Podcast: Mary Newsom Talks Charlotte's Appetite for Growth

On this week's talking headways podcast, the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute's Mary Newsom talks about Charlotte's history, urban growth, and transportation.

On Charlotte's Fight with North Carolina, Itself

A fight is breaking out between former Charlotte Mayor/current NC Governor Pat McCrory and current Mayor Anthony Foxx over funding related to the local Streetcar and LRT projects.  Charlotte, unlike many other states gives state level full funding grant agreements for capital transit projects. In 1998 Charlotte passed a half cent sales tax for transit expansion in the region with McCrory leading the charge.  In 2007 the pro transit folks fought off another ballot measure to take away the half cent and won by 70% of the vote.  This fight was partly started because of cost overruns that bothered libertarians, also chafing at the thought of having rail in the region.  Apparently the most despised mode of all. 

At this juncture, the city is looking to fund the streetcar project with local property taxes because there is no funding available from the half cent, which is tied up in the Northeast Corridor and operations of the expanded bus system.  The bus system funding has worked so well, that its seen over a 100% ridership increase.  Because of the lack of transit funding, the regional plan as seen below, is taking much longer than initially planned.

This seems to be the rub.  McCrory believes that only the half cent set aside for transit should be used for expansion, and that funding from the state ($299m) is dependent on local funding being so constrained, that the city has to go through the state.  Apparently trying to speed up the process of building out the network by locally funding is not allowed.  One line at a time, and no streetcars. And forget that the roads don't pay for themselves. What this tells us is that decision makers in the state think that if Charlotte has its half cent of play money, the big boys can use the funding for the other interests.

But what else is going on in the region that would equate to other interests?  How about the $3B in road projects that are happening in Charlotte currently.  And they want to start a state fight over a few hundred million?  What a disgraceful flareup.  The State doesn't want to give money because they think Charlotte has enough, and Charlotte with the help of NCDOT wants to waste billions on sprawl highways. Building sprawl highways that have no use until the land around them is developed into oblivion.  Charlotte pretends that it doesn't want to turn into over sprawling and traffic choked Atlanta, but it looks like being Georgia is the goal, and the state led by Pat McCrory, is more than happy to help them get there.

Loop Roads or Bust

It's been open season on long term capital improvements for fixed guideway transit.  First there's Minnesota Republicans looking to hack into transit by stealing operating money.  Then you get the fun times in North Carolina where Republicans are trying to cut out funding for the North Corridor light rail line.  But I found the article a bit funny, especially when they were saying, we don't have enough money for transit but more than enough for a completely un-needed beltway.  

...it would kill Gaston County's proposed Garden Parkway toll road, using money from that project for urban loop roads, perhaps including Interstate 485.

You know, that loop road that developers really want for their sprawl. And then...

"We wanted to target more dollars to maintaining the system we have - as opposed to building new roads, new bridges, new parts of the system," said Senate Leader Phil Berger, a Rockingham County Republican.

How the reporters didn't see this and do a double take on the building loops and not spending on new roads is beyond me.

Unconventional Thinking On Charlotte

A lot of times I'll see an article or a piece that I want to comment on but hold off to see if more of a complete picture comes through. I'm glad I did this time because I've waffled back and forth on the idea of Light Rail on Charlotte's Independence Boulevard. When the debate raged between BRT and LRT on this corridor back in 2005-2006 I felt like BRT would have given the corridor a raw deal. Partly because frequencies and vehicle capacity would mean much more in operating costs even if the capital costs were lower.

At that point there was a lot of support from local mayors (like former Matthews Mayor Lee Myers) and communities for the light rail line but as usual no money. So the decision to pick a locally preferred alternative was shelved for a later date several years down the road when there might be money available.

However recently Mary Newsom at the Charlotte Observer tweeted then blogged about a ULI session that suggested that Independence should be HOV lanes and a Streetcar should be run up Monroe Road. Yonah has a good graphic for this over on the Transport Politic. Initially when I saw the tweet I thought that was a really dumb idea. I had seen the fight between LRT and BRT before and the current suggestions were for the line to be a rapid bus line in the HOV lane and a streetcar on Monroe Road.

While still rapid transit, all that type of transit would do is reward people living further and further away from the city without changing any of the land use patterns closer to the city center. The streetcar might do it but I'm starting to wonder whether line haul streetcars are a great idea for places that would rather have more rapid transit options. Just as Yonah points out, you aren't really going to be getting anywhere fast.

But then I started to warm up to the idea of HOV lanes considering that freeway alignments don't really work well for TOD considering most of the really good property is taken up by the size of the road. Especially if the road is going to be the size of a freeway at some point ceasing to be an actual boulevard. But that is the rub.

The problem here is the same problem that's happening when TTI releases its urban mobility report based on a travel time index. All the engineers at the state DOT care about at this moment are making the trip from a place outside of the Loop into downtown faster. They want to widen this road and make it a full fledged freeway. But that decision alone goes against the centers and corridors plan that Charlotte developed after they voted for the half cent sales tax initially and revamped in 2010.


The TTI travel time index is the wrong measure, especially if it is going to push infrastructure investment that drives the vicious cycle of speed to further away parts of the region. We know now rather that access is a more important measure. CEO's for Cities laid it out in their Driven Apart study, showing that travel time skews the data towards travel flow rather than closer access to work or other destinations.

What this means for Independence Boulevard is that if the NCDOT gets a hold of it and upgrades the outer sections to a grade separated highway, then the ability to change those patterns for better access to an employment node is lost forever. One of the commenters on Yonah's post noted that the outermost piece of Independence is actually a boulevard instead of a highway. Not a boulevard in the sense of a grand boulevard but it is still not a grade separated highway.

The one problem with changing it to a grand boulevard is that urban development patterns that people like are harder to realize further from the downtown or major employment cores. Because of land values and other market forces, the further you get out from major gravity centers like downtown Charlotte or the University, the harder it gets to realize new urban style development. In fact, the South Corridor already shows that development further out is harder to realize. The map below shows development projects from 2007 and before on the South Corridor. The basic distance from downtown before development starts to wane is approximately 3.5 miles. Basically, the strong market of downtown seems to be extended with access provided by the transit line. This is about a 13-15 minute trip to downtown.

Source: Realizing the Potential One Year Later

Part of the reason for this is the travel time people are willing to endure to get downtown. It's not likely that people will take the streetcar from the outer edges of Monroe Road or Central Avenue unless they have no other options. Additionally, this is why an Independence Light Rail line gets a bit tricky. But we need to start thinking of Independence not as a corridor feeding downtown but rather as a future mass that will have its own gravity. And I believe that gravity can be achieved with a strategic investment in the road to make it an urbanism changing Boulevard.

Considering the section of Independence that is already most like a freeway is within the 3.5 mile radius, its hard to imagine much happening in the short term along the Boulevard. Below shows the ~3.5 mile radius. The yellow shows the part most like a freeway already. The red shows the Boulevard and the light blue is the railroad corridor that is parallel to Independence. The Orange is the Central Streetcar.


This means that a Monroe Streetcar would be good for the inner 3.5 miles but two different service types will be needed further out for shorter and longer types of trips. This also leaves an opportunity for a Grand Boulevard that can attract business and development over time if the road is done right and parcels are slowly transformed into gridded and walkable areas. The approximately 120 feet of right of way are more than enough to build a road that would be friendly to transit, bikes, pedestrians as well as autos.


This corridor specifically could pull offices out to 7.5 miles, creating a new employment corridor which could bring land values up and with it densities over time. Creating a new center should be the goal, not making it another pass through on the way to downtown with HOV lanes for buses that are going to get 5000 riders a day at best. Additionally, by creating two centers with a rapid transit line and streetcar between, the market between the two centers gets stronger, allowing it to support the types of urban development people always draw on their maps at public meetings.

Photo via Hugeasscity

I realize this might be a bit too forward thinking for some people but ultimately we have to change our mindset about what is possible in urban places if we are to give people opportunities to choose different housing and mobility types. Yes this corridor is going to be auto dominated for the near future but that doesn't mean we have to doom it to freewaydom and forever feed sprawling development patterns further and further out. In fact, it's possible to create a new center that attracts new transit trips from within its own gravitational field.

Giving Up and Release Valves

So it seems as if the Port Authority in Pittsburgh is giving up on a rail trip between the two largest employment centers in the region. Perhaps they'll get real BRT but given that opposition always goes to the lowest common denominator such as in Berkeley, you can bet there will be a fight over dedicating the lanes.

I'm disappointed because I feel like this is a travel corridor that could benefit from a direct link from the existing light rail system. However no one wants to actually invest in transit infrastructure these days. I can hardly blame them, once it gets built they have to fight for every penny to operate the thing. If we're ever going to get a real mode share out of transit, we're going to have to start investing in something real. Not necessarily in big projects, but real headways and dedicated lanes for places that will never have rail.

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I guess I'm in a pessimistic mood tonight. New Jersey is thinking about stopping the ARC tunnel for road projects (blech) and the Twin Cities is thinking about how they are going to serve the suburbs of tomorrow when people can't drive. Newsflash! Peak oil isn't our only problem people. What about those folks who can't drive because they are too old! Paratransit is expensive.

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This article irked me for some reason. In it Mary misses the major point about development and land value around transit and even "urban renewal" lessons. She complains about the high rises around transit close to single family neighborhoods.

That, of course, is precisely the problem with Charlotte's love affair with too-tall transit-oriented development zoning smack next to low-scale, historic Dilworth or - this will come - NoDa. Even if nothing's demolished, making land values so high so swiftly via zoning encourages large, expensive projects that will drive out small-scale enterprises.

You want to know why that property becomes so valuable? Because it is scarce! Contrary to popular belief, there is not enough supply of urban housing to meet the demand, so the speculators come in and jack up the prices. I bet you wouldn't have this problem if transit was built out such that neighborhoods didn't gentrify because people wanted the quality locations and access. In places like New York City or Chicago that have extensive transit systems to all kinds of neighborhoods, you see that transit stations are the more diverse income places than the region as a whole.

This is the problem with our thinking here. We complain about the results of our actions but don't think about the underlying actions themselves. Given that Charlotte is building its system line by line, you'll see development speculation and value increases acting as a release valve on the downtown market. If you built all the lines at once, that pressure gets relieved five or six ways instead of one way.

Right now this is just my theory, but when Denver and Houston open up their lines at relatively the same time, I am going to say that you are going to get a more diverse housing type in new stations than we've seen along corridors that are a first big transit investment in a city. The reason being is that they will meet the actual demand, instead of be a small rock in the pond.

So if regions are feeling for local businesses and the skyrocket land values around transit, the escape valve that creates greater opportunities in places that want to change is to build greater transit networks. More escape valves means greater distribution of different development and less pressure and speculation.

Trax Siemens Debut

Ok so two posts on this is a bit much but I wanted to compare the Charlotte and Utah vehicles side by side. These are for you Gordon. It looks as if the UTA vehicles are even shorter than the Charlotte LRVs and much shorter than the Houston LRVs which are all the same series. I had read before that this was done to accommodate four car trains.

Utah Transit Authority

Courtesy of UTA

Charlotte CATS


Via Willamore Media Creative Commons on Flickr.

Houston Metro


Via Word Junky Creative Commons on Flickr.

Bonus video footage from today's car unveiling and wow is it going out into the boonies. Better do it right.

New Siemens S70 LRV Debut in Salt Lake

We discussed these bad boys when the order was put in back in 2008. The thing I find interesting about this version of the S70 is that they are snout nosed and less archy on the ends than the new Portland and San Diego vehicles. This apparently was so that they could continue to run four car trains.

Here's a photo of Portland's new LRVs (with some older)


via Thomas Le Ngo on Flickr

Then the new Salt Lake City version

via Transit in Utah

I think I actually like them better. If anyone in Utah gets some photos shoot em over and we'll post them.

Half the Story McCrory

While it would be nice to believe that Light Rail changed the world in Charlotte, Mayor McCrory is doing a bit of oversell if this article is complete evidence of what he said to some streetcar folks in Fort Worth.

McCrory is credited with pushing through a transportation plan that, with the help of a $200 million federal grant for light rail, revitalized blighted Charlotte neighborhoods. On Friday, he visited with about 200 advocates of returning electric trolleys to the Fort Worth streets.

Now that light rail is on the ground in Charlotte, he said, "our bus ridership is not just people who have to have it but people who want to ride it. Bus ridership is all races and classes. The bus system is unbelievable now."

What happened in Charlotte was not only the construction of light rail and the planning for a rapid transit network, but most of the half cent sales tax went into improving bus service. This is what the referendum focused on back in 2007. If passed, it would have severely hampered the bus system as well as the LRT expansion. But as a reward for the investment, Charlotte has had substantial gains in ridership directly related to the upgraded network and improved service.

The Usual Statements

Will there ever be a day when we don't see this sentence in a newspaper article?

Huntersville Mayor Jill Swain said the N.C. Department of Transportation, "from the top down, recognizes that north Mecklenburg's roads are overwhelmed, and Barry Moose's comment shows we need to move the traffic through our area faster."

More sprawl subsidy on the way!

Sunday Night Notes

Long Beach is looking at streetcars
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Quatar has a $22B deal with Deutsche Bahn to build freight, passenger, and Metro rail lines using Siemens technology.
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Having the last train leave at 6:30 is a ridership killer. Commuter rail lines with limited time tables make no sense to me.
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Major developments along the North Corridor Commuter Rail line in Charlotte. My question, will it actually be Transit Oriented?
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Is the housing bust going to actually halt suburbs? I feel like this will be short lived unless something bigger changes.

Use the Land to Pay the Tab?

The city of Charlotte is contemplating buying a dead mall. The same dead mall is at the end of the proposed streetcar route. It would be interesting if they would decide to view it as an opportunity to be innovative in their financing. If they go Portland style, they could put together a development agreement and sell to a developer who might be able to do something interesting and urbanist with the property, provided there is a market for such a thing. It's also quite possible that this development could pay for part of the streetcar, some affordable housing and other amenities.

Does anyone know why Charlotte would want to buy this property? It's not clear that there is a true goal in mind, which could hinder any thinking, innovative or otherwise.

Stories Like This

When I see headlines like this, It makes me a bit upset.

"Woman Raped Along Uptown Light Rail Line"

Not just because someone was violated against their will, but also because the insertion of along Uptown Light Rail Line vilifies the line itself for something it really had nothing to do with. If you read closer into the story, the woman was not riding the light rail line and was assaulted downtown walking on a sidewalk. Could have been any sidewalk and she could have been leaving any bar. But the headline screams "transit is dangerous". These kind of associations happen all the time and will continue to happen. I just wish they didn't.

Monday Night Notes

Chris Leinberger tells us that "value capture" is the term of the next year. Though I wish he would dig a bit deeper.
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Izmir imports trams from China.
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Is McCrory for transit or against it? He likes the train when he's in Tampa, but doesn't want to spend money for the streetcars or an extension of light rail. Kay Hagen understands.

Hagan rode to her new Charlotte office – a symbolic short hop – on the Lynx light rail line, a reminder that earlier this year, she secured $24 million for the Charlotte Area Transit System

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Edmonton will levy a fee on suburban developers to pay for new transit.

Tuesday Night Notes

Vancouver puts its hopes along the Canada Line into TOD
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Is City Living the way to a wealthier nation? I'm not sure if it's just city living. I think it's creation of wealth through location efficiency. But currently our rules are set up to not let that happen.
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Charlotte is master planning at the North End rail yards south to Dilworth. Wonder if they are thinking about the Ringstrasse? Could tie it together quite nicely.
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Why the Catenary Talk?

After overriding the Mayor's veto, URS is going to look at how to bring the streetcar to the city. One of the issues, how to power them, will be fun to consider. Though the question asked in the article seems wrong:

"Do you want to be one of the last streetcars with a catenary system, or the first with a new system - that's the dilemma," Nadolny said.

What streetcar actually needs catenary? Simple trolley wire will do. Some interurban lines could run up to 90mph on trolleywire. I don't see why we have to always over-engineer these things. If you want to ugly things up, go ahead and build catenary. Perhaps that is the goal since the idea of wireless streetcars is all the rage.

Gaming the System for Roads

EPA is basically worthless in light of this:

City transportation planners changed data that essentially took one in three cars off the road, enabling them to show less pollution. They also have made overly optimistic forecasts about how often people would use mass transit.

And despite evidence that building more highways causes people to drive farther, the city has told the EPA the opposite: Building billions of dollars of new highways will cause Charlotteans to drive less, and create less smog, than if they weren't built.

Not that it doesn't tell us something we already knew. Non attainment is a joke and all regions are going to continue to build more roads and game the system with the main goal of "reducing congestion" so they can say that they reduced pollution. But what they are really doing is increasing growth on the periphery which increases VMT at a higher rate than technology can reduce the emissions. It's not rocket science to know that building roads leads more people to drive.

But in Charlotte, some of the improvements from cleaner vehicles have been offset by the region's population growth and an increase in how many miles the average Charlottean drives. Vehicles account for up to 70 percent of Mecklenburg's ozone-causing pollutants, according to a county estimate.

70%! They also got a pass because the figured they would have three rapid transit lines by now instead of one. So it's kind of funny that the environmental process for transit makes building the lines slower when roads can run free until they hit non-attainment, even though those transit lines would let them go further faster.

Wal Mart is Not TOD

Building a supercenter will not anchor TOD. Sorry to say.

Soon, the boarded up store fronts and run down parking lots that make up the mostly vacant Amity Gardens Shopping Center will be torn down to make room for a Wal-Mart Supercenter.

After years of discussions, the mega-chain finalized plans to build along Independence Boulevard Monday night. City leaders hope it will be an economic shot in the arm to the city's East Side.

"I think we have a real opportunity for transit oriented development next door and further out. This will anchor all of those developments," said Nancy Carter, of the Charlotte City Council.

I'm sure Wal Mart would act as a stellar anchor to new real transit oriented development, after it dies a slow gasoline-less supply chain death.

Symbolic Gestures

Looks like Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory vetoed the Charlotte streetcar study. But no matter, it initially passed with a 7 to 4 vote, wherin 7 votes are needed to override a veto. It was a symbolic gesture that might win him some local support from the local libertarian set, but ultimately would hold the city back from planning the line which would likely not be constructed for at least another few years, hopefully when the economy is better. Gotta plan for the future.

Building Something of Meaning

Mayor McCrory of Charlotte has been complaining about the stimulus for a while. Most of his argument revolves around the fact that its ridiculously hard to build anything of long term meaning. I tend to agree with him on this point and think that if we're going to spend the money, it might as well be on things that are long lasting.

Under the stimulus, there is limited ability to build transit systems or major power generating facilities, upgrade water systems, or undertake significant environmental cleanups. While President Roosevelt built dams and President Eisenhower built an interstate highway system, President Obama's stimulus fills pot holes.

72% New

72% of riders on Charlotte's light rail system hadn't used transit before. That is a HUGE number and somewhat surprising to me given that these are all people who have access to a car. Though I have to take issue with the last sentence in the article:

The study didn't ask riders what route they would have taken to work, so it's impossible to determine where the Lynx has provided any congestion relief.

If 72% weren't taking transit before, it seems to me they aren't blocking the road. The big thing still though is the development that has taken place along the corridor. While much of it has occurred in the South End, it just shows the power of transit push the downtown development market a bit further out with easier transportation access.