Category: CATS

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.

Is a streetcar speedy? And other red herrings

Courtesy Charlotte Area Transit System

Here’s the thing about the proposed Charlotte streetcar expansion, the one the City Council today is probably going to pitch from the city’s five-year capital improvements plan. A streetcar is not only about speedy transportation. To judge it from that point of view is to miss the point almost entirely.

A streetcar is about economic development and trying to buttress the city’s tax base. Which, let me point out, grew only about 7 percent overall 2003-2011, with a frighteningly high proportion of the city’s acreage seeing declining home property values, not rising ones. (See map at end.)

That point seems to be lost amid debate about streetcar speed and the fact that it stops at traffic lights. Even my former colleagues at the Charlotte Observer’s editorial board seem to be assessing the streetcar’s value by whether it’s faster than driving, as in Sunday’s editorial, “Now is not the time to take streetcar ride,”  which pooh-poohs the proposed 2.2-mile extension of the streetcar’s Phase I, a 1.5-mile segment due to start construction at the end of the year. The streetcar, it says, “would operate on regular streets, stopping for red lights and traffic congestion. It wouldn’t be faster than a bus. It would merely be a very expensive, but very pretty, bus. What the city is buying is an aesthetic.”

But lost in that analysis, and in remarks by some that a streetcar is just a toy, is this: Development reacts to streetcars very differently from the way it reacts to bus routes.

Cities all over the country have built or are building streetcars and seeing them lure development. These are not all big places like Seattle, which has seen revitalization along its South Lake Union  streetcar. They’re places like Little Rock, Ark., where North Little Rock has benefited from streetcar-induced development.

If streetcars are just silly aesthetics, then a whole lot of cities are being scammed, including Tampa, Dallas, Denver, Tucson, Philadelphia and, yes, Little Rock, all of which have streetcars operating. Cities with streetcar lines under construction include Atlanta, Cincinnati and expansions in Seattle, Tucson, New Orleans and Portland, Ore.

Cities with streetcars planned but not yet built (although in some cases already funded) include Oklahoma City, Phoenix, Sacramento, San Antonio and Fort Lauderdale.

Illogical though it may seem, people are more willing to ride public transportation on rails than city buses. I know people who’ll drive 10 or 15 minutes to park and ride the Lynx light rail to uptown Charlotte, driving past multiple bus stops on the way.

And not just riders are lured. Rail transportation brings development in a way buses don’t. After all, city buses ran regularly up and down South Boulevard for years, and still do, but development didn’t blossom in what’s South End until the nonprofit Charlotte Trolley ran a demonstration project along the rail line that today holds the Lynx.

Johnson C. Smith University president Ron Carter got it right in his piece in today’s Observer,
Streetcar would bring critical development to westside.

So love it or hate it, the streetcar should be debated based on what it would do for development, not as if its only role is to convey people along a city street. We could debate the value of trying to catalyze development along Beatties Ford Road versus other city areas, such as uptown (where the city just offered up almost $8 million in public money for a baseball stadium and the county some $28 million in similar subsidies).   Others may simply think now is not the time to build a streetcar, or they may not like the way it’s funded. Those are legitimate debate points.

Would Charlotte see the development other cities have? Why or why not? How would today’s development climate affect things?  Is  the long-term streetcar route, planned before the death of Eastland Mall, still appropriate? For a map, click here. Is the funding City Manager Curt Walton proposed, paying for the streetcar the way the city pays for its street and road projects, appropriate? Some cities have used a combination of funding tools, such as public-private partnerships, municipal parking deck revenues and special tax districts.

Legitimate questions. Too bad so many people are focused, instead, on stoplights and speed.

____________________________

Map of city single-family property valuations 2003-2011, is below:
(For a slightly larger view, click on the image.)

And click here to see my interview this morning on Fox News Rising, discussing the streetcar.

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.

Commuter rail to Gaston and Union counties?

Here’s an interesting snippet from deep inside a report to a Charlotte City Council committee. It suggests that some of the money from a proposed special tax on property along the proposed Red Line commuter rail would be set aside to help pay for commuter rail to Union and Gaston counties.

This is intriguing, but extremely preliminary.

The mention is in a memo emailed to council members of the Transportation and Planning Committee in advance of the panel’s Feb. 23 meeting (noon-1:30 p.m. in the city-county government center, room 280); the documents haven’t been posted online yet.

The Red Line proposal is complex, but in a nutshell it proposes setting up a special tax district near the would-be commuter rail line from uptown Charlotte to north of Davidson. Whether it would extend into Iredell County remains an open question; Iredell County commissioners have been relentlessly negative so far. Here’s a link to a slide-show presentation the city council committee heard last month. The idea is to upgrade the not-well-used existing Norfolk Southern tracks for both commuter rail and more freight traffic. You’ve heard of Transit-Oriented Development? The idea is to promote Freight-Oriented Development, luring industries and jobs in some spots, as well as mixed-use residential and retail development in other spots.

The special tax district flanking the rail line would assess 75 cents per $100 of property value on income-producing property, that is, not on single-family residential property. For most of the special tax district, 75 percent of the revenue would go to pay for building and operating the Red Line, with 25 percent going to the local municipality.

BUT, the Friday report emailed to the committee says, “At Charlotte Gateway Station, the proposal would:
• Direct 25% of the tax increment capture proceeds to the Red Line.
• Direct 75% of the tax increment capture to a reserve fund for future commuter rail projects to Union and Gaston Counties
The proposal presumes the future commuter rail projects to Union and Gaston Counties would terminate at Charlotte Gateway Station.”
The Gateway Station is the long-proposed new Amtrak station on West Trade Street, which would also be the end point of the commuter rail line. Some people, notably local planner and architect Michael Gallis, have criticized the idea of having two different rail stations, one at Gateway and the other, for the Blue Line light rail, six or seven blocks away at the Transportation Center. The Charlotte Area Transit System proposes running shuttles between the two stations.
But commuter rail to Gaston County? If you’re thinking that’s more pie-in-the-sky than anything you’ve heard recently, then consider this: The N.C. Department of Transportation has bought several chunks of the old Piedmont and Northern Railroad right-of-way that runs from uptown Charlotte through the Wesley Heights neighborhood, crosses Tuckaseegee Road, crosses the Catawba River near N.C. 27 and heads into Mount Holly. CSX owns much of the line in Mecklenburg County, but the state owns enough of the Gaston County sections that it is introducing freight traffic there. Hmmm. The old P&N was an electrified passenger rail line built and operated between Charlotte and Gastonia by a precursor of Duke Energy. When passenger service stopped it became a freight line.
Commuter rail to Union County, though, might be in that pie-in-sky category. 

New transit rules from the feds, part II

John Muth, chief development officer for the Charlotte Area Transit System confirms that yes, as I speculated in “New transit rules from the feds” yesterday, the rules changes being proposed by the Federal Transit Administration do “cover how fixed guideway projects such as commuter rail, light rail, and bus rapid transit are evaluated for possible federal funding.”  He said in an email that he hadn’t yet reviewed the notice of proposed rule-making but will do so.

“We will be using most of the time between now and the March 26th deadline to review the guidance, compare notes with others in the industry, and prepare our comments,” Muth reports.
The latest news on the Red Line proposal is that the consultants are saying the letter from Norfolk Southern railway is not the final word on the project. Here’s a report from DavidsonNews.net.
Interesting tidbit inside that last link: Note that on Feb. 8, Randall O’Toole from the conservative/libertarian Cato Institute is giving a presentation and analysis of the Red Line plan at 9 a.m. at Cornelius Town Hall. That’s, er, interesting.

New transit rules from the feds

We’ve been waiting months for the Federal Transit Administration to pop out with some supposed new guidelines for how the FTA will evaluate its transit projects. Is this it? “FTA proposes New Starts streamline,” from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s official blog, Fast Lane, says proposed new rules “will speed up the New Starts process and focus more on transit options that fit local needs.”

Here’s the press release.

I’m checking with CATS folks to see if the proposed changes might, for instance, help the proposed Red Line commuter rail to north Mecklenburg (and maybe Iredell but that’s iffy), compete for federal funds. Currently it does not. Commuter rail projects, in general, have not met the FTA’s standards for cost-effectiveness. That’s the big reason CATS and the N.C. Department of Transportation and the Red Line task force have created the idea of pairing commuter rail with freight rail-oriented development. 

And by the way, the fact that Norfolk Southern says freight and commuter rail are incompatible may not mean the railroad is not willing to partner. Or it may.  It’s worth remembering that the railroads have a reputation for driving a very hard bargain. Or being great negotiators, if you want to put it another way.
 

The huge significance of the Red Line proposal

MOORESVILLE – “Revolutionary is not too strong a word for plans being laid out today to a room full of government officials, consultants and interested laypeople. We’re at a “summit” to discuss ideas for reviving a long-stalled proposal to build a commuter rail line to Iredell County.

For starters, the plan involves regional cooperation. Second, the current public money crunch has forced a creative new way of thinking about transportation financing.

Even for a region that’s had plenty of regional “discussions” for decades, what’s being proposed is a major leap forward for working across county boundaries. The complicated proposal depends, in part, on seven governmental bodies agreeing to form a new legal entity, called a joint powers authority. Members would be Mecklenburg and Iredell counties, and Charlotte, Huntersville, Cornelius, Davidson and Mooresville.(The JPA wouldn’t have taxing authority.)

Not since the great Mecklenburg annexation/spheres of influence agreements of the 1980s and the formation of the Mecklenburg-only Metropolitan Transit Commission in the 1990s have so many local governments been asked to come to a formal, legal agreement of this sort. And this time the agreement must cross county lines. That’s a rare proposition around here, where crossing the county line can put you into a place with an entirely different political culture, and where most of the counties outside Mecklenburg harbor, if not fear, then at least wariness of Charlotte’s behemoth footprint.

But if there’s to be any hope of prudently guiding this huge and sprawling metro region away from financially unsupportable growth, it’s going to have to come with a large dose of inter-county cooperation. The choices at hand are these: Cooperate, and continue to progress? Or maintain geographic silos and find the region bypassed by other, more cooperative metro regions?

Viewed that way, what happens to the Red Line proposal could well be a harbinger of the region’s future.

The other reason today’s summit and the Red Line plan carries major significance is this: For the first time since the 1998 transit sales tax campaign, the MTC and member governments are putting on their thinking caps about financing.

Here’s a link to the slide show presentation Tuesday.

Until now, most people here pretty much figured transportation money – including roads, not just transit – would eternally flow down from the feds and the state. For transit, you’d also add in the local revenue stream from the half-cent sales tax, collected only in Mecklenburg. (Individual cities, of course, also use local tax money for local street projects that aren’t part of the vast state road network.)

Even before the 2008 financial crash, it was starting to look as if the MTC couldn’t build out its five-corridor plan in 25 years without more money than it could expect from the half-cent sales tax and expected state and federal funds. Since then, the recession and continuing high unemployment have battered the sales tax revenue. Until a year ago the MTC appeared to believe it had few options beyond delaying transit construction for decades, pushing for a politically unlikely sales tax increase or passively hoping the sales tax revived.

Finally, with help from the N.C. Department of Transportation and some savvy consultants, it has gotten smarter and more creative about finding money. They have looked around the country at other metro areas that are building transit systems. Two important words arose: Value capture.

That means recognizing that building infrastructure such as highways and transit lines makes nearby property more valuable.  (It’s why land speculators like to buy property 20 years before the state highway goes through.) Instead of letting public spending enrich private landowners with little monetary benefit to the public, why not “capture” some of that increased value for public purposes?

A value-capture set-up would use some of the new, higher tax revenues from the now-more-valuable property to pay off bonds sold to build those same infrastructure improvements. The Washington Metro, the Dallas Area Rapid Transit System and the Portland, Ore., streetcar system have all used value capture in their construction.

The Red Line plan proposes two value-capture techniques. One is tax-increment financing (TIF) – using some of the expected higher property taxes to pay off bonds.  Another is a special assessment district, formed when a majority of the income-producing property owners (i.e. not owner-occupied residential homes) along the Red Line rail line agree to an extra property tax (.75 per $100 in assessed property value is what’s been proposed).  Most of that tax revenue would help fund construction, but 25 percent would go to the general fund of the local governments.

The proposals laid out today must undergo weeks of examination and discussion among elected officials before any decisions. And nothing is certain. For instance, Iredell County is a key player, yet not one Iredell County commissioner was at today’s meeting in Mooresville.  All other affected elected bodies had representatives in the room.  What does that mean for the proposal’s chances?

But even if the proposal ultimately fails, the precedents it’s setting, in pushing for smarter transit financing and in pushing for cross-county cooperation, will have far-reaching resonance.

Charlotte Trolley to roll through new neighborhood?

The nonprofit Charlotte Trolley has won a $15,000 grant from Wells Fargo to work toward putting historic Car 85 back on track, this time through the Wesley Heights neighborhood just northwest of uptown.

The organization hopes to start another demonstration project, like the one along South Boulevard that in the 1990s ignited enthusiasm for light rail. This time, the route would be the rail line adjacent to the Stewart Creek Greenway, said Charlotte Trolley board president Greg Pappanastos. It was the site of an original line of the former Piedmont & Northern electrified passenger railroad. Charlotte Trolley is exploring how it could use that still-existing pathway.

Here’s why Charlotte Trolley’s role is more than just that of a bunch of history and rail buffs.

As I wrote in a piece for Grist.org last year:

Back in the 1980s, many of top leaders of both political parties in Charlotte knew regional transit was needed. But any suggestions for taxes to fund it were DOA at the rural-dominated state legislature, whose permission was needed. Two barriers had to fall: Convincing a conservative electorate that transit wasn’t a frill, and finding millions to build it.

Enter Charlotte Trolley, a volunteer group of rail buffs and enlightened developers who decided to restore an antique trolley car (found being used as a rental home outside Charlotte) and run it on an unused railbed near downtown. In 1996, after eight years of fundraisers, Charlotte Trolley launched a 1.8-mile ride, drawing throngs who loved the taste of old-fashioned streetcar travel. Keen-eyed developers built rail-oriented mixed-use projects, betting light rail service would follow.

Car 85, the last Charlotte streetcar to be put out to pasture in 1938, wasn’t allowed to run on the Lynx Blue Line tracks for safety reasons and was put out to pasture again. The Charlotte Area Transit System, in a budget-cutting move, scrapped the trolley service that was using replica cars.

“Their [Wells Fargo’s] support helps us pursue our mission to engage the community and put a vintage trolley back on tracks,” Pappanastos said. “We’re excited about the possibility of running historic Car 85 again, and believe we have a viable prospect for doing that on the city’s west side.”

The group will hold a “Vision Launch” on Wednesday, Nov. 2, at the Trolley Museum to celebrate the Wells Fargo grant and kick off planning and neighborhood outreach for the new line.

A reminder for rail purists: A streetcar runs in the street. A trolley runs from an overhead electric wire. Sometimes a trolley is also a streetcar. But if it doesn’t run in a street, it isn’t.

(Disclosure: Until a few months ago my husband, Frank Barrows, was on the Charlotte Trolley board, an unpaid volunteer position.)

Carroll Gray to leave N.Meck transportation group

DavidsonNews.net tells us former Charlotte Chamber CEO Carroll Gray has told the Lake Norman Transportation Commission he’ll leave the commission’s executive director job at the end of this year. Gray, 71, of Cornelius helped launch and lead the regional lobbying group over the past three years. He told DavidsonNews.net he has mixed emotions about the decision, “but I think it’s time to move on.”
The LNTC has been effective in getting the long-planned and long-sidetracked proposal for commuter rail service from uptown Charlotte to Davidson (and possibly Mooresville) back into the mix for the Metropolitan Transit Commission, the group that oversees the Charlotte Area Transit System.

See my earlier posts on changes afoot in the strategy for funding the Red Line:
“Charlotte transit plans due for a makeover?”
and
“New strategy for transit to North Meck”

Charlotte’s transit plans due for a make-over?

It appears some basic assumptions about Charlotte’s transit lines may be about to change.

One: The North Corridor transit line (formerly the Purple Line but now the Red Line) will be commuter rail on a little-used Norfolk Southern rail right-of-way leading from uptown to Mooresville in Iredell County.

Two: The Southeast Corridor (a.k.a. the Silver Line) will run down the center of Independence Boulevard from uptown to the Levine Campus of Central Piedmont Community College in Matthews. It’s going to be bus rapid transit. Or maybe rail. In 2006 the Metropolitan Transit Commission agreed that BRT was the preferred alternative but it would wait at least five years to see if light rail made more sense by then.

But the governing body for transit in Mecklenburg County, the Metropolitan Transit Commission, heard two reports Wednesday night that contemplate changing both those assumptions. (My posting on the Red Line proposal. And my posting on the Silver Line proposal.) The MTC hasn’t voted yet on either, but the discussion and questions didn’t point to huge disagreements – at least not openly.

The problems, of course, stem from the MTC’s diminished expectations for money. It can’t afford to build and operate all five transit lines first envisioned in the mid-1990s.

The problem is especially acute for the Red Line, which has beaucoup ardent supporters in the north Mecklenburg towns of Huntersville, Cornelius and Davidson, who point out that the line is pretty much shovel-ready. Except for that pesky money thing. The new idea is borne of a strong push from the North Meck towns, who pooled their money and created the Lake Norman Transportation Commission, with former Charlotte Chamber CEO Carroll Gray as director. They’ve been strategically pushing political buttons and have succeeded in getting the attention of the N.C. Department of Transportation, among others.

Basically, they’re looking for a strategy that will help find funding to make up for the lack of federal funding, which originally had been expected to pay 25 percent of the costs.

The new strategy: Position the rail line as “economic development,” not just “carrying passengers.” Be open to partnering with freight operations, which opens up new potential lending and other strategies. It’s not “commuter rail,” per se, but “rail.”  You’ve heard of TOD – transit-oriented development? Wednesday night there was talk of FOD – freight-oriented development.

For the Silver Line, the problem is also funding. This Southeast Corridor has been contentious. The vocal and organized neighborhood groups in East Charlotte have not been keen on the concept of any form of bus transit. Bus routes haven’t been shown to perk up development the way rail does, although BRT supporters note that a fixed bus way is different from a changeable bus route on city streets. Hence the maybe-bus-maybe-rail position of the MTC.

But, as I and others have written, expecting any form of transit along Independence Boulevard to spark much pedestrian-friendly, close-knit transit-oriented development means closing your eyes to the reality of Independence. It’s a freeway that barrels through miles of highway-oriented, suburban strip development.  Unless someone plans to bulldoze miles of buildings and rebuild from the dirt up – which no one does, due to expense and the sheer impracticality of that notion – it’s not going to be in the same universe as “walkable” for many generations to come.

A group from the nonprofit Urban Land Institute studied Indy Boulevard last year and recommended scrapping, for good, the idea of light rail down its median.  You wouldn’t get much development anyway, the ULI panel said.  Instead, focus on the proposed Central Avenue streetcar and add a streetcar down Monroe Road as well. Since that proposal, a task force has been meeting and it’s recommending similarly.  It suggests being a tad vaguer about that Monroe Road streetcar in case some form of light rail down the CSX rail line to Matthews emerges as a possibility.

But it is suggesting the MTC “rescind the provision that reserves space in the center of the [Independence] highway.” Use that space, now a high-occupancy-vehicle lane used only by buses, for a high-occupancy-toll lane to be used by buses and motorists willing to pay a toll to escape the regular Indy Boulevard congestion.

It was inevitable, of course, that the original five-corridor plans for Charlotte’s transit system would evolve. In the next few months, look for some significant evolutions to take place.