Occupy CLT Protesting CATS
They probably don’t know it, but the Occupy Charlotte movement is gearing up to protest the exorbitant cost of light rail.
Their specific target is bus/rail fare increases being proposed by the Charlotte Area Transit System, which Queen City occupiers – last seen being rousted from their uptown encampment – are encouraging folks to speak up against at the CATS public hearing, scheduled for 5:30 p.m. today at the Government Center.
The fare increases, of course, are being driven in part by the insanely high price tag(s) of light rail. It’s happened in city after city, where cost overruns and higher than expected operating costs for light rail have forced officials to either trim bus service and/or jack up fares. The Neanderthals who tried to point out, way back when, that the same course would likely be followed in Charlotte were wholly discounted as kooks and naysayers.
For CATS it’s been a triple-whammy, with revenue from the half-cent sales tax for transit plummeting while the local transit system has been forced to absorb a larger percentage of light rail capital expenses because of construction costs that skyrocketed (see South Corridor, under Lynx Blue Line, subheading exploding budget) and operating costs that have done the same.
CATS, in fact, could provide a whole calendar year’s worth of protest-rich material for the Occupy crowd, as it looks like déjà vu all over again with the latest light-rail budget buster coming down the tracks. Officials announced this week that construction costs for the Blue Line extension, a 9.4-mile line slated to run from uptown to UNC-Charlotte’s main campus, were pegged at $1.16 billion. Which should be taken with a huge grain of salt.
This is the same project, after all, that’s seen its budget roller coaster from $700 million in 2007 for an 11-mile line to $1.18 billion in 2009, which dropped to $977 million when CATS changed some design elements and trimmed the project’s scope, only to claw back to its current $1.16 billion. But CATS officials are firm on that number now. Just ask them.
And then go read the city’s proposed tax-hike budget, which includes about $102 million worth of infrastructure upgrades to grace the Blue Line extension route and $119 million for the Foxx/Faux Streetcar to Nowhere.
And then go grab a sign and join the Occupy crowd in their protest against (wink) higher transit fares.
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