Category: BLE

Getting creative with Blue Line Extension design

This is about something that was not the big headline from the Charlotte City Council tonight.

The big news, of course, was that the council passed a new budget that raises the city’s property tax rate by a little more than 3 cents, from 43.7 cents per $100 assessed value to 46.86 cents, to pay for a huge bundle of building projects. Those projects include a cross-city bike/ped trail, renovating Bojangles Coliseum (the original 1950s Charlotte Coliseum on Independence Boulevard), building a new 911 call center, and so on. (Read more here. And here’s a link to the city’s budget department.)

But during the dinner meeting, the council heard a short presentation from a couple of planners about an idea to help the new light rail line look a little better than the first one, the Lynx Blue Line. “Some of the components of the Blue Line we wish that we could have done better,” Planning Director Debra Campbell said. So for the Blue Line Extension, city planners and the Charlotte Area Transit System are looking to use some of the already budgeted art-in-transit funds to dress up a number of the walls, bridges and other light rail equipment whose design can range from boring to bleak.

Example of a standard wall finish (taken from tonight’s slide presentation) is above, right.

Now, however, designs have been drawn for concrete for walls that is molded with a flowered pattern. Here’s an example of a typical wall, and then the one CATS and the city hope to build, instead. (All images courtesy of the City of Charlotte.)

And the nicer way to build a wall:

Here’s a rendering of how some of the more artistically designed walls might look:

The light rail bridge that will be built over Harris Boulevard near UNC Charlotte could have an artistic railing, with a pitcher plant design on the piers:

And, for about the 200th time, council member Andy Dulin complained about the gray and orange color scheme on the bridges along the already built Lynx light rail line. Those colors were chosen by artists, he said, and he thinks they are unattractive.  I don’t always agree with Dulin but he is spot on in this assessment. The color that was supposed to conjure the red clay soil of the region instead conjures a Home Depot sign. The blue-gray of the Southern sky is more like battleship gray.

The planners assured Dulin that orange and gray would not be used.

Transformative transit, still on track

Mayor Anthony Foxx, (L-R) U.S. Rep. Mel Watt, D-N.C., FTA Administrator Peter Rogoff before Tuesday ceremony

In reality, they signed the agreement 30 minutes before the public ceremony. I imagine no one wanted to take any chances with the legalities.

But at 10 a.m. today, with speeches and congratulations, dignitaries from Charlotte, Raleigh and Washington on Tuesday made formal the U.S. Federal Transit Administration’s commitment of $580 million to help extend the Lynx Blue Line from Seventh Street uptown northeast to the UNC Charlotte campus. The signing of the full funding grant agreement, as it’s called, is something of a formality, but its significance can hardly be overstated. FTA Administrator Peter Rogoff, in town for the event, predicted ridership on the Blue Line would double. I think that’s underestimating it.

Mayor Anthony Foxx greets N.C. Transportation Secretary Gene Conti

The 9.3-mile Blue Line Extension, when it opens in 2017, will connect the heart of a city of 750,000 to a campus of some 30,000 people. To compare, 30,000 is bigger than the city of Statesville and roughly the size of Monroe, Mooresville or Salisbury (all 33,000). And the university’s plans call for continued growth. In other words, there is a huge destination at the end of the Blue Line Extension that dwarfs what lies at the southern end of the Blue Line: the town of Pineville (population 7,678). OK, to be fair there are a lot of people living near, but not in Pineville. Still, in my view the part of the city near the BLE terminus is larger and more robust.

In addition to the UNC Charlotte campus, the university city area holds a regional hospital (Carolinas Medical Center-University), as well as stores, houses, apartments and offices. It is a big enough destination that it has its own Charlotte Chamber chapter.

Among those 30,000 university students, faculty and staff are some who already travel regularly between the main campus and the university’s Center City Building, less than a block from today’s ceremonies at what will become the Ninth Street Station. (Disclosure: I am one of those staff members and was disappointed when I asked if the new section could be finished way ahead of its scheduled 2017 and was told, “No.”) It’s fair to predict that as transportation gets easier, even more of those faculty, staff and students will make that journey even more often.

Also in the crowd was CATS’ first CEO, Ron Tober

Charlotte is home to a major state university, yet the university, for much of its existence, wasn’t physically integrated into the rest of the city. That has been changing in recent years, and with the new light rail line it will change dramatically. Students will be able to travel easily from campus – where the station will be near the Student Union and a large cluster of dormitories – to South End, uptown and points in between, notably the NoDa neighborhood of bars, restaurants and renovated mill houses. Heck, they can even travel to the outskirts of Pineville. And people in other parts of the city will be able to travel more easily to the main university campus without having to fight interstate highway traffic.

The university has been eager for the light rail project, granting a right-of-way worth $4 million. “UNC Charlotte – like CATS,  the federal government, the citizens of Mecklenburg County and the State of North Carolina – is deeply and directly invested in this project,” Chancellor Phil Dubois said in a prepared statement. (He was out of town for his son’s wedding and couldn’t attend Tuesday’s ceremony.)

In addition, the city’s hope is that transit-oriented development will start to reshape some of the more bedraggled sections of North Tryon Street that stretch from Eastway Drive north to near the university. If the light rail’s South Corridor is any predictor, it will. For my part, I say let the work begin.

Blue Line Extension facts

Stations: 11
Projected average weekday ridership by 2035: 24,500
Projected travel time from I-485/South Boulevard to UNC Charlotte: 47 minutes
Funding breakdown for $1.16 million project: Federal money $580 million, N.C. DOT money $299 million, Charlotte Area Transit System money $250 million, City of Charlotte money and in-kind spending $31 million.
For more information, click here

Smells like train spirit

What just rolled into my email inbox is an invitation from the Charlotte Area Transit System to a “major transportation funding announcement” Tuesday morning. “Please join FTA [Federal Transit Administration] Administrator Peter Rogoff, Congressman Mel Watt, Mayor Anthony Foxx and CATS CEO Carolyn Flowers … ” it says.

The time: 10 a.m. Tuesday, Oct. 16
The place – and this is a big clue – “9th Street Trolley Station.”

That’s a station built for and used by Charlotte Trolley when the nonprofit was running its trolley service through uptown. But the trolley service is defunct (at least for now), and the station is empty. That would, however, be the first station of the new Blue Line Extension.

I’ve made a few calls, but so far to little effect, to try to get confirmation or denial of whether this is what it smells like. Olaf Kinard, CATS’ marketing and communications director, would neither confirm nor deny anything. Mayor Anthony Foxx’s press secretary, Al Killeffer, would say only, “Just come to the event.”

Although most everyone in town has taken it for granted that the Blue Line Extension – a.k.a. the Northeast Corridor, or, the light rail to UNC Charlotte – would of course get built, a Full Funding Grant Agreement is essentially the signed agreement between the federal government and the local transit agency. While there are never any guarantees when it comes to federal funding, it’s a lot harder for the state or the feds to decide not to pony up the money if the FFGA has been signed. (The FFGA with the state was already signed.) With the current anti-rail-transit sentiment among many in the congressional and state legislative leadership, getting this agreement signed and nailed down is major.

If, of course, that’s what this is.

Was light rail at root of odd council budget vote?

A source with good Charlotte City Council information tells me this morning it’s highly likely the bizarre 6-5 City Council vote Monday night to spike the proposed city budget (but proposing no other budget, either) was related to an attempt in the N.C. Senate to kill any state funding for Charlotte’s Blue Line Extension project. (Click here for more on the council’s budget vote.)

The proposed Senate budget, released Monday, as reported by the N.C. Metropolitan Mayors Coalition, would cut the state’s transit programs by “eliminating the New Starts Program and transferring the $28.9 million to the General Maintenance Reserve. The Charlotte light rail Blue Line Extension is the only project in the New Starts Program. The budget bill specifically says public transportation appropriations shall not be expended on any fixed guideway project in Mecklenburg County. There is an additional provision that says fixed guideway projects can compete for Highway Trust Fund dollars under the equity formula.”
 
What’s the connection to the city budget? My source believes the issue is Republican opposition to the city’s proposed streetcar project, which would have cost $119 million, part of the almost $1 billion, multiyear capital projects budget City Manager Curt Walton proposed. The capital program is what would have required a property tax increase of 3.6 cents per $100 in property value.

Council member Michael Barnes, a strong supporter of the BLE, which would run through his district, asked several questions during the council meeting to make Charlotte Area Transit System chief Carolyn Flowers  specify publicly that the 30-year CATS plan, funded with a countywide sales tax, does not include money for the proposed streetcar project, which would come from city money only.

My source speculates that the four council members who raised barely a peep against the budget through months of council discussion and who were part of a 9-2 straw vote for it May 30, but then voted against it Monday – Barnes and at-large members Patrick Cannon, Claire Fallon and Beth Pickering – will try to get the streetcar removed from the capital budget. Why? Because influential Republicans at the state level don’t like it, and may be using the BLE as a bargaining chip. I won’t identify whom my source named as behind it until I can get that person’s comments.

And I’m seeking comment from some of those council members. Will update this when I have more information.