Charlotte's Light Rail: Lynx Blue Line

[roningreensboro]

^ I don't see why they can't run 3 cars. They can load 2 of three then inch the train up to load the third car. At least for now, in my mind it will work.

[New Name]

[quLets not forget that the ACC tournament is going on, and there are massive amounts of people in town for that, and it remains to be seen what the effect is on the Lynx line. In fact, the crowds in Uptown have been much larger than normal. It feels a more like we're in a larger city with the kind of volume thats around, and all the tourists taking pictures and asking for directions.

[tozmervo]

Lets not forget that the ACC tournament is going on, and there are massive amounts of people in town for that, and it remains to be seen what the effect is on the Lynx line.

The effect is what rockhilljames and myself just described. The massive amounts of people in town pushed the Lynx to its maximum capacity. I suspect that tomorrow will be similar, with the St Patrick's day celebrations in tandem with ACC.

[monsoon]

^ I don't see why they can't run 3 cars. They can load 2 of three then inch the train up to load the third car. At least for now, in my mind it will work.

This was discussed earlier why they can't. It's too confusing and hence too dangerous for the numbers of people we are talking about.

[Neo]

The effect is what rockhilljames and myself just described. The massive amounts of people in town pushed the Lynx to its maximum capacity. I suspect that tomorrow will be similar, with the St Patrick's day celebrations in tandem with ACC.

Has anyone had a good look at the 485 platforms? As I stated earlier my wife and I have reservations for dinner tomorrow night downtown so I'm curious if I would just be better off driving to the end of the line at 485.

I really wish that CATS would exercise their option to buy more trains so that they could run double trains every 7.5 minutes if that is indeed the problem with getting doubles every 7.5 minutes. I had to squeeze my way in when the CIAA was in town at Tyvola but it sounds as if this weekend is worse than when the CIAA was here.

[uptownliving]

If you time your ride so that you are riding while the game is occuring at the Arena for the ACC Tourney then you should be fine.

Games times are at 1:30pm and 3:30pm tomorrow. So you should find space on your ride in Saturday for dinner. There will not be an evening game tomorrow.

If you do have a full train that arrives at your station I would recommend going all the way to the back to look for space. While eating at Phat Burrito yesterday I watched about 5 trains pass by and almost all of the were full in the front but had a good amount of space in the back. I guess people dont like riding backwards in this town

Edited March 14, 2008 by uptownliving

[tozmervo]

^ That's a side effect of their obnoxious policy to pull single car trains all the way forward. People wait toward one end of the platform, so the second car doesn't get nearly as much traffic. If they centered the single car trains, I think riders would be distributed more evenly.

[monsoon]

^I am sure that is a procedure for safety reasons again. Drivers always pull the lead train to the exact same spot so there is no issue of a driver accidentally pulling a long train to a short position. When you are dealing with moving a large number of people you want to design out the possibility of mistakes as much as possible.

[Charlotte_native]

If you time your ride so that you are riding while the game is occuring at the Arena for the ACC Tourney then you should be fine.

Games times are at 1:30pm and 3:30pm tomorrow. So you should find space on your ride in Saturday for dinner. There will not be an evening game tomorrow.

There is a lot to consider when making these plans this weekend. In addition to the tourney there is a street festival at the 300 block of South Tryon for St. Pat's as well as St. Pat's parties all over the place.

[monsoon]

Any sign the ticket machines are taking credit cards yet?

[jednc]

I rode the train uptown Thursday night to be a part of all the excitement of the tournament. We got off the train with a girl/lady at the Stonewall Station. After the train moved on we were walking toward the Westin and she told us that she didn't know where we were from, but that the train was awesome. She wished they had one where she was from. She went on and on about how convenient it was. I finally asked where she was from. She was from Raleigh. It was really nice to hear someone from Raleigh who thought the city was great and had really made a good call on creating the light rail line (I don't like the rivalry and think NC is lucky to have both great cities not to mention the Triad, Asheville, Wilmington, etc.).

Edit: Corrected a typo

Edited March 16, 2008 by jednc

[TD]

Ok, So Im thinking of moving to Charlotte, And I LOVE trains.... But im worried... The blue line doesnt go very far... I want them to expand it quickly. And if its as packed as people say... then how is there not immediate plans to expand the number of trains and the routes?

[dubone]

We're doing our best to expand it quickly. The present time is actually the most active for the expansion plans of the next 2 decades. We are currently in active pursuit of the Northeastern extension of the blue line to 485 beyond the university, which will be built as soon as practical (pending federal support), which will be within 5 years or so. We are also pursuing the building of the North commuter line (purple line) to Lake Norman towns. Then, even though the CATS plan doesn't have it built until 10 years from now, some city council members are looking at supplementing funds to speed up the streetcar line that runs east - west between Eastland Mall and Beatties Ford/I 85. Therefore, right now we are in a period of pursuing the fastest expansion of mass transit.

While they aren't immediate (ie. under construction), they are not too far away in the scheme of things. If you are thinking about carlessness and the practical effect of not having the lines up and running, bear in mind that there is still the bus system, whose hub is at the main station of the light rail line. Therefore, you can transfer free of charge to any of the busses to go the rest of your trip.

[TD]

We're doing our best to expand it quickly. The present time is actually the most active for the expansion plans of the next 2 decades. We are currently in active pursuit of the Northeastern extension of the blue line to 485 beyond the university, which will be built as soon as practical (pending federal support), which will be within 5 years or so. We are also pursuing the building of the North commuter line (purple line) to Lake Norman towns. Then, even though the CATS plan doesn't have it built until 10 years from now, some city council members are looking at supplementing funds to speed up the streetcar line that runs east - west between Eastland Mall and Beatties Ford/I 85. Therefore, right now we are in a period of pursuing the fastest expansion of mass transit.

While they aren't immediate (ie. under construction), they are not too far away in the scheme of things. If you are thinking about carlessness and the practical effect of not having the lines up and running, bear in mind that there is still the bus system, whose hub is at the main station of the light rail line. Therefore, you can transfer free of charge to any of the busses to go the rest of your trip.

Yes, I want to move to a city and not have a car, I will have the car only to travel back home and such.... But I want to do 99% of my travel by mass transit... Tell me more about Charlottes Commuter Rail... This will be a standard train correct? And not the nice LYNX line?

Is there Commuter Rail already in place?

I want to compare the experience to BART MUNI and Cal Train I had when in San Francisco. i think one of the best systems in America....

Will I be able to get off lynx and take a regular train anywhere else... Bus's are ok, but I prefer train.

[Mobuchu]

How easily you can live without a car will depend alot on where you live and where you work. If you live downtown you can get to most of the city very easily by bus or the Lynx blue line. There are no other rail/train lines to commute through the city currently other then the Blue line. You can however make transfers to a bus line.

I understand why many think trains are nicer, but give the buses a chance. For a city its size Charlotte has a pretty extensive bus system that will get you to most destinations throughout the city. Maybe too extensive since some lines are underutilized and pass through low density sections of the city.

Check out CATS website at www.ridetransit.org

And for a map of all the bus and rail lines, visit here.

Live downtown and work downtown, no problem without car

Live downtown and work near a line, fairly easy without car

Live along a line and work downtown, easy commute, but will require a transfer to get to most of the city

Live along a line and work along a line, transfer on commute and for most everything else. As long as your not in a hurry, you can make it work.

Bottom line, choose wisely where you live...

Edited March 16, 2008 by Mobuchu

[TD]

quoted previous posted deleted

Cool, thing is... I want to see an east west line, will we see one?

Edited March 16, 2008 by monsoon
Please don't do a long quote to respond with a one liner

[monsoon]

^Why don't you please read the 2030 Thread. It explains fully the plans for transit in this area. This isn't the appropriate topic for it.

[davidclt]

Any sign the ticket machines are taking credit cards yet?

Yep, it is. I paid for my ticked for my commute Friday with a credit card. Credit is only available if you don't do a quick ticket. Also the TVM gives you a ticket and a receipt. The TVMs are still sloooow though.

[dubone]

That is completely ridiculous to have credit card system working but not available for a 'quick ticket'! A quick ticket would be THE time people would assume they could use a credit card. I wish they'd have some common sense.

Also, from our trip to Europe, I found a vastly better system for ticketing. It is still 'proof of payment' where you only get checked periodically by conductors, but the tickets are for any type of transit within a zone for 2 hours and you must get it timestamped to be valid. Therefore, you can buy a few tickets at any time, and then stamp it at the station or inside the vehicle. They even sold tickets inside the vehicles, too, in most cities. They came out extremely fast, to the point that we could see the train coming, and quickly select our ticket, pay, get change and multiple tickets printed in the 30-45 seconds it took to get the rest of the way to our station. It put our system to shame. Not only does the zone ticketing make so much more sense, but it actually seems much more reasonable for being validated. On CATS, a return trip for a round trip ticket is completely unverifiable. Theoretically, you could use it to ride 10 times that day and a conductor wouldn't know. Whereas, a zone ticket good for 90 minutes or 120 minutes (we saw both) actually allows for short roundtrips to be cheaper than a commute, or a longer stay that has you in your destination for a longer period of time. It also allows you to get on a bus for the remainder of your trip, take the reverse train if you miss your stop, or whatever you need to do for that period of time.

They also had group tickets, where a family or group of friends could get a single ticket (printing and waste is reduced) good for 2-5 people. It is a savings if you have 4 or 5 people, about even for 3 people, and a little bit than it would cost for 2 people to get individual tickets. However, we used it a number of times for simplicity and speed.

In the end, it put our ticketing system to shame for effectiveness, speed, simplicity, ease of use, practicality, and everything else. The sad thing is, if we end up sticking with the current systems, we are bound to repeat it for every new line in the system that opens. That is a scary thought, and really reduces the quality of the system overall.

[RiverwoodCLT]

That was the way we did it in London. We had about 20 people and we got a discount from the airport to downton London.

[voyager12]

Use some perspective people.....where are your priorities? We can't discuss logical improvements to rail line ticketing when people that chose to live alongside a train are complaining that the horn hurts their ears

Edited March 17, 2008 by voyager12

[dubone]

Maybe so . Although, I have to say that it is a good choice to use the bells in urban areas. Frankly, I was surprised to hear that horn over bells in the first place. It is proper to use the horn for high speed crossings and the bells for places where people are going pretty slow anyway.

[voyager12]

I was staying in 3030 South two weeks ago and I barely noticed the horn. I think this is just another example of Charlotte small town mentality refusing to catch up with it's increasing size and normal urban cacaphony.

[palmetto75]

Its been a month or so since the last time I rode. All in all I'd say CATS has indeed made some improvements however small they may be:

1. Didn't have the stopwatch out, but pretty sure never waited more than 10 min all day for a train on Sat. I realize this was a special weekend schedule, but at least shows it can be done.

2. The GPS seems to be fixed as the "Train approaching in 1 minute" warning was spot on!

3. Had a ticket checker on the ride from uptown around 8:30. Pretty nice guy (actually maybe too nice). Said he hadn't written a ticket since the 4th, but had thrown a few people off. On that particular he said everyone had a ticket.

4. Noticed the credit card option, but was prepared with cash. At least got some cool new $ coins as change instead of a CATS voucher.

In general I thinks CATS did a great good and was very prepared for the wknd. It even seemed like they had their A list conductors working as their anouncements were very clear and instructive. Everyone I talked with one the train were from surrounding araes and were very impressed! Most impressive was the fact that almost half the people that were in my group on Sat. had used Lynx in some form to get uptown. This from a group of natives who largely questioned light rail from the get go.

[davidclt]

That is completely ridiculous to have credit card system working but not available for a 'quick ticket'! A quick ticket would be THE time people would assume they could use a credit card. I wish they'd have some common sense.

On CATS, a return trip for a round trip ticket is completely unverifiable. Theoretically, you could use it to ride 10 times that day and a conductor wouldn't know.

They also had group tickets, where a family or group of friends could get a single ticket (printing and waste is reduced) good for 2-5 people.

I was quite surprised when I pushed Quick Ticket and the machine asked me to pay. I slid my card in and nothing happened. So I hit Cancel and waited, and waited and waited (okay, so it was probably 10 seconds . . . still). And selected a one way trip when then gave me the choice of cash or credit to pay.

Regarding the round-trip ticket, first I think they're still working out the kinks for the buses. My trip is walk, train, bus and the reverse inbound. When I got on the bus with my round trip ticket for my return home, the machine spit it out as expired. The driver gave my ticket a look with a frown and issued me a transfer. As I understand it, you have 90 minutes from time of ticket issue to take an outbound trip from the station and then the rest of the day to return to the station (but not beyond). Sounds like your European experience was quite good but they've had years to get it right . I think as long as we keep cheaping out on systems in our light rail, we're going to get percisely the systems we pay for. I'm not advocating throwing money away, but making in investment for the long-term seems to be the way to go. Also I'm noticing car maintenance appears to not be happening. On the 110 there's a gasket that has fallen across one of the reader boards that would seem to be an easy fix.

The group tickets sound like a great idea, not just for convenience but with our ever so speedy TVMs might mitigate some of the speed pains. I wonder if there is anything the D-team from the TVM vendor is doing anymore to try and rectify the situation since I've heard nothing else since December.