Category: Independence Boulevard

Five key takeaways from Charlotte’s newest transit plan

The chosen Silver Line route is shown in green, at right, along 11th Street. The blue line shows where the Trade Street tunnel would have run. Other options not chosen are a surface route along Trade Street (purple) and a route along the existing Blue Line.

No tunnel uptown. A light rail line crossing the Catawba River into Belmont. Finally light rail to Pineville?

When the Charlotte Area Transit System’s policy body on Wednesday unanimously adopted an update to its 2030 Transit System Plan, those optimistic visions became part of the official CATS planning process.

Note to readers: CATS doesn’t currently have money to build any of those things, estimated to cost $6 billion or more. Just so you know.

But here are some key takeaways from what the Metropolitan Transit Commission adopted.
1. No tunnel uptown. CATS hired consultants WSP (the former Parsons Brinckerhoff) to study a tricky issue – how would the proposed Silver Line (formerly known as the Southeast Corridor), get across all the freeways encircling uptown, then through uptown and head west on its route to Charlotte Douglas International Airport and over the Catawba River?

CATS’ existing light rail line, the Blue Line and Blue Line Extension, travel through uptown on a pre-existing rail corridor. The proposed Silver Line would not. It’s planned to run alongside Independence Boulevard and then head west, thereby adding the former West Corridor to the Silver Line. Any way you look at it, getting that sucker through uptown will mean complicated engineering and high costs.

One option WSP proposed was to tunnel under Trade Street to the existing Charlotte Transportation Center, a hub for most bus routes as well as a Blue Line light rail stop, and up West Trade Street to the not-yet-built Gateway Station, which would also hold a new Amtrak station. Gateway Station is also envisioned as the terminus for the long-proposed-but-still-distant Red Line commuter rail to north Mecklenburg. More about that later.

The MTC opted not for the tunnel but for a route running the Silver Line above ground, beside 11th Street, then alongside the existing Amtrak route beside Elmwood Cemetery, over to Gateway Station and then heading west to the airport. It’s less expensive to build, although the tunnel route would have cost less to operate, over time, the consultants said, and would have shortened Silver Line travel time considerably. (Update as of March 8: Brock LaForty, the Carolinas area manager for WSP, says the consultants’ analysis found the tunnel route would save two minutes per trip, a difference
LaForty called marginal, and said WSP had not analyzed whether the tunnel would cost less to operate over time. The statements about travel time and lower operating costs were the personal opinions of Ron Tober, a former CATS CEO who was working for WSP as a consultant on the project until this month.)

2. At long last, Pineville welcomes light rail. Ever wondered why the Lynx Blue Line ends where it does, just outside the south Mecklenburg municipality of Pineville? The stated reason from Pineville officials when the Blue Line was planned almost two decades ago was that the town didn’t want the high-density, transit-oriented development that would, rail boosters proclaimed, spring up all along the line. So the Blue Line ends at I-485, just outside Pineville. 

“Saved us $30 million,” recalled Ron Tober, who was CATS CEO at the time and who happened to be sitting next to me Wednesday night.

For the record, to date no high-density, transit-oriented development has yet come anywhere near Pineville.

And on Oct. 9 of last year, the Town of Pineville adopted a resolution to support the prospect of CATS someday extending its light rail line to Pineville’s Carolina Place Mall and then to Ballantyne in far south Charlotte. “Pineville stakeholders now recognizes (sic) the need to extend the line into Pineville, the Ballantyne area and beyond to … improve the accessibility of rapid transit and provide a faster link to and from other parts of the Greater Charlotte area …” the resolution states.

3. Finally, light rail to the airport, and into Gaston County. Someday. The proposed transit corridor formerly known as the West Corridor, and (sort of) planned to be a streetcar is now officially part of the proposed Silver Line. It would be light rail along Wilkinson Boulevard past the airport, across the Catawba River and end in the Gaston County town of Belmont. This would be CATS’ first light rail venture across county lines. Further, an ongoing Regional Transit Study would evaluate light rail to downtown Gastonia.

Gastonia Mayor Walker Reid III on Wednesday presented a city proclamation supporting the idea of light rail to Gastonia. Politically, Gaston County has been deep red, with Republican county commissioners less than a decade ago complaining that greenways were, in essence, creeping socialism. So this is progress of a sort.

The West Corridor, now renamed part of the Silver Line, would run along Wilkinson Boulevard (the route shown in purple) and cross the Catawba River into Belmont in Gaston County.

4. Still no commuter rail to north Mecklenburg, for now.  The updated plan calls for short-, medium- and long-term options heading north. Short-term would be enhanced express-lane bus service along I-77 to and from the north Mecklenburg towns, using the soon-to-open I-77 toll lanes. Medium term would be bus rapid transit from Gateway Station to Mooresville in southern Iredell County. This service would be all-day, including nights and weekends. Bus rapid transit (a.k.a. BRT) uses dedicated lanes so it’s faster than regular bus service.

Long-term, the plan would be to keep talking with Norfolk Southern about using its rarely used rail right-of-way from uptown Charlotte to Mooresville for rail transit – maybe commuter rail as was originally proposed.

5. Even some Union County enthusiasm. If Gaston County is red, then Union County is, if such a thing is possible, even deeper red. Nevertheless, the town of Stallings passed a resolution asking CATS to at least study the possibility of extending the Silver Line from Matthews into Union County and to a potential terminus in Stallings. So CATS will study that.

Remember, though, there’s no money for CATS to build any new light rail. And to date not one of the surrounding counties has proposed taxing its own residents, as Mecklenburg does with its half-cent sales tax for transit, to help build out the transit system.

Read more details here: “Charlotte unveils new transit options.”

Another Independence Boulevard – lost opportunity or potential future?

Bologna’s Independence Boulevard on a Monday morning in October. Photo: Mary Newsom

On a recent trip to Italy, we stopped for a night in the northern city of Bologna, home to some famous pasta sauces, the world’s first university and a basilica where, legend has it, a German priest was so disgusted by the church’s opulence he went back to Germany and – his name being Martin Luther
– started the Reformation.

It’s also home to an Independence boulevard.  I didn’t capitalize “Boulevard” because the official name of the street is Via dell’ Indipendenza. In any case, it’s a powerful reminder that a busy city thoroughfare need not be ugly.

Photo: Mary Newsom
Under the arcade

I took these photos about 9 a.m. on a Monday, and I took them during breaks in traffic, so they don’t accurately convey the traffic, although it’s safe to say it’s far less than Charlotte’s Independence Boulevard, which carries more than 100,000 vehicles a day in places.

Our Indy Boulevard began life in the 1950s as a four-lane U.S. highway (U.S. 74) that sundered a white, working class neighborhood as well as the city’s first municipal park and its rose garden. Today, Independence Boulevard in Charlotte is either a freeway-style highway lined with sound walls or, where the freeway hasn’t been built yet, a seemingly endless strip of bleak, now-bedraggled highway commercial development that had its heyday in the 1970s and ’80s.

But in Bologna, first settled about 1,000 BC, via dell’ Indipendenza looks different. We arrived on a Sunday evening and the street was jammed with people, and no cars. The street and several others are pedestrianized from 8 a.m. Saturday to 10 p.m. Sunday.

The street itself, like many of the old streets in the city center, is lined with an arcade, which protects pedestrians in bad weather. Under the arcades, many with vaulted ceilings, the sidewalks are terrazzo tile, or something similar. No chewing-gum-stained concrete or crumbling asphalt.

Is there any hope for our Independence Boulevard? I confess to being a pessimist about that. Streets, I’ve observed, set a development pattern that’s difficult to change unless the government decides to buy up all the land, tear everything down, and start over with new development. They have tried that before here, and urban renewal was a brutal disaster.

Charlotte’s Independence Boulevard, 2014. Photo: Nancy Pierce

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.

Whatever do we do with Independence Boulevard?

Charlotte’s “hell highway” is never referred to by that term at public meetings. But that’s what it is. Tonight, the Metropolitan Transit Commission is chewing over some recommendations from a group of officials and citizens over what, really, needs to happen to the now-vintage plans for light rail down Independence.

(Here’s UNCC Professor David Walters’ recent essay on the same topic.)

A panel from the nonprofit Urban Land Institute last winter recommended rethinking the earlier idea to put a light rail line down the median of Indy Blvd.  The ULI panel pointed out the obvious: Putting a transit station in the middle of a huge multilane freeway would be about as pedestrian-unfriendly as you could be, and other cities have found you don’t get much transit-oriented development at light rail stops along freeways. Turn the median into a high-occupancy-toll lane for buses and cars, and put the rail transit along Central Avenue (as in the planned streetcar) and along Monroe Road.

For the past six months a task force of transit, transportation and East Charlotte representatives has been meeting to see what, if any, of the ULI recommendations should be pursued. Tonight, the MTC heard its recommendations. In a nutshell: Do what the ULI said, only be more flexible in where, exactly, the rail transit along Monroe Road should go.

“The Metropolitan Transit Commission should rescind the special provision in the 2006 Transit System Plan that calls for preserving the ability to construct light rail transit or bus rapid transit in the center of Independence Boulevard,” the task force says in a letter to Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx, who chairs the MTC.

MTC discussion was lively and enthusiastic – more so, really, than for the Red Line task force report earlier. Matthews Mayor Jim Taylor noted that “Union County [just southeast of Charlotte] seems to be the most interested I’ve ever seen them to be in the past 10 years.” Getting tax-averse Union County interested in anything involving light rail transit would be a sea change in the local transit landscape.

And one tidbit: The state highway project to turn Indy Boulevard into a freeway has been nicknamed a “one mile per decade” project.