Category: Lynx

Rail matters: the South End lesson

A local television station yesterday did a short feature on the South End neighborhood in Charlotte. If you click here, you’ll see my colleague Bill McCoy, the director emeritus of the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute, describe how the area has changed. As just about anyone i Charlotte could tell you, a huge transformative event was the launching of the city’s first light rail line, the Lynx Blue Line, in 2007.

The Ashton apartments in South End. Photo: David Walters

Nov. 24 marks the five-year anniversary of that launch, so a little retrospective is fitting. But it’s also important to know that South End was reviving before 1998, the year Mecklenburg County voters passed a half-cent sales tax for transit and we all knew, finally, that we’d get a light rail line. Three important lessons:

1. Zoning and design matter.  The city created transit-oriented development zoning categories to allow and encourage the form of development that best serves public mass transit: walkable and mixed-use, and denser than single-family-only residential or office-only or industrial-only. You’d think that would be a no-brainer, but many cities made the mistake of launching rail transit in 1980s and early 1990s yet did not change development codes. What they got was not much transit-friendly development.

2. South End’s development was sparked before the 1998 transit vote by a small-time, volunteer trolley run. So it was the hope of light rail, and a modest little rail ride, rather than mass transit service itself, that was key.

The nonprofit Charlotte Trolley volunteer group launched a historic trolley car ride down some railroad tracks the city had bought because the city hoped someday it might use them for light rail. This trolley run (not a streetcar; it didn’t run in street) was barely a mile and didn’t even cross I-277 and go into uptown. Yet it was enough to encourage developers. It didn’t hurt, of course, that the former industrial area later dubbed South End abutted uptown as well as the prosperous Dilworth neighborhood. By the time the Lynx launched in 2007 plenty of transit-oriented development had already occurred. Alas, the historic trolley run itself was booted from the line by a combination of federal safety regulations and a Charlotte Area Transit System revenue crunch after the 2008 financial crash. Beloved old Car 85 awaits a new neighborhood with which it can work its magic.

3. This is last, and most important: It was not adding public mass transit that sparked the development. It was adding rail transit.

Proof? For years, city bus No. 12 has traveled up and down South Boulevard. Yet the area languished until the spark from the old trolley coursing on the rails. Why didn’t the bus spark development? Because rails mean permanence. A regular old city bus can be rerouted. Few developers would peg their future to a bus route.

The city says it wants to help other languishing areas (can you say “Eastland Mall”?). City council members should remember the lessons of South End. If you want developers to commit, then the city should commit – to rail. 

Transit lovers, and Portland haters (an update)

Friday, May 22, 12:21 PM update:
If you like reading about Portland, check out this piece from the Oregonian’s Anna Griffin, whom some of you will remember as a former Charlotte Observer writer (who covered the growth beat here in the QC before moving to our Raleigh bureau.)

Today, a little something for transit-lovers and then for transit- and Portland-haters.

First, here’s a newsy dispatch from Mary Hopper at University City Partners:

“The most recent cost estimate for building the LYNX Blue Line Extension from Center City to University City now exceeds $1.1 billion. That’s a lot of money, to be sure. But is it too much money? A study paid for by University City Partners suggests that every dollar spent on transit construction will come back three-fold in additional development and increased property value and tax base within our municipal service district through 2035.” Here’s a link to the study she refers to.

Hopper, executive director for UCP, also points to a proposed high-rise office building from Bank of America:
“University City’s proposed transit line is already spurring plans for intense transit-friendly development on North Tryon Street. Bank of America has requested a zoning change to allow up to 1 million square feet of offices in buildings up to 16 stories tall, just south of Mallard Creek Church Road. The wooded 24-acre site lies within a quarter mile of a proposed light-rail station on Mallard Creek Church Road. The Charlotte City Council will consider the request at its June 15 zoning hearings.” Read more. And here’s a link to the rezoning petition.

Finally, for those who like to read opposing opinions, here’s some red meat for you anti-transit, anti-planning, anti-density readers: George Will on “Why Ray LaHood Is Wrong and Portland Stinks.” [My title, not his.]

2:15 PM – A friend shares with me this riposte to George Will. Link here.
3:28 PM – A TV station in Portland is running an online poll on who would win if George Will debated U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer, a Portland Democrat who’s an avid supporter of transit, bicycling, pedestrians and planned growth. Link here.

CATS boss: Build it now, or never

CATS chief Keith Parker thinks the 2030 Transit Plan — the one with four more corridors plus a streetcar system — should become a plan for 2018.

He told a transportation forum this week: “If we don’t build the 2030 plan before 2030, it will be hopelessly unaffordable.”

He said rising construction costs could price the expansions out of reach if the Metropolitan Transit Commission hews to its timetable. And with “a modest increase in revenue” it could be done within the next 10 years, he said.

The idea isn’t at all crazy. Denver is doing something similar. Its light rail debuted in the 1990s but never got expanded. A few years back a coalition of the Chamber of Commerce, mayors and environmental leaders backed a regionwide system of six lines at $4.7 billion, to be paid with a sales tax. Voters OK’d it in 2004, even without a commitment of federal support. (The estimated price now is $7.9 billion. You can see why Parker is worried.)

In Charlotte, Parker said, the success of the Lynx Blue Line has everyone demanding transit. “Everybody wants rail. Everybody wants it now.”

I’d gladly pony up a fraction more on the sales tax if it meant faster construction of trains to north Mecklenburg, University City and good transit service to the airport and out Indy Boulevard.