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."

Blue Line or Green Line?

Should the existing Blue Line be renamed the Green Line, to please UNCC? Tomorrow the Metropolitan Transit Commission takes up the discussion at its 5:30 p.m. meeting. Here's a link to the meeting agenda.

At first, it sounds like an easy and simple decision: The transit line that's planned to run from uptown to UNC Charlotte should be the Green Line, to reflect the 49ers school colors.

But with transit – and transportation in general – things are rarely as simple as you'd think. Here's the biggest sticking point: The new line will be a continuation of the existing Blue Line. That is, you could hop on at I-485 outside Pineville and ride all the way to beyond UNCC.

There's already been significant investment in "Blue." Even the train cars are blue, not to mention the signs, etc.

As CATS officials note, they couldn't find any other transit system that "changed colors midstream" (hmmm, interesting turn of phrase). It might well confuse riders. I mean, we're not talking a lot of riders here with New York-caliber subway expertise (where one line simultaneously might have two numbers or letters or colors, and you have to notice whether you're hopping on a local or an express route, for instance). Starting on the blue line and ending on the green line might be as confusing as starting out on Woodlawn and, without turning, finding yourself on Runnymede and then Sharon Road then Wendover, and then Eastway. Or maybe Tyvola to Fairview to Sardis to Rama. Or ... well, I could go on but I won't.

Hmmm. Now that I think about it, a Blue-to-Green Line transit corridor fits right in. How very Charlotte.

Transit's threat to NoDa

How to route the to-be-built northeast light rail line? CATS officials are pondering that question. Read about it in this story from Sunday's Observer, from The City section. If you want a public voice, there's a hearing Tuesday 6-8 p.m. in the fellowship hall at Sugaw (not Sugar) Creek Presbyterian Church, at North Tryon Street and Sugar Creek Road.

I was hoping CATS would route the northeast corridor up North Tryon Street instead of the railroad corridor that parallels North Davidson Street. Apparently that's not to be, at least between uptown and NoDa. CATS is still considering whether to put a section of the line along North Tryon between Sugar Creek Road and Eastway Drive. North of Eastway, the route follows North Tryon Street.

I'm very worried about the NoDa business district being beset by the same forces that are hitting South End and threatening the Dilworth historic district and its bungalows. Except the NoDa retail area is closer to the rail line than much of Dilworth, and NoDa's business district has a better preserved "Main Street"-type feel to it than anything that was in Dilworth. That's all at huge risk, because the Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) zoning that applies to transit station areas allows high-rise buildings of up to 120 feet -- or higher if your developer asks for an exemption.

The way land values work, if zoning allows high rise buildings on your land and there's a strong economic market, eventually you're likely to have high rises there. Say so long to the Center of the Earth Gallery building, the Evening Muse building, the Neighborhood Theatre building, and say hello to more brutalist modern towers like the reviled, pink Arlington.

Even more threatening to NoDa is that it lacks even the protection Dilworth has as a historic district. NoDa isn't a local historic district, which requires new development to blend in with the old. Being a historic district hasn't prevented the bulldozing of some bungalows or the ballooning of others into wannabe McMansions twice the size of the original house. But it's much better than no protection at all.

If NoDa's main street were to avoid TOD zoning because the rail stop was put up on North Tryon, then you wouldn't have those sky high, I-can-build-a-tower land values wreaking quite as much havoc on NoDa's business district. The super-intense development would instead be a half mile north on North Tryon Street, which heaven knows could use TOD's better urban design rules as well as stronger economic sizzle. Some South End-style development there would be a very good thing.

In the middle of NoDa, those transit-oriented high-rise buildings would merely kill the special place that has grown up naturally along North Davidson and 36th streets.

One solution would be for the city to craft a more historic-preservation option for TOD, capping heights at three or four stories. Sadly, given the grip developers have on the development-loving city officials, that's about as likely to happen as I am to be picked as the vice presidential candidate for John McCain or Barack Obama.

"Green" conventions? And other news

Should Charlotte's convention center start trying to capture the "green convention" business? Successful event planner Mary Tribble, who's back from a national conference on the subject, said Tuesday she believes more national conventions will aim their business at cities and facilities that can market themselves as "green." The Charlotte Convention Center is not LEED-certified, of course. [LEED = Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design.] Nor will the new NASCAR Hall of Fame be. (See my May 23 posting, below.)

Tribble says she and Charlotte Regional Visitors Authority honcho Tim Newman are forming a task force to see what can be done in Charlotte.

-- In Wake County, even conservative tax-watchdoggers are pushing FOR a land transfer tax to generate money to build schools. Click here for the N&O's story.

Excerpt: Even former county commissioner Phil Jeffreys, speaking as a member of the fiscally conservative Wake County Taxpayers Association, was on board for a transfer tax. "We need to make sure we go to the legislature and really push on real estate transfer fees," said Jeffreys, who was voted off the board in the last election after voting "no" on many spending proposals.

-- In fast-growing Chatham County, county commissioners on Monday enacted a moratorium on residential development. Click here for the story.

-- Courtesy of one of my favorite planning info sources, Planetizen.com, here's a link to a Wall Street Journal article about the trauma subprime loans are causing in many minority neighborhoods, including a long-established middle-class area of Detroit. According to the article, so many homeowners are facing foreclosure now that it may well erase any gains in homeownership the nation has seen. (And don't forget the Observer's coverage, complete with online map of local foreclosures. Here's a link.)

--And finally, also from Planetizen, here's a piece in which the author takes aim at Reason magazine's assumptions about mass transit versus road-building.

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.