Charlotte's Light Rail: Lynx Blue Line

[tozmervo]

Uptown was extremely busy today. There was something at the baseball stadium during the day and something at BAC stadium this evening. 

My 77x home was packed, too. Only 5 or so free seats 

[KJHburg]

6 minutes ago, tozmervo said:

Uptown was extremely busy today. There was something at the baseball stadium during the day and something at BAC stadium this evening. 

My 77x home was packed, too. Only 5 or so free seats 

Major rock concert tonight at the Bank.  a Motley Crew and friends I hear 

[kermit]

Gezzus Christ, Blue line is reverting to 20 minute frequencies again on August 15, exactly when I return to daily riding. CATS is in a death spiral.

https://twitter.com/JoeBrunoWSOC9/status/1552451953191526400?s=20&t=wn92YEtAYSg7o6kf5se4sw

 

Edited August 1, 2022 by kermit

[CLT2014]

Have seen quite a few threads on Nextdoor lately for lower income neighborhoods impacted by the reduced service times where people are looking for a cheap car because service levels are getting so bad and they can't get things done from errands to arrive to work on time. 

This is just going to further encourage car ownership in Charlotte if it stays like this too long...

Edited July 29, 2022 by CLT2014

[15895]

43 minutes ago, kermit said:

Damnit. Blue line is reverting to 20 minute frequencies again on August 15. CATS is in a death spiral.

https://twitter.com/JoeBrunoWSOC9/status/1552451953191526400?s=20&t=wn92YEtAYSg7o6kf5se4sw

 

20 minute frequency due to shortage of drivers or something? 
 

20 minute frequency is ridiculous (assuming it’s not due to operational issues or whatever). Not many people actually live close enough to the blue line where it’s competitive with vehicle when you factor in walking to the station. Those fortunate enough to live super close to the rail lines probably nearly all own vehicles…
 

Say if you live in Circa Uptown. You want to go to Optimist Hall. At what point do you take up to 45 minutes trying to get there versus a 7 minute car trip. I lived uptown before and had friends who lived in Novel NoDa and other places around uptown. Almost all of them exclusively drove their cars between uptown/SouthEnd/charlotte (and some even drunk from the bar….). They’d rarely, rarely take it on times just for that experience of bar hopping using rail.

20 minute frequencies are fine for suburbanites coming into uptown. Parking at their little park and rides. But what about those IN the central part of the city… who aren’t taking a night out to a panthers game….

And to take it further than still just catering to privileged urbanites that are just trying to get to NoDa or SouthEnd bars. At what point do you not sacrifice your left leg because you don’t want to take 1+ hour one way to go to a grocery store or a laundromat or whatever that you could do in a 10 minute car ride. 

Edited July 29, 2022 by AirNostrumMAD

[kermit]

1 minute ago, AirNostrumMAD said:

20 minute frequency due to shortage of drivers or something?

Yup. The frequency cut was at the bottom of the list of bus routes being reduced due to driver shortages. CATS had not mentioned that rail would be a part of those cuts before releasing this info.

[JRCLT]

Damn it. Blue line is reverting to 20 minute frequencies again on August 15, exactly when I return to daily riding. CATS is in a death spiral.
https://twitter.com/JoeBrunoWSOC9/status/1552451953191526400?s=20&t=wn92YEtAYSg7o6kf5se4sw
 

I heard about it a few days back. Has the the Blue Line been unreliable/late more than when it was on 20 min, more noticeable? They say the reason they’re doing this is for reliability and will improve as more hires are made or so they say.

[dylansukkert]

3 hours ago, JeanClt said:

I heard about it a few days back. Has the the Blue Line been unreliable/late more than when it was on 20 min, more noticeable? They say the reason they’re doing this is for reliability and will improve as more hires are made or so they say.

The 8:45am train for me in the morning has been 95% on time for me during the 15 min frequency. Also has been really full some days. This will make it worse. 

[KJHburg]

this is good location for this station. from WSOC 

CATS is proposing the new South End light rail station to be near Publix and Sycamore/Atherton Lofts. There will be a track crossing connecting the two. 

Inbound station- Publix
Outbound station- Sycamore 

Goal is to start construction in late 2024/early 2025. Opens late 2026

[Blue_Devil]

9 hours ago, KJHburg said:

this is good location for this station. from WSOC 

CATS is proposing the new South End light rail station to be near Publix and Sycamore/Atherton Lofts. There will be a track crossing connecting the two. 

Inbound station- Publix
Outbound station- Sycamore 

Goal is to start construction in late 2024/early 2025. Opens late 2026

Any news if they will put a crossing in before construction starts?

[AltNative]

11 hours ago, KJHburg said:

Goal is to start construction in late 2024/early 2025. Opens late 2026

I know these kinds of things move slow but is a late 2024 start time not laughably bad? Does it really have to be this way? 

[KJHburg]

1 hour ago, AltNative said:

I know these kinds of things move slow but is a late 2024 start time not laughably bad? Does it really have to be this way? 

I am sure given engineering work that has to be done which of course done before construction would begin.  Plus getting all their monies together. 

[videtur quam contuor]

To me this appears to serve as a pedestrian crossing more than a stop for riders. How many nearby residents served by this ride south (few, imo) or to uptown or UNCC (few imo). If regular riders can provide their experience about transit LRT riders boarding and departing at E-W or New Bern please offer you experience.

[RANYC]

I am so in the dark on this. 

Seems like the requirements  should be so minimal here.  Not even an enclosed structure, just some shade from the elements, and a surface for boarding or getting off the train, with signaling and an announcement.  Four years just seems wild lol. 

With something this slight and spartan needing 1/20 of our lifetimes, I will no longer be discussing the Silver Line unless some sort of drastic transformation happens with the CATS operating model.  By the way, who's responsible for the Pedestrian Bridge across the Belk?  Why does that feel like an eternity in the making?

Edited August 10, 2022 by RANYC

[JHart]

4 hours ago, AltNative said:

I know these kinds of things move slow but is a late 2024 start time not laughably bad? Does it really have to be this way? 

1 hour ago, RANYC said:

Seems like the requirements  should be so minimal here.  Not even an enclosed structure, just some shade from the elements, and a surface for boarding or getting off the train, with signaling and an announcement.  Four years just seems wild lol. 

The devil's in the details. Yes the station design would be fairly simple, but think of the immense coordination effort required for something like this. Everything for this station construction needs to be staged in the area the width of the rail trail on either side in-between apartments, a grocery store, and Atherton Mill. You need to do all construction off-hours or alongside an active railway. Definitely not a simple project to plan. 

[RANYC]

16 minutes ago, JHart said:

The devil's in the details. Yes the station design would be fairly simple, but think of the immense coordination effort required for something like this. Everything for this station construction needs to be staged in the area the width of the rail trail on either side in-between apartments, a grocery store, and Atherton Mill. You need to do all construction off-hours or alongside an active railway. Definitely not a simple project to plan. 

Rome wasn't  built in a ^day decade

Edited August 10, 2022 by RANYC

[DJ8hep]

Having had worked on a light rail project I know exactly why the stations take so long in spite of their rather simplistic design. Most of the time spent is going through all the channels for review. Not only does the design have to adhere to some really strict rail standards and intense frequent reviews, but the construction does as well. All the entities have to review every step of the process, when we started building the stations it seemed that every week there was a site visit for everyone to review how the concrete looked on each portion of one station.

[RANYC]

1 hour ago, DJ8hep said:

Having had worked on a light rail project I know exactly why the stations take so long in spite of their rather simplistic design. Most of the time spent is going through all the channels for review. Not only does the design have to adhere to some really strict rail standards and intense frequent reviews, but the construction does as well. All the entities have to review every step of the process, when we started building the stations it seemed that every week there was a site visit for everyone to review how the concrete looked on each portion of one station.

You'd say the CATS timeline from conception to execution is standard/normal?

4-years for a single light rail stop...can't even imagine what's involved in a new 26-mile line with X number of stops.  Is there something to Tarik's point about emerging mobility technologies?  Fixed-line transit takes so long and mobility tech is changing so fast, perhaps we're better served considering more flexible alternatives than fixed-line...  

Edited August 10, 2022 by RANYC

[kermit]

7 minutes ago, RANYC said:

..and mobility tech is changing so fast,...

Honest question, how is mobility tech changing? Other than a transition to battery electric cars and bikes, along with a semi-novel new mode (scooters), I am not sure I see much change in mobility systems. Having said that, I feel like I am overlooking something. 

[RANYC]

18 minutes ago, kermit said:

Honest question, how is mobility tech changing? Other than a transition to battery electric cars and bikes, along with a semi-novel new mode (scooters), I am not sure I see much change in mobility systems. Having said that, I feel like I am overlooking something. 

I'm no mobility tech expert, but I'm just thinking about continuous improvements in safe autonomous navigation, app-based on-demand mobility, i.e. an adaptation of the rideshare model for public transit objectives.

One also wonders about fast-changing mobility trends and how public transit might adapt.  Will we have a remote work or flex work future, whereby the bulk commute model goes away?  Instead, people have mostly smaller, more localized, and much more varied mobility routines versus the long haul to a CBD?  If that's a credible future, then perhaps our dollars better spent on much more flex type of mobility like smaller-scale, autonomous vehicles to navigate twists and turns of neighborhood roads, or we make e-bikes widely available? 

I suppose my conjecture is that if a single light-rail stop takes 4 years, then we probably have a right to be skeptical of the Silver Line completion timing of 2040.  Might that be more like 2060?  If so, might some of these emerging technologies be matured, and mobility trends be established?  

On a somewhat separate note, has anyone come across provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act that include large-scale funding for clean transit that might benefit CATS?   I ask because the press on the Act suggests it makes massive investments in reducing climate impact, and because transportation is a big driver of emissions, did the Act go beyond just incentives for personal/private mobility (tax credits for EVs) and include public mobility goals as well?

Edited August 10, 2022 by RANYC

[15895]

4 hours ago, RANYC said:

You'd say the CATS timeline from conception to execution is standard/normal?

4-years for a single light rail stop...can't even imagine what's involved in a new 26-mile line with X number of stops.  Is there something to Tarik's point about emerging mobility technologies?  Fixed-line transit takes so long and mobility tech is changing so fast, perhaps we're better served considering more flexible alternatives than fixed-line...  

Obviously  we have an expert on the matter, but my uneducated opinion is that the light rail stop will take that long to complete likely trying to be as low cost as possible mixed with typical regulatory hurdles. Which makes sense. There’s no reason to expedite it anymore than the time frame it has. 

Fixed lines absolutely work in my opinion if implemented correctly and spares no expenses, isn’t designed to encourage marginal development and doesn’t seem to be as low cost to build as possible.

What if you could get to pretty much anywhere in metro Charlotte on rapid rail with speeds that goes over 50mph?

What if there was a stop underground for most of downtown Davidson, Cornelius, Downtown Huntersville and Birkdale. That let you out right in the thick of this areas? It would be faster than driving from Cornelius to Birkdale. What if it was easy to get to SouthPark on rapid rail to either uptown, Matthews and Ballantyne? With a stop connected to SouthPark mall? If SouthPark was a connection point and you could take rail from Matthews to Ballantyne connecting there?

what if the rail went from Kings Mountain to past Concord and From Statesville to Rock Hill? To Carowinds, to White Water Center. Etc. Live in downtown Gastonia by a rail station underground and get to nearly anywhere you’d want in the metro?

What if within the inner city, there were a bunch of stops located underground in the most convenient areas? Trains every 7 minutes on rails served by 1 line and shorter on lines serves by more? 

That network is possible. There could be money for it. And it could be heavily utilized. Mass transit is supposed to move people around rapidly and easily. 

I think metro Atlanta in 1980 had a smaller population than Charlotte 2022. Rail service started on Atlanta 1979

 

Edited August 10, 2022 by AirNostrumMAD

[JRCLT]

While I am not against the new transportation technology… negating fixed lines would not solve congestion. A train can just Carry an incomparable amount of people while being extremely more efficient in energy and space. Truly if these technologies of on demand and ride share / autonomous vehicles were to be implemented it would be nothing more than capillaries in functioning city body. The real main arteries are necessary to work in conjunction with these smaller forms of mobility. These fixed lines are made for high concentrations of passengers and truly make mobility better when managed correctly. It’s not a question of will it work in Charlotte but How will it work. Then after that’s answered how can it be implemented and surely that is the hard part. Affordable housing along these lines would go a long way. Bringing walkability into the equation around the line. You can’t have a line and expect people to walk in suburbia. It isn’t going to encourage people to walk. Certainly though, some people will want their cars and “independence” but I think sometimes a city needs to address the future and sustainability rather than the now. No point in continuing anything now if it all goes to sh*t 30-50 years later even 100 years later. Though these transit oriented neighborhoods become harder to achieve when the line takes a considerable amount of time to come to fruition when more of the cities trees are cut to fill in suburbia and make it so more people are car dependent. It’s hard to judge the decision process when one can’t keep up with the decisions and the justifications of those decisions in the background in real time when public engagement is seen as a phase Where the community is allowed input instead of bringing the community in to be part of the process truly.

[Hushpuppy321]

I think that the Asymmetrical design of the Planned Station works well.  Remember we had a debate about it being by Publix or Sycamore - well now it will serve both.  Hopefully the planned Residential is slightly modified to take into account this newly planned station. 

[dylansukkert]

10 hours ago, tarhoosier said:

To me this appears to serve as a pedestrian crossing more than a stop for riders. How many nearby residents served by this ride south (few, imo) or to uptown or UNCC (few imo). If regular riders can provide their experience about transit LRT riders boarding and departing at E-W or New Bern please offer you experience.

I would use it if it was there right now. 

[kermit]

19 minutes ago, dylansukkert said:

I would use it if it was there right now. 

Yea, I know at least three people who live around Ideal Way / Macs who would use it (one of them does not use transit now, the new station would make her switch)