Category: CATS

Want your face on the side of a bus? Now it’s possible

Advertising’s coming back to Charlotte city buses. And it’s coming to light rail cars – an option not available in 2001, when the governing body for the Charlotte Area Transit System voted to remove the ads from bus exteriors.

The Metropolitan Transit Commission’s vote was about as split as it is possible for such a vote to be. Each municipality has one vote, as do the county and the N.C. Board of Transportation representative (currently developer John Collett). The first vote Wednesday night, on a motion to approve the new advertising , was 4-4, with Matthews Public Works Director Ralph Messera abstaining. Because of the tie, MTC chair and Mecklenburg County commissioners’ chair Jennifer Roberts declared the motion failed, until someone pointed out an “abstain” vote is counted as a yes. That made the vote 5-4.

Messera said he abstained because, while he believed Matthews Mayor James Taylor was in favor, he had not had a specific conversation to nail down how he wanted Matthews to vote.

Olaf Kinard of CATS said projections showed CATS would clear between $900,000 to $1 million a year over five years, taking into account its expenses for putting the advertising program into effect

Revenue from the county’s half-cent sales tax for transit has been flat, while the system’s 2030 plan for building more light rail, streetcar and possibly bus rapid transit corridors is based on a projection that shows those revenues steadily climbing. So the MTC has been pondering whether to look for more revenue opportunities.

Why vote against what, to some, would seem a no-brainer idea for more revenue? Huntersville Mayor Jill Swain said she worried about quality control for the ads. Others pointed out that CATS has spent the past 10 years positioning itself, to the public, as a clean and efficient bus and transit system. The image issue was a key reason the MTC abandoned ads on buses in 2001. “We’re violating the brand we established 10 years ago,” said Davidson Mayor John Woods.

Looking ahead, there’s a decent possibility the MTC will go to voters in coming years for new taxes or other public revenue. It would be even harder for the MTC to ask for new public revenue if it were still rejecting a revenue stream that many in the public consider low-hanging fruit to be plucked.
Photo: Get ready for more advertising on CATS buses, such as this on promoting Charlotte Motor Speedway’s October races. Credit: Charlotte Observer file photo

Want your face on the side of a bus? Now it’s possible

Advertising’s coming back to Charlotte city buses. And it’s coming to light rail cars – an option not available in 2001, when the governing body for the Charlotte Area Transit System voted to remove the ads from bus exteriors.

The Metropolitan Transit Commission’s vote was about as split as it is possible for such a vote to be. Each municipality has one vote, as do the county and the N.C. Board of Transportation representative (currently developer John Collett). The first vote Wednesday night, on a motion to approve the new advertising , was 4-4, with Matthews Public Works Director Ralph Messera abstaining. Because of the tie, MTC chair and Mecklenburg County commissioners’ chair Jennifer Roberts declared the motion failed, until someone pointed out an “abstain” vote is counted as a yes. That made the vote 5-4.

Messera said he abstained because, while he believed Matthews Mayor James Taylor was in favor, he had not had a specific conversation to nail down how he wanted Matthews to vote.

Olaf Kinard of CATS said projections showed CATS would clear between $900,000 to $1 million a year over five years, taking into account its expenses for putting the advertising program into effect

Revenue from the county’s half-cent sales tax for transit has been flat, while the system’s 2030 plan for building more light rail, streetcar and possibly bus rapid transit corridors is based on a projection that shows those revenues steadily climbing. So the MTC has been pondering whether to look for more revenue opportunities.

Why vote against what, to some, would seem a no-brainer idea for more revenue? Huntersville Mayor Jill Swain said she worried about quality control for the ads. Others pointed out that CATS has spent the past 10 years positioning itself, to the public, as a clean and efficient bus and transit system. The image issue was a key reason the MTC abandoned ads on buses in 2001. “We’re violating the brand we established 10 years ago,” said Davidson Mayor John Woods.

Looking ahead, there’s a decent possibility the MTC will go to voters in coming years for new taxes or other public revenue. It would be even harder for the MTC to ask for new public revenue if it were still rejecting a revenue stream that many in the public consider low-hanging fruit to be plucked.
Photo: Get ready for more advertising on CATS buses, such as this on promoting Charlotte Motor Speedway’s October races. Credit: Charlotte Observer file photo

A ‘CATS’ fight for transit money?

Looks as if the Charlotte Area Transit System may finally be getting some in-state competition for federal transit money for light-rail. The News & Observer of Raleigh reported Sunday (“Triangle Transit proposes 2 light-rail lines”) that Triangle Transit, the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill transit agency, is looking at two potential light rail routes. The TTA timetable has it applying to the Federal Transit Administration next summer and, in fall 2011, asking Triangle-area voters for a 1/2-cent sales tax to fund the transit plans.

“In a fall 2011 referendum, Triangle voters are expected to consider approving a half-cent sales tax – which would add 5 cents to every taxable $10 purchase – that would cover a large share of new bus and rail costs.”

For now, the TTA has dropped its earlier idea of commuter rail to the Research Triangle Park. It’s looking at light rail instead, because light rail – which is powered by overhead electric wires – need not run on a railroad right of way as it does in Charlotte, but can run in the streets as well, i..e., as a streetcar. (For terminology geeks, just fyi, “heavy rail” doesn’t mean Amtrak-like passenger rail. It means a rail system powered by an electrified rail on the bottom, like subways, with the so-called “third rail,” hence the allusions to a “third rail” that one must never touch without deadly effect.)

The N&O’s Bruce Siceloff reports:
“So, at public meetings last week and this week, Triangle Transit officials and consultants are explaining that the first light-rail trains will not run through the region’s suburban center. The two most promising corridors are about 20 miles apart in the western Triangle and Wake County:

– Northwest Cary through N.C. State University and downtown to Triangle Town Center in North Raleigh, 18 miles. It rates high in projected rider counts, job and housing density, development potential, and capital costs compared to the number of weekday transit trips.

– UNC Hospitals in Chapel Hill to Alston Avenue in downtown Durham, 17 miles. It rates high in rider counts, low-income residents who are more likely to depend on transit, and capital and operating costs. This corridor is rated weak in housing density and development potential.

And don’t read right over that part about “bus.” A close relative of mine was trying to get to Chapel Hill from the Durham Amtrak station on Labor Day and realized, with some shock, that the TTA’s Chapel Hill-Durham bus didn’t run on the holiday. Better bus service in the Triangle would likely be welcomed by many.

TTA is also looking at “a limited kind of region-wide rail service that was not in the cards a few years ago. Commuter trains pulled by standard diesel locomotives are proposed to run from west Durham to the Wake-Johnston county line. These trains would operate on weekday rush hours, every 30 or 60 minutes, and make stops in RTP.”

I was joking when I wrote that headline about a CATS fight. While CATS and every other transit agency in the country knows competition is tight for federal money, in the long run it’s probably better for all N.C. cities to have multiple mass transit systems. That way the N.C. DOT, the legislature and all the entities holding the money bags – not to mention the voting (and riding) public – can get their heads around the concept that “transportation” means more than just private-auto transportation.

Anyway, the CATS fight currently is what’s going on in the Mecklenburg County Metropolitan Transit Commission, between backers of the proposed commuter rail to North Mecklenburg and those of the being-built-but-rather-slower-than-planned extension of light rail to UNC Charlotte.

New look at old problem: Paying for transportation

RED WING, Minn. – Planning consultant Scott Polikov from Fort Worth, Texas, has an idea that needs a bigger audience. It’s about how you find money to build transit systems. That’s a problem Charlotte is facing, along with dozens of other U.S. cities. Based on his thinking it’s something Charlotte has possibly mismanaged, along with many other places.

The key understanding is that building a transit system (or any transportation system, whether it’s highways or canals) creates huge profits for real estate interests. Example: A transit authority will announce it’s building a line, and where the stations will be. Then it will go out and buy right of way, often through eminent domain, along that planned route, paying now-higher land prices, since the building of the line will make that land worth more.

“In Europe, the landowner pays for the right to have the station,” he said.

Why shouldn’t the government (that is, all of us, since we are the government) capture some of the value that it’s creating (that we’re creating) by building that infrastructure?

Indeed, in the pre-crash era there were developers who were seriously thinking about putting up millions to build Charlotte’s proposed commuter rail transit lines, because they knew it would make their development significantly more valuable. The same was true for the Triangle Transit proposed transit line.

Sometime, credit for real estate development will re-emerge. When that happens, why shouldn’t the Charlotte Area Transit System, for instance, auction off the development rights at the transit stations? And then use that money as a revenue stream? (Yeah, yeah there are a lot of legal issues involved, not to mention political ones.)

Consider how development has occurred along the Lynx light rail line through South End. The line was fixed. In an understandable effort to lure transit-oriented development at the station areas, the city has doggedly gone in and pro-actively up-zoned land to the TOD zoning – thereby giving away huge land value to the property owners. It also gave away any real power the city planners might have had to force better urban design onto that TOD development. If you’re already allowed by right to do your TOD, why should you listen to the city’s request that you do something different – for instance, including some affordable housing units?

(I’m at a yearly conference among people affiliated with the Citistates Associates, a loose coalition of planners, economists, think-tankers, current and former elected officials, Chamber of Commerce execs, etc., who share an interest in metro region growth issues.)

iCatch the Light Rail

I sat next to CATS‘ honcho Olaf Kinard at the Monday city council dinner meeting and he showed me a new mobile phone app that CATS has worked up, with a local company Myjive Inc. It’s called iCatch LYNX. It shows you the closest Lynx (light rail) station, and when the next train is arriving.

It’s free. Just do an app search for iCatch LYNX and you’ll find it. Works on iPhone and Blackberries, he says. Phase II will work on Androids.

Kinard, who’s the director of marketing and communications, says they’ll have an app for buses, starting in about a month. Good. The Lynx schedule is easy to remember, and except in the early mornings on weekends, the trains are never more than 20 minutes apart. Buses are way more complicated, and sometimes if you miss one you’ll be waiting 50 minutes or more for the next one. Or all weekend, since some routes simply don’t operate on weekends.

Your face on the side of a CATS bus?

Carolyn Flowers, CEO of the Charlotte Area Transit System, tells me today that she expects the issue of advertising on CATS vehicles to come up at the Wednesday meeting of the Metropolitan Transit Commission. Here’s a link to the agenda.

Former CATS CEO Ron Tober nixed the advertising early on in his tenure. He told me he thought it was important, in launching a new transit service, for it to look professional and clean. And certainly, the Lynx Blue Line has been very successful. I am not sure how much of that is due to the lack of advertising placards and how much to other factors, though I suspect the latter.

That said, they should look into the advertising. With the half-cent transit sales tax revenues dropping to 2005 levels, I think they could trade off some pristine appearances in exchange for some cash. Flowers said the most recent estimate, at least a year old and done by the City of Charlotte, said ads could bring in from $590,000 to $2.6 million a year. (Transit sales tax revenues this year are projected at $57 million, with 2010-11 projections at $59.4 million.)

(Note: Flowers’ father died today in California. She’s traveling to the West Coast and expects to be gone several days.)

Envisioning streetcar stops

What should the stops look like for the city’s proposed streetcar project? You can weigh in next Thursday, Feb. 18, 6-8 p.m., at the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Government Center in Room 267.

A press release from the city and from the Charlotte Area Transportation System (CATS) quotes John Mryzgod, civil engineer with the city: “It is important we understand what the public would like to see because it gives us the tools to not only design a streetcar stop, but to design a stop that ties in with the fabric of the community.”

(Background: The CATS plan for transit for 2030 includes a streetcar. The city of Charlotte doesn’t want to wait that long so it is going to try to build the streetcar without CATS funding. So far, it is working on planning and engineering but doesn’t have construction money. It is, though, applying for a federal grant to build a 1.5-mile segment of the proposed 10-mile project.)

I will add my two-cents’ worth here, instead of at the hearing:

• Why does a streetcar line need “stops” that must be “designed”? On other streetcar systems I’ve seen – most recently Toronto, but including Rome and New Orleans – you just got onto the streetcar in the street, as you would a bus. Obviously, thought must go into things such as where it stops, how to sell the tickets (or maybe just use machines that take money, as buses do?) and which stops will be busy enough so benches and shelter might be offered. Other than that, don’t spend money on anything more than an easily spotted sign and the same amenities you’d offer at a bus stop.

The stations on the Lynx Line were way, way over-designed, IMHO, and more reminiscent of subway (aka “heavy rail”) stops or commuter rail stations. Maybe CATS figured that in a city of transit newbies we’d need something prettier and more noticeable than just a spot to buy tickets and some shelter while we wait.

• That said, shade, shelter from the rain and a spot to sit would be welcome at the busier streetcar stops. So, too, would be system maps plus route and schedule information about the streetcar. The maps should show what major attractions are at each stop – the arena, the county courthouse, police station, Central Piedmont Community College, Presbyterian Hospital, Johnson C. Smith University, etc.

• And I will take this opportunity to lodge a gripe about something that’s bugged me for years about CATS bus stops, although to be fair I’ll note bus stops are much improved in recent years. But why not a shelter with a roof that shades you from the sun? Bus shelter roofs should be opaque, not tinted plastic. This is the South, for crying out loud. It gets mighty hot here. Shade is vital.
To learn more about the Charlotte Streetcar Project, please visit http://www.charlottefuture.com/ or try this link.

‘Differences of opinion’ on transit plans

TRYON, N.C. – After the lunch break at the City Council retreat (great blackberry cobbler! – and yes, the Observer journalists pay for their own lunch) talk has turned to transportation.

Hard to blog and take notes and listen simultaneously, but lotta talk about concern in North Meck and on the MTC about whether the North transit line should have been built ahead of the NE line and the streetcar. Of course, no MTC money is being used to build the city’s streetcar project, but, as City Manager Curt Walton said, at the recent Metropolitan Transit Commission meeting, city officials showed CATS data to prove that no CATS/MTC money going to the streetcar, “But they didn’t believe it.” He also cited what he said was “a legitimate difference of opinion” about whether the Northeast line or the North line should be moving forward next.

What Walton didn’t say, but that savvy transit officials would, is that the Bush administration’s rules on how to rate transit projects’ cost-efficiency meant the North corridor did not qualify for any federal money, and the NE corridor just squeaked in by the skin of its teeth. If someone is to be bludgeoned about why the North corridor is not being built, folks might want to be looking toward the Federal Transit Administration and the previous administration. ( Note: The Obama administration has announced that it’s changing those rules on how to rate transit projects.)

And CDOT director Danny Pleasant just now made that point, as I was typing the above. Neither the North Corridor nor the streetcar qualified for fed transit funds under the old rules. But things are changing.

Sen. Nesbitt, welcome to Charlotte

Sen. Martin Nesbitt, D-Buncombe, the N.C. Senate’s new majority leader, visited fair Charlotte on Wednesday to meet and greet and, it would seem, reassure the business community that he will be just as business-friendly as his predecessor, Sen. Tony Rand of Fayetteville.

Accompanied by Sen. Malcolm Graham, D-Mecklenburg, Nesbitt stopped by the Observer’s editorial board – for which we are grateful – and as we chatted, before Graham arrived, he talked a bit about the need for better public transit, especially rail. Seems he had gotten caught in a lengthy traffic jam driving I-95 past Washington. “It was a hundred-mile traffic jam, from Baltimore to Richmond,” he said. “We’ve got to find another way.”

But then, he started talking about rail transit and how it hasn’t been successful. Mentioned Charlotte’s new (as of 2007) light rail line and asked how it had worked out. We told him it had beat all its ridership projections and was in most parts deemed a success. “Oh,” he said.

I think Charlotte Area Transit System (aka CATS) leaders might want to buy the man a lunch or three and take him for a spin on the Lynx some rush hour afternoon …

My colleague Jack Betts, who among his many valuable contributions writes the This Old State blog, recalled:

Back in the 1990s when legislators could still accept such trips, the Charlotte Chamber brought legislators to Charlotte for a Hornets basketball game and a tour around town. I wound up strolling around the Blumenthal with Nesbitt and another House appropriations chair, David Diamont of Surry County. It was obvious neither of them got to Charlotte much, and they seemed to be awestruck with all the new buildings, the cultural amenities – including some built with state assistance – and the can-do atmosphere that marked a city clearly on the rise. They were struck by how many things Charlotte had and aspired to, compared with the rest of the state.

The things they saw in Charlotte were not new things that no one from elsewhere wouldn’t have known about, and it struck me that Charlotte was not a part of the state that these legislators visited often.

Nesbitt’s remarks about transit Wednesday seemed to show that he had not spent much time in the Queen City since then, either. It’s not that he doesn’t get around. With a district in Buncombe, a law practice and a stock car racing team he helps his son with, and a legislative concentration on what went wrong with the state’s badly botched mental health reforms, he has stayed busy – and as Senate majority leader he’ll be busier yet.

Betts concluded: “If I were the Charlotte transit folks, I’d have a representative sitting in his office tomorrow morning at 8 a.m.”

Commuter rail – westward ho?

Commuter rail to … I bet you’re thinking, ” … to Davidson and North Mecklenburg.” A rail line to the north is one of CATS’ top priorities, to be built as soon as the feds cough up some money to build it.

In Gaston County, though, they’re thinking commuter rail from Charlotte to Gastonia. The Gaston Gazette recently reported on the City of Gastonia’s first estimates of what it would cost to build a commuter line on the old Piedmont & Northern railbed, which runs from Charlotte to Mount Holly and on to Gastonia: $265 million to $300 million.

Part of the route’s right of way – between Mount Holly and Charlotte – is controlled by CSX and carries freight. The N.C. Rail Division of the N.C. DOT owns the 11.6 miles from Mount Holly to Gastonia, plus a 3-mile spur to Belmont. Here’s a link to a map of the P&N line in Gaston County. And here’s a link to the NCDOT’s page showing the rail rights of way it owns. The P&N was built by tobacco and power company magnate James B. Duke, and carried passengers until 1951.

At the moment, of course, there’s no state, federal or local funding for this rail project. And the Charlotte Area Transit System (aka CATS) doesn’t have the P&N line as one of its five proposed transit corridors. It’s just an idea – but one with support among some key Gaston County leaders, who see a stronger connection to Charlotte as a way to boost economic prospects in a county where unemployment last month was 13.3 percent.

Reminder of terminology: “Commuter rail” typically means a passenger train akin to the inter-city Amtrak service, although some commuter rail uses newer technology, and the cars are usually less comfy. Stations are relatively far apart compared with subway, streetcar, light rail service. But don’t call it “heavy rail.” That’s a term for a system with a powerful electric rail down there with the tracks. It’s the “third rail,” the kind you should never, ever touch – hence the expression, “Social Security (or any other untouchable policy) is the third rail of American politics.” Subways, not commuter trains, tend to be “heavy rail.”