Myth-busting: CATS compares well with other cities

(The full report is now available online from the UNCC Center for Transportation Policy Studies. Folks at the center reported some problems with it, however, so if you can’t open it, try again later. This links to the center’s home page, where there’s a link to the report.)

Are Charlotte’s bus system costs way out of line for similar cities?

Does the cost for building the South Corridor light rail line make it among the most expensive in the country?

Have the South Corridor construction costs gone up so much that it stands out among public projects as bloated and wasteful?

If you only read the John Locke Foundation’s data, or listen only to AM talk radio, or believe everything someone tells you in the grocery store line — or in the comments section of this blog — you’re going to answer YES, YES and YES.

And you’ll be wrong. So says a new research report from Edd Hauser. Hauser is founding director of UNC Charlotte’s Center for Transportation Policy Studies, and he has a lengthy and impressive pedigree in transportation engineering and planning, including master’s and Ph.D. degrees from N.C. State in transportation engineering and a master’s in regional planning from UNC. He helped found the Institute of Transportation Research and Education (ITRE) at UNC, was an assistant state highway administrator at the N.C. Department of Transportation and worked in the private sector for almost a decade, with Kimley-Horn and Associates.

He happened to see a March 26 City Council meeting at which Charlotte Area Transit System chief Ron Tober and City Manager Pam Syfert gave their version of the effect on city taxes and CATS if a proposal to eliminate the county’s half cent sales tax for transit succeeds.

“Emotions are running amok in this. I wanted to start looking at the data,” Hauser told me today. He and colleagues at the CRPS started looking at the numbers. “Our objective was to layout relevant data. I had no idea what it would look like when I started.”

His report isn’t available online yet, but here’s a link to an executive summary. (Hauser points out a typo. In the bulleted paragraph “Construction Cost Estimating,” the phrase “the original project cost” should read “the original project cost estimate.”)

He found CATS’ bus operations are comparable to, and in some cases are more economical than those in comparable cities, including four others in North Carolina, using three widely accepted measures of cost. He found CATS per-mile costs for light rail construction are in the middle of other cities with recent LRT projects.

He looked at metro areas from 300,000 to 1 million population, but only three of those had light rail transit operations so he also looked at metro areas roughly Charlotte’s size with more than a million population. He looked at operating expenses per passenger mile, operating expenses per vehicle revenue mile and cost per passenger trip.

For areas of more than a million, CATS’ bus operations ranked No. 1 (i.e. least cost) in operating expenses per vehicle revenue mile (VRM); No. 4 in operating expenses per passenger mile; No. 8 in cost per passenger trip.

For areas of 300,000 to a million, CATS’ bus operations ranked No. 2 out of 10 in operating expenses per passenger mile; No. 3 in cost per passenger trip; No. 4 in operating expenses per VRM.

He also compared CATS with bus systems in Raleigh, Greensboro, Durham and Winston-Salem, “with all four systems in total having fewer operational buses than the Charlotte system,” the full report notes. CATS ranked No. 3 in operating expenses per VRM, No. 4 in operating expenses per passenger mile, and last in cost per passenger trip.

He looked at Charlotte’s capital costs for its light rail construction, compared with 9 other new transit projects, and converted all costs to 2007 dollars. In cost per mile, CATS ranked 6, with $48 million per mile. More expensive per mile were St. Louis ($56 million), Dallas, ($60 million), Phoenix ($65 million), and Seattle ($179 million).

Finally, he looked at other regional transportation construction projects, to see how much they cost above their original estimate. The current estimate for the U.S. 29-601 Connector is 305% ABOVE the original estimate. That for the northwest segment of I-485 is 584% ABOVE the original estimate. The current estimate for the U.S. 29-N.C. 49 Connector is 327% ABOVE the estimate. The third runway at Charlotte-Douglas International Airport is 180% above the original estimate.

The CATS South Corridor line is 109% above the estimate.

(Note: “original estimate” is what you get from the engineers after thorough study. The estimates given before the 1998 sales tax referendum were projections, not specific estimates for specific routes, with a specified number of stations, etc., from engineers. Why would anyone who knows anything about public projects and how they’re funded think they’d be precise engineering studies, when there was no funding at that point for study or design? In other words, of course they were flabby. Get over it. And all the brouhaha because the costs weren’t given in inflation adjusted dollars? Maybe that SHOULD be standard practice but it isn’t. Hauser says typically construction project estimates aren’t adjusted for expected inflation.)

I hope he’ll be able to put the whole report online. Hauser is a researcher who looks at the data and then draws his conclusion, rather than drawing a conclusion and then seeking data to support it. “A lot of information is put into the media based on an incomplete look at relevant data,” he said.

What should you conclude? If you think any spending on light rail transit, or on a public bus system, or both is a waste of money, none of that information will change your mind. But if you’re under the impression CATS is a lot more inefficient than other transit systems, then consider whether you’ve been getting only part of the story, from whoever you’re getting your information from.

Myth-busting: CATS compares well with other cities

(The full report is now available online from the UNCC Center for Transportation Policy Studies. Folks at the center reported some problems with it, however, so if you can’t open it, try again later. This links to the center’s home page, where there’s a link to the report.)

Are Charlotte’s bus system costs way out of line for similar cities?

Does the cost for building the South Corridor light rail line make it among the most expensive in the country?

Have the South Corridor construction costs gone up so much that it stands out among public projects as bloated and wasteful?

If you only read the John Locke Foundation’s data, or listen only to AM talk radio, or believe everything someone tells you in the grocery store line — or in the comments section of this blog — you’re going to answer YES, YES and YES.

And you’ll be wrong. So says a new research report from Edd Hauser. Hauser is founding director of UNC Charlotte’s Center for Transportation Policy Studies, and he has a lengthy and impressive pedigree in transportation engineering and planning, including master’s and Ph.D. degrees from N.C. State in transportation engineering and a master’s in regional planning from UNC. He helped found the Institute of Transportation Research and Education (ITRE) at UNC, was an assistant state highway administrator at the N.C. Department of Transportation and worked in the private sector for almost a decade, with Kimley-Horn and Associates.

He happened to see a March 26 City Council meeting at which Charlotte Area Transit System chief Ron Tober and City Manager Pam Syfert gave their version of the effect on city taxes and CATS if a proposal to eliminate the county’s half cent sales tax for transit succeeds.

“Emotions are running amok in this. I wanted to start looking at the data,” Hauser told me today. He and colleagues at the CRPS started looking at the numbers. “Our objective was to layout relevant data. I had no idea what it would look like when I started.”

His report isn’t available online yet, but here’s a link to an executive summary. (Hauser points out a typo. In the bulleted paragraph “Construction Cost Estimating,” the phrase “the original project cost” should read “the original project cost estimate.”)

He found CATS’ bus operations are comparable to, and in some cases are more economical than those in comparable cities, including four others in North Carolina, using three widely accepted measures of cost. He found CATS per-mile costs for light rail construction are in the middle of other cities with recent LRT projects.

He looked at metro areas from 300,000 to 1 million population, but only three of those had light rail transit operations so he also looked at metro areas roughly Charlotte’s size with more than a million population. He looked at operating expenses per passenger mile, operating expenses per vehicle revenue mile and cost per passenger trip.

For areas of more than a million, CATS’ bus operations ranked No. 1 (i.e. least cost) in operating expenses per vehicle revenue mile (VRM); No. 4 in operating expenses per passenger mile; No. 8 in cost per passenger trip.

For areas of 300,000 to a million, CATS’ bus operations ranked No. 2 out of 10 in operating expenses per passenger mile; No. 3 in cost per passenger trip; No. 4 in operating expenses per VRM.

He also compared CATS with bus systems in Raleigh, Greensboro, Durham and Winston-Salem, “with all four systems in total having fewer operational buses than the Charlotte system,” the full report notes. CATS ranked No. 3 in operating expenses per VRM, No. 4 in operating expenses per passenger mile, and last in cost per passenger trip.

He looked at Charlotte’s capital costs for its light rail construction, compared with 9 other new transit projects, and converted all costs to 2007 dollars. In cost per mile, CATS ranked 6, with $48 million per mile. More expensive per mile were St. Louis ($56 million), Dallas, ($60 million), Phoenix ($65 million), and Seattle ($179 million).

Finally, he looked at other regional transportation construction projects, to see how much they cost above their original estimate. The current estimate for the U.S. 29-601 Connector is 305% ABOVE the original estimate. That for the northwest segment of I-485 is 584% ABOVE the original estimate. The current estimate for the U.S. 29-N.C. 49 Connector is 327% ABOVE the estimate. The third runway at Charlotte-Douglas International Airport is 180% above the original estimate.

The CATS South Corridor line is 109% above the estimate.

(Note: “original estimate” is what you get from the engineers after thorough study. The estimates given before the 1998 sales tax referendum were projections, not specific estimates for specific routes, with a specified number of stations, etc., from engineers. Why would anyone who knows anything about public projects and how they’re funded think they’d be precise engineering studies, when there was no funding at that point for study or design? In other words, of course they were flabby. Get over it. And all the brouhaha because the costs weren’t given in inflation adjusted dollars? Maybe that SHOULD be standard practice but it isn’t. Hauser says typically construction project estimates aren’t adjusted for expected inflation.)

I hope he’ll be able to put the whole report online. Hauser is a researcher who looks at the data and then draws his conclusion, rather than drawing a conclusion and then seeking data to support it. “A lot of information is put into the media based on an incomplete look at relevant data,” he said.

What should you conclude? If you think any spending on light rail transit, or on a public bus system, or both is a waste of money, none of that information will change your mind. But if you’re under the impression CATS is a lot more inefficient than other transit systems, then consider whether you’ve been getting only part of the story, from whoever you’re getting your information from.

What’s up with the Cup?

I caught up this week with Gardine Wilson, one of the co-proprietors of the Coffee Cup, the venerable soul food restaurant threatened with demolition. Beazer, the developer that owns the property, plans a mixed-use project there. Things don’t look good, though Wilson says he’s trying to stay optimistic.

City Council in March designated the 60-year-old building a historic landmark, but even that doesn’t prevent demolition. It just delays it by up to a year. So for now, the Cup sits forlornly amid several blocks that have been cleared of all buildings and vegetation. It looks like a mesa rising from the desert.

Wilson says they’re still negotiating with Beazer. The company doesn’t really want to try to build around the old restaurant building, he said. One possibility is selling some property to Wilson and co-proprietor Anthony McCarver, with Beazer moving the old building, or maybe moving into a new building. Which, as we all know, just wouldn’t be the same.

Wilson said Beazer is having experts look at whether the building can be moved, the same ones, he said, who moved the Ratcliffe Florist building on South Tryon Street.

I asked if he was optimistic. “I think Beazer is pretty well set on what they’re doing,” he said. “They’ve said they’d pretty much wait that year out (for demolition) and take it from there. Unfortunately, they do own the building.”

Among Wilson’s worries is that the business can’t survive if it’s forced to close for months of construction.

Another worry is that land nearby is now incredibly valuable. If your business is on expensive land (whether you’ve bought it or someone else has), it’s hard to make a profit if you’re a modest, 38-seat diner that traditionally offered good food at modest prices. You’d have to jack up prices, or add a lot more seats. Or both.

“We want to maintain the essence of what the Coffee Cup is – the warm feelings, the Southern hospitality,” Wilson said. “People come from all over the world. We had some folks in here from New Zealand last week. … They had us on the Travel Channel last week, on a show called ‘Taste of America.’ I got calls from Denver, Texas, Mississippi and California.”

Beazer, I’ll point out, hasn’t had much good publicity recently. Observer investigations have found rampant foreclosures in some of Beazer’s starter-home developments, and some loan applications with, ahem, problems. Last week the Observer reported that a Beazer executive in 2001 offered homebuyers $100 to rate the company highly on customer satisfaction surveys.
The Securities and Exchange Commission is looking into whether anyone related to the homebuilder violated securities laws.

Seems to me Beazer needs a lot of good press.

Seems to me that working out an arrangement to let the Coffee Cup survive in place, business intact, would bring in a lot of community kudos.

What’s up with the Cup?

I caught up this week with Gardine Wilson, one of the co-proprietors of the Coffee Cup, the venerable soul food restaurant threatened with demolition. Beazer, the developer that owns the property, plans a mixed-use project there. Things don’t look good, though Wilson says he’s trying to stay optimistic.

City Council in March designated the 60-year-old building a historic landmark, but even that doesn’t prevent demolition. It just delays it by up to a year. So for now, the Cup sits forlornly amid several blocks that have been cleared of all buildings and vegetation. It looks like a mesa rising from the desert.

Wilson says they’re still negotiating with Beazer. The company doesn’t really want to try to build around the old restaurant building, he said. One possibility is selling some property to Wilson and co-proprietor Anthony McCarver, with Beazer moving the old building, or maybe moving into a new building. Which, as we all know, just wouldn’t be the same.

Wilson said Beazer is having experts look at whether the building can be moved, the same ones, he said, who moved the Ratcliffe Florist building on South Tryon Street.

I asked if he was optimistic. “I think Beazer is pretty well set on what they’re doing,” he said. “They’ve said they’d pretty much wait that year out (for demolition) and take it from there. Unfortunately, they do own the building.”

Among Wilson’s worries is that the business can’t survive if it’s forced to close for months of construction.

Another worry is that land nearby is now incredibly valuable. If your business is on expensive land (whether you’ve bought it or someone else has), it’s hard to make a profit if you’re a modest, 38-seat diner that traditionally offered good food at modest prices. You’d have to jack up prices, or add a lot more seats. Or both.

“We want to maintain the essence of what the Coffee Cup is – the warm feelings, the Southern hospitality,” Wilson said. “People come from all over the world. We had some folks in here from New Zealand last week. … They had us on the Travel Channel last week, on a show called ‘Taste of America.’ I got calls from Denver, Texas, Mississippi and California.”

Beazer, I’ll point out, hasn’t had much good publicity recently. Observer investigations have found rampant foreclosures in some of Beazer’s starter-home developments, and some loan applications with, ahem, problems. Last week the Observer reported that a Beazer executive in 2001 offered homebuyers $100 to rate the company highly on customer satisfaction surveys.
The Securities and Exchange Commission is looking into whether anyone related to the homebuilder violated securities laws.

Seems to me Beazer needs a lot of good press.

Seems to me that working out an arrangement to let the Coffee Cup survive in place, business intact, would bring in a lot of community kudos.

What does ‘professional’ theater really mean?

Here are some facts about professional, Equity and union theater, courtesy of Observer theater writer Julie York Coppens. This is to clarify some of the comments on my previous post, which make some factually murky statements. And it’s all relating to the now-shriveling efforts by Steven Beauchem to try to find community support for a regional, professional theater to replace the defunct Charlotte Rep.

There are several pro theaters in the Carolinas — all more successful than Trustus, which one commenter mentioned: The most obvious are Flat Rock Playhouse, Playmakers Rep in Chapel Hill, Blowing Rock Stage Co. and Triad Stage in Greensboro.

The union/non-union question is worth addressing, Coppens says. When people say “professional regional theater,” they mean (among other things) a company affiliated with Actor’s Equity, i.e., most of the talent and crew are union and so earn what might be called living wages.

The pro companies listed above live at various points of a sliding scale Equity has devised to allow smaller and emerging professional theaters, which have lower potential box-office income, to hire fewer union members and to pay those at a lower rate than the larger, more established houses do. Thus, all are professional/union, but only Flat Rock (as far as Coppens knows) is fully so — though even Flat Rock relies on a lesser paid army of “apprentice” laborers and chorus members who are working toward Equity status.

Charlotte’s two remaining professional theaters (Actor’s Theatre and Children’s Theatre) provide occasional work for Equity members under Guest Artist contracts, but not at a pay level or of a consistency for someone to live and work here long-term. That’s why so many of our best artists have left town. Steven Beauchem was trying to establish an Equity-affiliated company, which you really can’t do for less than a quarter-million. Presumably most of the talent, especially at first, would be jobbed in from NY or Chicago.

Charlotte’s fringe theaters (like BareBones) call themselves professional. Is it professional if the actors are making $100 for four weeks of work? But “professional” also refers to a company’s orientation, its artistic ambitions, its emphasis on product over participation. Says Coppens, “I know some amateur/community theaters that show more professionalism, in the way they work and in the product they put on stage, than a lot of fringe theaters do. The old lines are blurring.”

The Observer plans more coverage of the Rep-replacement issue in coming days.

Charlotte: Graveyard for theater?

Is Charlotte a city where the arts are healthy? You be the judge. The latest, unfortunate wrinkle in the city’s theater scene is that Steven Beauchem, a theater enthusiast who was trying to see if support exists here for professional regional theater to take up where the now-defunct Charlotte Repertory Theatre left, has called it quits.

Here’s what Beauchem wrote, in a lengthy e-mail. In a nutshell, he concluded that “Charlotte isn’t ready for locally produced, regional-level, professional theatre.” There simply isn’t enough community-wide support to make it feasible to found such an effort, he came to believe. The Catch-22, he notes, is that to demonstrate that support exists you have to put on some productions, and that to put on productions you have to have support. (And all you libertarian types, “support” doesn’t mean govt money.)

It’s wrong, he says, to blame the Arts & Science Council or the Blumenthal Performing Arts Center.

I’d love to hear what theater-lovers (and others) think about Beauchem’s efforts and his conclusions.

Trying to comment?

If you’ve tried to comment in the past couple of days and couldn’t, try again. I tinkered with the settings the other day and seem to have disabled comments by mistake. I think I’ve fixed it. If it’s still a problem, let me know.

New theater gets a name

A few tidbits from the City Council meeting Monday that didn’t get headlines, plus some national recognition for ImaginOn:

Council news: The council approved naming the new 1,200-seat theater being built as part of the Wachovia-cultural arts campus on South Tryon Street the Knight Theater.

No, you conspiracy buffs, it isn’t about the Charlotte Knights minor-league baseball team, which wants an uptown stadium. The theater will carry the name of John S. and James L. Knight, “for their involvement in and commitment to the Charlotte community,” and for the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, which gave a $5 million donation to the arts endowment campaign.

Yes, there’s a connection to the newspaper, but the newspaper is entirely separate from the foundation. The Knight family owned multiple newspapers, including The Charlotte Observer and the former Charlotte News. In 1974 Knight Newspapers merged with the Ridder newspaper company and became Knight Ridder, which last year sold itself to McClatchy, which now owns the Observer.

The Knight family set up a foundation, which makes major national journalism grants as well as grants in 26 communities that had Knight Ridder newspapers at one time, including Charlotte.

The council also OK’d naming the new Afro-American Cultural Center facility for former Mayor Harvey Gantt, who’s been active in politics, civic affairs and architecture since his mayoral terms in the 1980s. He’s most deserving of the honor, IMHO.

ImaginOn: The Project for Public Spaces, a well-known nonprofit group that helps teach planners and developers and others how to make the most of parks, plazas, markets and other public gathering spots showcases ImaginOn in its April newsletter. Take a look.

Developers want in on transit project

Reports of the death of the Scaleybark transit-oriented development were, as Mark Twain might have said, greatly exaggerated.

Two of the original three development groups are back in the game: Scaleybark Partners, led by Peter A. Pappas of Pappas Properties, and as of last week, Crosland.

After a Bank of America-led development group pulled out April 9, Scaleybark Partners, which had pulled out in February, asked to get back into the negotiations. Its new proposal is squishier on whether it is committing to build some of the things the city says it wants: affordable housing, and a parking deck. It doesn’t say it won’t build them, but doesn’t nail down that it will.

And last week, a group that had dropped out even before Scaleybark Partners, led by Crosland, wrote the city asking to get back into negotiations, too.

Here’s a link to the Scaleybark Partners proposal. At last Wednesday’s meeting of the City Council’s Economic Development and Planning Committee, the committee decided to recommend that the council tonight (Monday) vote to keep negotiating with the Pappas group.

But that evening the Crosland letter arrived (here’s a link to the new offer from Crosland). It says it’s offering $6.4 million for the 17 acres of city-owned and Charlotte Area Transit System-owned land.

The Pappas offer is for $3 million for the CATS land, 9 acres, and $3.1 million for the 8 acres the city owns. But the 8 city-owned acres would be in a Phase II, on or before Oct. 1, 2012.

And with this kind of deal, the purchase price you see isn’t always an apples-to-apples comparison with another deal. Which is a fancy way of saying I don’t know if the Crosland proposal really is more money for the city or not.

Jamie Banks, the communications/marketing manager for the city’s Economic Development office, tells me it’s off the agenda for City Council tonight. Want to see what IS on the agenda? Here’s a link.

Developers want in on transit project

Reports of the death of the Scaleybark transit-oriented development were, as Mark Twain might have said, greatly exaggerated.

Two of the original three development groups are back in the game: Scaleybark Partners, led by Peter A. Pappas of Pappas Properties, and as of last week, Crosland.

After a Bank of America-led development group pulled out April 9, Scaleybark Partners, which had pulled out in February, asked to get back into the negotiations. Its new proposal is squishier on whether it is committing to build some of the things the city says it wants: affordable housing, and a parking deck. It doesn’t say it won’t build them, but doesn’t nail down that it will.

And last week, a group that had dropped out even before Scaleybark Partners, led by Crosland, wrote the city asking to get back into negotiations, too.

Here’s a link to the Scaleybark Partners proposal. At last Wednesday’s meeting of the City Council’s Economic Development and Planning Committee, the committee decided to recommend that the council tonight (Monday) vote to keep negotiating with the Pappas group.

But that evening the Crosland letter arrived (here’s a link to the new offer from Crosland). It says it’s offering $6.4 million for the 17 acres of city-owned and Charlotte Area Transit System-owned land.

The Pappas offer is for $3 million for the CATS land, 9 acres, and $3.1 million for the 8 acres the city owns. But the 8 city-owned acres would be in a Phase II, on or before Oct. 1, 2012.

And with this kind of deal, the purchase price you see isn’t always an apples-to-apples comparison with another deal. Which is a fancy way of saying I don’t know if the Crosland proposal really is more money for the city or not.

Jamie Banks, the communications/marketing manager for the city’s Economic Development office, tells me it’s off the agenda for City Council tonight. Want to see what IS on the agenda? Here’s a link.