I suspect it has begun to dawn on transit agency officials that the Trump administration is not going to shovel money their way as the Biden administration did. That means many of the larger agencies are going to have to put some of their rail plans on the shelf for at least four years or until a more sympathetic administration takes power. Unfortunately, I doubt that many will seriously consider altering their long-term dreams of building rail lines all over whatever urban areas they serve.
Light-rail train in Charlotte. Photo by James Willamor.
A case in point is the Charlotte Area Transit System (CATS), whose ridership (as of December) is still less than two-thirds what it was before the pandemic. Despite this, CATS has grandiose plans for its future. Central to those plans are the development and operation of a 25-mile Red Line commuter train from downtown Charlotte to the suburb of Mount Mourne. This line is such a loser that the Federal Transit Administration refused to fund it back in 2011, so CATS tried and failed to get local communities to find half while the state would fund the other half. Continue reading
