From a prior postL
Ours has been wildly popular.
The second line is in engineering studies.
Lackawanna Route of the Phoebe Snow
Phoebe Vet: To what do you attribute LYNX’s (Charlotte’s light-rail system’s) great success? - a.s.
It is clean (they wash all the trains every night), reliable and frequent. The ride is smooth and quiet.The trains run every 15 minutes most of the day and every 7 1/2 minutes during rush hour.All the roads that lead to city center, including I-77, grind to a halt during rush hour in spite of being recently upgraded.It costs less to ride the train to city center than it does to park your car in city center. Nobody likes driving laps inside a parking garage looking for a parking space.It stops at the convention center and the arena where the Charlotte Bobcats NBA team plays and where many shows and concerts are held.It stops just a few blocks from where the Carolina Panthers NFL team plays, the Blumenthal performing arts center and Belk Theater. There is a free trolley style bus that moves people around within city center.The convention center stop has an entrance into the over street mall which connects several square blocks of city center via enclosed over street walkways, so that you can move around city center without going outdoors.The headquarters of Bank of America and (at least for the moment) Wachovia are part of that over street mall.The employees are all polite and eager to help.Riding the light rail is just a more pleasant experience than fighting traffic in your car.
P.V., do you yourself feel that the planning was good? The idea of it running from the ring Interstate highway downtown with park-and-ride lots (even if they habitually fill up)?
Some cities have been accused of building LRT systems for “prestige” or because it seems the thing to do, but if the routing isn’t reasonable to large groups of commuters / travelers, it won’t succeed as well. I’m thinking of Houston in particular. - a.s.
Al:
I do feel it was well planned. There are cameras in every car, on every station platform, and at every crossing.
It parallels the two busiest routes into city center from the south. When the next segment is completed, that will parallel the two busiest routes into city center from the northeast.
The Blue Line was actually supposed to go one more stop south, but the City of Pineville was afraid the associated development would destroy the character of their ratty old downtown.
The Silver Line will follow Route 74, another major highway, and the Maroon Line will be commuter rail up Lake Norman parallel to I-77.
Incidentally, the bright color stripes on the building in that picture, make noise when you touch them. Some play musical notes, one laughs, some make animal noises…
Hey PV & Al,
Don’t forget that the new extension will also go to University of NC at Charlotte- (UNCC) already 20,000+ students and expected to be the biggest school in the UNC system within 10 years.
… now if only it went to the track …
Al, maybe discussion of park-and-ride might be more appropriate on the Park and Ride Lots Never enough parking… thread, in fact I think that’s the thread on which Phoebe Vet had the post you used to start this thread.
But anyway, are you hinting that lots habitually filling up reflects good or bad planning? After all a lot that doesn’t fill up may indicate bad planning, or it may indicate efficient feeder routes, or an abundance of riders within walking distance of the station. And a full lot that turns away 5, 10 or 20 single passenger automobiles per day may not represent enough lack of parking capacity to warrant going to the expense of expanding the parking.
Also from what I’ve seen in Phoebe Vet’s posts the light rail cars are at capacity, so there might not be many places to put the bodies that might come from those extra automobiles that might not find room in the parking lots.
Just with most things in life, we need balance. You want the ride to be comfortable, but if you derive your comfort from always finding a parking spot, and always finding a set of facing double seats to put your feet up and plop your luggage next to you, then you’re wasting 3 to 4 seats for 1 passenger. On the other hand each CEO, director, manager, supervisor or janitor at Wachovia who scrounged for a parking spot and then had to be a straphanger with his briefcase every ride this past week is a potential former but never again light rail user.
Actually Al’s original question was “to what do you atribute Lynx success”.
The structure on the right is an 1160 car parking deck at the I-485 station.
It is full by 7:30 AM.
The original plan included 300 foot platforms for triple trainsets, but funding problems made them sorten them. That turns out to have been a bad decision.
From today’s Charlotte Observer:
A read of the linked story tells a glowing story about Charlotte’s light rail system. However, no where do I see the answers to these questions:
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What percentage of the people in Mecklenburg County use public transit? And what percentage of them use the light rail system?
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What percentage of the people going to the sporting events or restaurants referenced in the article use the light rail system?
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What is the per trip subsidy for each passenger using the light rail system in Charlotte?
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What is the per trip subsidy for each passenger using public transit in Charlotte?
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Who pays the subsidy for the persons using the light rail sytem?
Clearly, the proponents of light rail, or any passenger rail for that matter, should acknowledge the benefits of the systems. They should also point out the costs and who picks-up the tab.
You know, I used to have a dog like you. My neighbor parked his new car in his driveway next to ours and the dog promptly went over and urinated on it."
CATS continues to break ridership records with each passing month in FY 2009 and October was no exception. CATS served over 2.5 million trips with system wide average daily ridership reaching over 94,500 trips.
"The article was not an audit, it was a holiday puff piece, and it mentioned only a small percentage of the new development along the Blue Line. People who think like you have, and continue to try to stop the project, but every time they manage to get something started, they get shut down themselves by the citizens, not the politicians.People along the Blue Line love it. It is crowded when there is a game in city center, and during rush hour weekdays.
My opinion, People in the parts of the city where future expansion is planned are not clamoring loudly enough to speed up the project, since money issues make that impossible
or at least they’re not clamoring with their money.
[quote user=“Phoebe Vet”]
You know, I used to have a dog like you. My neighbor parked his new car in his driveway next to ours and the dog promptly went over and urinated on it."
CATS continues to break ridership records with each passing month in FY 2009 and October was no exception. CATS served over 2.5 million trips with system wide average daily ridership reaching over 94,500 trips.
"The article was not an audit, it was a holiday puff piece, and it mentioned only a small percentage of the new development along the Blue Line. People who think like you have, and continue to try to stop the project, but every time they manage to get something started, they get shut down themselves by the citizens, not the politicians.People along the Blue Line love it. It is Tokyo crowded when there is a game in city center, and during rush hour weekdays. I don’t know what percentage of our citizens rides it, but I know it would be more if the trains ha
Charlotte is going to be one of the great cities in the South, if not already.
People not familiar with it are going to think that Charlotte is a burg somewhere in the pines with no activity downtown whatsoever after 5 PM sharp. The traffic has always been bad. They can pave a 300 lane freeway to and around the place and it will still jam up in the morning rush. Ive seen this happen in Jersey over the years when they widened and tripled the number of lanes on the NJT and then extended 10, 20 30 miles out… resulting in stop and gos that much distance.
A city will not ever be great until it has the ability to take care of people all day, most of the night and every day. Light Rail or Transit goes a long way towards meeting that goal. Now if they just stop focusing on the Stadium or the Mall and actually spread throughout the city to make it a truly accessible system… it would make cars unnecessary.
Imagine that.
Where did you get the impression that municiple mass transit systems are supposed to make a profit, or even break even?
I have never said that public transit systems should make a profit or breakeven. However, it is important for decision makers, as well as the public, to understand the cost/benefit ratio since practically everyone pays the lion’s share of the tab.
Unfortunately, most people make a lot of claims about the benefits without in many if not most instances being able to support them with rock hard data.
Transparency about costs and benefits helps keeps total costs in check. Most people in Mecklenburg County probably don’t know how much CATS costs, especially the light rail system, or how much subsidy the riders receive, let alone the benefits other than those claimed by people who cannot support them with data.
Many of the decision makers in Dallas, with which I am most familiar, did not and don’t have a clue regarding the cost of light rail. If they had or did, they may have opted for less expensive alternatives that could the job nearly as well, i.e. more HOV lanes, rapid bus technology, etc.
My interest in trains and public transit systems, as well as my support, is trumped by one factor. Fiscal responsibility!