Transportation Plan At Odds With Reality
A long-range transportation plan that received approval from the city council Monday night assumes that Charlotte will have two more rail-transit corridors up and running by 2025, which coupled with some long-delayed road-building projects will help the Charlotte region attain air-quality levels mandated by the federal government.
One glaring problem with the plan, of course, is that while Charlotte has a fat $9.5-billion transit scheme in place and on the books, even the most ardent of rail boosters concede that reliable, or in some cases even realistic funding options for the proposed North and Northeast corridor rail lines are turning into a train wreck before their very eyes.
Another problem facing the so-called air quality plan is that additional rail-transit corridors won’t provide any measurable benefit in, well, improving the region’s air quality. Neither, for that matter, would any single one of the proposed road-building projects, according to Norm Steinman of Charlotte Department of Transportation, nor a proposed streetcar project that would cost upwards of a half-billion dollars to complete.
Improved technology for cars that produce fewer pollutants, Steinman said, will be the major factor that drives any demonstrable improvement in the region’s air quality. Not flashy new trains. Not sleek new streetcars. Not that the facts would have any bearing on the city council’s continued obsession with rail transit.
Indeed, the major complaint councilmembers raised about the transportation plan, which is up for final vote of approval later this month by the Mecklenburg-Union Metropolitan Planning Organization (MUMPO), was that it shortchanged Charlotte’s train-building dreams. Mayor Pro Tem Susan Burgess, a Democrat, was discouraged that the transportation plan slated the city’s vaunted streetcar project for 2035, when city leaders are currently scurrying feverishly for a federal grant to expedite the first leg of the project.
“When I read this [report] it seems incredibly pessimistic,” Burgess said. “I’m very confident we’ll get that grant. Shouldn’t it at least get an asterisk?”
Asterisk duly noted, and add another one for good measure. Councilmember Nancy Carter, a Democrat whose district includes southeast Charlotte, was ready to vote against the plan because it didn’t include any reference to a possible rail or express bus corridor running down Independence Boulevard from uptown to Matthews.
Carter ultimately voted for the plan after cajoling her colleagues into including reference of the Southeast Corridor project, even after Steinman had explained the plan was only supposed to include projects that the city could realistically be expected to pay for. That caveat, he said, allowed far fewer projects to be included under current funding scenarios, dropping about two-thirds of road projects from eligibility.
In that light, it’s a wonder how any of the projects would make a significant dent in the region’s transportation woes; capacity expansion, Steinman told the council, will lag growth.
“Long-term funding is not adequate,” he said, “to construct, operate and maintain the 2035 transportation system.”
In fact, part of the recommendation for MUMPO approving the proposed 2035 plan later this month is for the group to immediately start preparing another long-range transportation plan.
For the time being, assuming that enough coin can be scrapped together, projects of note in the plan cover completion of I-485 from NC 115 to I-85 near Concord Mills and completion of the Monroe Bypass/Connector for 2015; and widening Independence Boulevard from Conference Drive to Krefeld Drive and widening I-485 from I-77 to Independence for 2025. For 2035, the plan includes widening Independence from Krefeld Drive to NC 51, widening I-485 between Independence and Albemarle Road, and widening NC 51 from Matthews Township Parkway to Lawyers Road.
And, of course, the Northeast and North rail corridors slide in slated for completion by 2025, part and parcel of Charlotte’s $9.5-billion grand transit plan that nobody has a clue how to pay for and which will do virtually nothing to significantly improve air quality.
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