High Speeding Into Ruin
Faced with falling revenues and rising costs, the Metropolitan Transit Commission this week declared full steam ahead for its now self-professed, out-of-control rail transit building plan. Never mind that there’s no money to pay for it.
The 11-mile, $1.2-billion Blue Line light-rail extension to UNCC is short some $200 million. The solution? Fast track the project, but scale its scope; toss up a shorter line, with fewer transit stations, fewer amenities and less frequent trips. Just keep the latest shiny thing moving forward.
That might be more problematic for full implementation of the proposed 10-mile, $500-million streetcar project, which Charlotte Area Transit System Chief Carolyn Flowers officially disowned during Wednesday’s MTC powwow, effectively killing the project for the foreseeable future.
The city, recall, had already assumed financial obligation for the 1.5-mile streetcar mini-stub, planned to run from uptown’s transit station to Presby Hospital.
CATS had previously rung up a $10-million tab tearing up roads and disrupting businesses along that portion of the line and, with Mayor Anthony Foxx leading the charge, the city earlier this year sunk $12 million of general fund money into it, to match a $25 million federal grant.
So we now are apparently stuck with the 7,920-feet long Foxx Faux Line to Nowhere, at a capital cost of at least $47 million, with no clue how to pay for future operating costs.
The outlook doesn’t look much brighter for the $456-million commuter-rail train to north Mecklenburg. The appropriately named Red Line has been a losing proposition since its inception, with cost/ridership ratios so out of whack even the feds panned it. But that hasn’t stopped CATS and the MTC, who argue the way to move the line forward is through public-private partnerships.
Norfolk Southern pops up as a potential candidate for partnership, but it’s hard to see the upside for that working without massive public subsidy. More likely: some massive tax increment financing swindle that would crater property tax revenue streams in the out years, drawing money away from core government responsibilities. That’s when you’ll hear the cry that a property tax hike is needed for more police, fire, roads, yada, yada.
And speaking of taxes, the light rail cabal is apparently no longer content with just lobbying for legislative authority to put another half-cent sales tax for transit up for a vote. They now want local authority, bypassing legislative approval, to put taxing referendums on the local ballot.
Another transit tax is imperative, the argument goes, because the existing half-cent isn’t throwing off enough revenue to satiate Charlotte’s train-building lust, falling about $470 million shy of projections over the next decade.
Rail transit enthusiasts, however, got a glimmer of hope at the end of the tunnel this week, courtesy of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. North Carolina and the greater Char-Meck region, he informed, could be in line to receive millions of additional federal dollars for high-speed rail, largely because a pair of fiscally responsible and sane governors, both Republicans, from Ohio and Wisconsin, are declining to accept the federal loot for projects in their own states. The money has to go somewhere; might be North Carolina, was the message from LaHood.
Local officials, naturally, cheered the news, despite overwhelming evidence that high-speed rail is a giant boondoggle waiting to roll down the tracks.
So we have that to look forward to, along with the 7,920-feet long Foxx Faux Line, a Blue Line extension built on the cheap that will still cost upwards of a billion dollars, a Red Line that’s living up to its moniker, and the possibility of yet another local tax to fund the madness.
And no new transit plan with any semblance of sanity in sight.
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