave configuration eliminates the need for redundant roads that would be required to develop anything on the west side of South Boulevard.

As stated before, placing the station in the middle gives ownership of the station both sides of the road, meaning both have convenient access. This situation happens in numerous places around the country as others have posted, and I have seen in first hand in Toronto where one of their streetcar lines runs down the middle of either a 6 or 8 lane boulevard with 4 foot wide stations platforms. Crossing is handled with either dedicated crosswalks or the station is close enough to a street intersection that it can utilize the existing crosswalks. As an aside, one could argue that the East Blvd station is far more difficult to access from the other side of East Blvd than it is to access the Scaleybark station.

If you are solely concerned with high volumes of automobile movement and creating a "park and ride" station, then I agree, this design makes no sense. However, if this area is intended to be urban then the design, given the conditions, makes sense long term.

[monsoon]

If you are solely concerned with high volumes of automobile movement and creating a "park and ride" station, then I agree, this design makes no sense. However, if this area is intended to be urban then the design, given the conditions, makes sense long term.

[nowensone]

Eastern platform looking north:

[monsoon]

Indeed. It should be noted that from the blueprints posted above, the only access to the station will be at the end right in that left turn lane. People are going to be dodging vehicles all over the place.

[origin.clt]

Except of course, a Park & Ride location is exactly what the city is creating since the design requires hundreds of parking spaces for park and ride drivers, plus it will be a bus transfer station. This isn't something that is going to be very condusive to pedestrians and urban living at all. I can imagine much better design point if that really was the intention including building a pedestrian bridge over South Blvd so that it was more convenient to the neighborhoods on the east side of the tracks.

[monsoon]

..... The clear long term goal is an urban environment designed to support the rail line.

[cinco]

i tend to agree with mugen's assessment....

i can understand the criticism. for instance, the left hand turn lane in the above picture does seem problematic. i don't understand why they just don't get rid of that turn lane & crossover... it should be incorporated with buffer zone. they should have figured out an alternative scenario for the crossover.

other than that, i actually like how, @ this point, the light rail interacts with s. blvd. i do think it will introduce and solidify s. blvd as a "pedestrian friendly" zone, from that point on into uptown. i hope they intend to plant some trees in the buffer b/c that would also add to the area.

as for other criticism... i don't see how i could definetively say this area is going to be a failure or a success - yet.

[origin.clt]

It's really not that clear to me. It may be an unstated goal, but the design of this station, the inclusion of large numbers of park and ride lots, a bus xfer station and putting a station in the middle of a highway where the tracks have to cross the road in multiples places is not how one goes about this.

[monsoon]

That is the problem in general when an abandoned railroad is used to build light rail. These things are decades if not centuries old and often they are places where people didn't want to live. This issue can be dealt with, but I feel they didn't do it in the case of the Scaleybark station.

[uptownliving]

This is the only potentially problematic piece that I can think of - a left turn lane not at a light controlled intersection. To briefly use Houston as an example again, I think these are the largest single cause of it's vehicle-train accidents as drivers must completely think for themselves to avoid collisions (whereas a traffic light does most of this work for them).

[MZT]

I vote with dubone, Mugen683 and uptownliving that it's going to work out in the end.

I think CATS generally played a poor hand well on this design. In fact, I think removing some more junky buildings north of the Laufen tile store and extending the median further, with the tracks continuing in the middle, might have been OK with me.

One thing to keep in mind, the tracks were NEVER moved. Only the road bed for South Blvd. I'm sure of it - I have watched this for two years, riding #12.

[monsoon]

They will be putting a signal at that Intersection later this year.

[Justadude]

I just hope that Charlotte drivers learn a bit more tolerance for pedestrians in the next year or two. People here are almost aggressive about buzzing past pedestrians, as if to force them off the road. That's going to have to change around these stations.

[RiverwoodCLT]

I know they are going to put up lights, but I don't like the design of moving South Blvd. traffic over the line twice within one mile. A service road could have been built on the west side of the line to give access to all business and future projects.

[MZT]

I suppose another method, could have been to condemn some of the land on the east side of South Blvd to make room for the road widening. But it won't be that long a wait before we get a sense how this will work out. They should be running trains through here in test phase before much longer.

[monsoon]

Or they could have simply run the tracks onto the western edge of that TOD property and eliminated all of the very negative aspects of this project. In places that have successful TOD being developed around a transit station, the station itself is a generator for small mom & pop businesses. The municipality owns the facility that is built with adjoining retail, meeting rooms, etc, and the city rents out space to business that want to cater to people using the transit station. Small Grocery/convenience stores, coffee shops/bakeries that cater to rush hour travelers, newstands, etc are all examples of this and these types of uses make it convenient for people using the train to commute. They can stop at the station on the way home to pick up stuff for the evening which eliminates the need for another trip (usually by car) for shopping in the evening.

It's a great way to stimulate TOD but unfortunately the city has totally lost this opportunity by designing a station that is nothing but an exposed concrete pad in the middle of South Blvd, and instead, and as ususal, settling for a broken design from Charlotte developers that have done nothing but broken designs in this city. It's a place that people will hurry to get away from. It's a crying shame this has happened at Scaleybark because this was one of the few places where they had pretty much clean slate to try something new and innovative instead of the SOS. But then again we are talking about CATS where that is one of their mottos.

This is design 101 again, and I am constantly amazed that we get consistently get it so wrong in Charlotte. Maybe one day this city will get over its arrogance and go do some field trips to other places to see where it actually does work.

[ChiefJoJo]

My own opinion is that the majority of CATS staff are quite knowledgeable in their craft, and are good stewards of taxpayer money on the whole. Certainly their have been misjudgements with information sharing and some other minor management mistakes along the way (and these should be pointed out), but in general, considering the public-sector financial climate (read: cash-strapped) we are in, and the fact that this project has received tremendous scrutiny from the media/public/etc, and being the first in the history of NC, looking back in 3-4 years most people will forget how difficult this was and will ultimately be happy with the final product and the future prospects in the other transit corridors.

[monsoon]

Given they fired the "consultant" and manager of this project, Parsons, for gross mismanagement and design errors and most likely are going to sue them for it, and this was the same company that did this station design, I am not convinced this is a qualification of their talents. We are talking about a train and where people want to walk, not a space shuttle. It's not that hard to understand that putting a station in the middle of highway is not going to be that desirable for he people using it. Especially when it didn't have to be there.