Having the light rail line run right through campus is going to be a HUGE game changer.
Also, we will really need to beef up security.
Yeah I am a little worried about that. As far as I am concerned they should put a little campus cop/ char-meck station right at the light rail stop. If they are going through with the K-8 school there I am sure they will stay on top of security though.
Yeah I am a little worried about that. As far as I am concerned they should put a little campus cop/ char-meck station right at the light rail stop. If they are going through with the K-8 school there I am sure they will stay on top of security though.[/quote]
Well, if the station is located more towards North Deck, then the campus police station is right next door.
http://www.wbtv.com/story/17287797/lynx-trains-set-to-run-to-uncc-by-march-of-2017
The 9.4-mile extension of the popular light rail line will extend the line from 7th Street in uptown to the campus of UNC-Charlotte in University City. The train will pass through NoDa and the Old Concord Road area before turning into the median of N. Tryon Street.All totaled, the trip from uptown to campus will take 22 minutes.
Students will be able to get to NoDa and Southend on the train. I can’t see why anyone would ever choose to go to App or ECU again.
[quote=“Nugget, post:25, topic:26360”]Students will be able to get to NoDa and Southend on the train. I can’t see why anyone would ever choose to go to App or ECU again.[/quote]App is in a beautiful area…ECU, yeah, I don’t know why anyone would ever willingly live in Greenville.
Someone check my math. I figured $127,000,000 per mile, but its too early to believe it.
I really expect NoDa to blow up with students.
[quote=“MeanJoeGreen, post:27, topic:26360”]Someone check my math. I figured $127,000,000 per mile, but its too early to believe it.[/quote]Are you angry about wasting money on the Monroe Bypass and the Garden Parkway, or do you reserve your hatred for rail projects exclusively?
I really expect NoDa to blow up with students.[/quote]That would be a shame. There are plenty of douchey places uptown that cater to college kids already. I’d hate for NoDa to turn into Uptown-lite.
I like Uptown and the bars there, but I also like the NoDa bars and restaurants because they have a different vibe than uptown.
100% Against Toll roads. They would not be needed if the state spent the all of the money taken from those who buy gas on actual roads. 100% against lightly ridden rail. Not seeing all the grand development and jobs created in south Charlotte from the first 150% over budget rail.
http://pundithouse.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/RedLineFinancePlanReview-1.pdf
I really expect NoDa to blow up with students.[/quote]That would be a shame. There are plenty of douchey places uptown that cater to college kids already. I’d hate for NoDa to turn into Uptown-lite.
I like Uptown and the bars there, but I also like the NoDa bars and restaurants because they have a different vibe than uptown.[/quote]
IMO The douchey vibe downtown is not college kids. It is the transplants and young professionals. The few times I have walked around epicentre I did not think these are college kids. Now of courses there are some, but seems like to me they are not the majority.
I would love to see NoDa turn into a little more a traditional college environment.
127M per mile is painful - I am an advocate of rail, but I would like to see the timeline on ROI on this.
My biggest beef with the rail so far is the half assed way we are doing it - rail here, light rail there, trolley there, street car there. They also failed big time in getting surrounding counties to help fund this thing. Part of the reason these are needed are due to people coming in from out of char-meck.
As for Garden Parkway - don’t even get me started on that. It is nothing more than elected officials lining their pockets. Very little if anything good will come from that project. Every study has come back with signs that this road is a mistake, but it keeps getting approved at every level. I don’t understand how some of this stuff is not illegal.
100% Against Toll roads. They would not be needed if the state spent the all of the money taken from those who buy gas on actual roads. 100% against lightly ridden rail. Not seeing all the grand development and jobs created in south Charlotte from the first 150% over budget rail.
http://pundithouse.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/RedLineFinancePlanReview-1.pdf[/quote]A lot of the development plans hit a snag, but there has still been over a billion dollars of investment in South End since Light Rail was completed. That significantly increases the amount of property tax the city can collect. There are several major projects that have broken ground recently or will in the next few months in South End. Initial plans were mostly for condo/townhome projects, but they have since been reconfigured as apartments.
This map shows the projects that will start development (mostly) in 2012. These represent over 3,000 additional housing units on the light rail line.
Glad to hear you at least spread your transit hate around to wasteful road projects too, so at least we can half agree on something, which I’ll take. 
I really expect NoDa to blow up with students.[/quote]That would be a shame. There are plenty of douchey places uptown that cater to college kids already. I’d hate for NoDa to turn into Uptown-lite.
I like Uptown and the bars there, but I also like the NoDa bars and restaurants because they have a different vibe than uptown.[/quote]
NoDa is three blocks long. For it to “explode” with students they’ll have to be willing to live in the ghetto that surrounds NoDa on all four sides. I don’t see that happening. Now if you just mean they’ll go “hang-out” there, its already full without them. I saw a tour bus there yesterday, really, wtf?
127M per mile is painful - I am an advocate of rail, but I would like to see the timeline on ROI on this.
My biggest beef with the rail so far is the half assed way we are doing it - rail here, light rail there, trolley there, street car there. They also failed big time in getting surrounding counties to help fund this thing. Part of the reason these are needed are due to people coming in from out of char-meck.
As for Garden Parkway - don’t even get me started on that. It is nothing more than elected officials lining their pockets. Very little if anything good will come from that project. Every study has come back with signs that this road is a mistake, but it keeps getting approved at every level. I don’t understand how some of this stuff is not illegal.[/quote]I don’t see that as being half asses at all. That’s how most cities do it. DC has commuter rail lines that go into suburban VA and two that go into suburban MD. They are diesel powered and do not travel on the same kind of tracks the subway does. They are also installing street cars to service the east side of the city on H street.
SF has a similar set up and so does NYC (minus the street cars).
Portland does the same.
Light rail does not work on some streets, so the only rail that is feasible is street cars. I personally find streetcars to be a waste of money since they are subject to traffic just like a car/bus. I’d rather see them put in nice bus stations to give the bus lines a sense of permanence (since that is the perceived value of streetcar) with upgraded buses that offer WiFi service and cleanliness. They can then give it some BS made up name so people don’t think of it as a regular bus.
I’d like to see Light Rail run from the university to 485 in south Charlotte, to the airport, and down 7th street/Monroe Rd to downtown Matthews. Heavy rail to Huntersville, Davidson, Mooresville.
The rest of the mass transit efforts here should be centered around decentralizing the bus service. Hub and spoke bus systems are very inefficient. If I lived in the University area and wanted to go to Plaza-Midwood, I’d have to bus downtown and then transfer. Total trip time is damn near 2 hours. I can drive there in 15 minutes. That’s just awful.
I really expect NoDa to blow up with students.[/quote]That would be a shame. There are plenty of douchey places uptown that cater to college kids already. I’d hate for NoDa to turn into Uptown-lite.
I like Uptown and the bars there, but I also like the NoDa bars and restaurants because they have a different vibe than uptown.[/quote]
NoDa is three blocks long. For it to “explode” with students they’ll have to be willing to live in the ghetto that surrounds NoDa on all four sides. I don’t see that happening. Now if you just mean they’ll go “hang-out” there, its already full without them. I saw a tour bus there yesterday, really, wtf?[/quote]Yeah, not much of NoDa is really ghetto anymore. There is still a ghetto section (Belmont) in between Uptown and NoDa, but even that is starting to see some change. I live by P-M (but technically in Belmont) and I see a lot of new homes/renovation jobs popping up in the Belmont community. The city has a great Belmont revitalization program that is spurring development in the neighborhood. A guy I know just built a beautiful new Charlestonian style home in Belmont and he’s far from alone.
127M per mile is painful - I am an advocate of rail, but I would like to see the timeline on ROI on this.
My biggest beef with the rail so far is the half assed way we are doing it - rail here, light rail there, trolley there, street car there. They also failed big time in getting surrounding counties to help fund this thing. Part of the reason these are needed are due to people coming in from out of char-meck.
As for Garden Parkway - don’t even get me started on that. It is nothing more than elected officials lining their pockets. Very little if anything good will come from that project. Every study has come back with signs that this road is a mistake, but it keeps getting approved at every level. I don’t understand how some of this stuff is not illegal.[/quote]
The rest of the mass transit efforts here should be centered around decentralizing the bus service. Hub and spoke bus systems are very inefficient. If I lived in the University area and wanted to go to Plaza-Midwood, I’d have to bus downtown and then transfer. Total trip time is damn near 2 hours. I can drive there in 15 minutes. That’s just awful.[/quote]
This is what I was really getting at - all the different methods of movement and I do not feel like they are interconnected that well at all. I grew up outside of DC when the METRO was being built. I can see what a well thought out and executed mass transit plan can do for a metro area. I just don’t feel like we have that. It really felt like well we don’t have money so here lets do this here and this here with no overall plan. I don’t mind mass transit at all - just want it more thought out than what I have seen thus far. And they really screwed up by not getting all the surrounding counties on board with the plan - which goes on to show either how bad or how poorly communicated their plan is. I mean I drive into Charlotte everyday and would be happy to ride mass transit. Hell I would leave the explorer parked and ride motorcycles all the time, but in the plan they have there is no way other than a bus to get me to south charlotte and I am not riding a bus through west charlotte.
What is really a shame is I can recall being in high school and hearing the Charlotte City Council say that any type of mass transit system for Charlotte beyond buses was not needed and would be a waste of tax payer money. If they had done it then we would be in much better shape now.
I will say that IF the garden parkway gets built I am one of the few people it will help. Cut’s my drive distance to work from 11 miles to maybe 3 maybe 4. So if it gets built the chances of me using any mass transit probably goes way down.
I am not sure what the apartment owners pay in property taxes, but I do know all those people crammed into one location do not pay property taxes on their place of residency, which means they will come after all of us who do when they need more money again.
Toll roads suck because they never stop and never give any money back. Those toll bridges and roads never seem to get paid off. Anyone who has ever driven through NY City knows what I am talking about. Its just yet another government bureacracy to bleed those of us who are productive in society.
$127 million per mile does not include operational costs or future costs associated with deterioration. God only knows what costs will be attributed to design and estimating errors. Anyone willing to bet their FSL’s on the lightly ridden rail project coming in under budget would be insane in my opinion. The only question is how much over the $1.16 Billion it ends up. Thats the problem with huge numbers. the 0.16 implies accuracy, but its still 160 million. The final 485 leg with all those bridges and interchanges is well under that isn’t it?
I really expect NoDa to blow up with students.[/quote]That would be a shame. There are plenty of douchey places uptown that cater to college kids already. I’d hate for NoDa to turn into Uptown-lite.
I like Uptown and the bars there, but I also like the NoDa bars and restaurants because they have a different vibe than uptown.[/quote]
NoDa is three blocks long. For it to “explode” with students they’ll have to be willing to live in the ghetto that surrounds NoDa on all four sides. I don’t see that happening. Now if you just mean they’ll go “hang-out” there, its already full without them. I saw a tour bus there yesterday, really, wtf?[/quote]Yeah, not much of NoDa is really ghetto anymore. There is still a ghetto section (Belmont) in between Uptown and NoDa, but even that is starting to see some change. I live by P-M (but technically in Belmont) and I see a lot of new homes/renovation jobs popping up in the Belmont community. The city has a great Belmont revitalization program that is spurring development in the neighborhood. A guy I know just built a beautiful new Charlestonian style home in Belmont and he’s far from alone.[/quote]Belmont, home of the $5477 streetlights (each). Yikes!