Charlotte Opens Light-Rail Extension

Last week, the Charlotte Area Transit System (CATS) opened a 9.3-mile extension to its light-rail system. The extension cost $1.1 billion, or about twice as much as the city’s first light-rail line, which was about the same length.

Back in 2002, CATS did a major investment study that estimated the light-rail line would cost about $370 million (about $485 million in today’s dollars). The study found that rail would cost 80 percent more to build and slightly more to operate than bus rapid transit, yet buses would attract about 60 percent more riders than rail.

So naturally, they chose to build rail. As near as I can tell, bus rapid transit was not given any further consideration despite its clear advantages.

In 2010, CATS published a draft environmental impact statement. Although the law requires agencies to consider a “full range of alternatives,” the only alternatives considered were “no build” and two slightly different light-rail routes.

By that time, projected costs had grown to more than $1.2 billion ($1.3 billion in today’s money), or nearly 2.7 times the original estimate. Meanwhile, tax revenues were falling short of expectations. CATS responded by cutting about a mile off the proposed line, reducing the size of park-and-ride stations, and making some other cost-cutting measures, but these saved less than $100 million.

Since light rail is going to be faster and more frequent than the local buses in the no-build alternative, CATS projected that light rail would increase the region’s transit ridership by 22 percent. While 22 percent sounds large, transit was projected to move just 0.81 percent of 2030 trips in the region with the light-rail extension, vs. 0.66 percent without it, so the effects on regional transportation would be negligible.
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Ridership projections done in 2010 are pretty worthless anyway. Thanks to stable fuel prices, ride sharing, and other factors, CATS ridership has fallen in every year since 2013. Ridership in 2017 was 22 percent lower than 2013. The new light-rail extension might result in a one-time increase in overall ridership, but it won’t halt the long-term declining trend.

Light rail will have lasting impacts on the area’s traffic. A traffic analysis found that the build alternative would result in increased traffic congestion at many intersections. While the report also projected lower congestion at some intersections, the reduced congestion appeared to be due more to assumed improvements in traffic signal coordination and changes in right- and left-turn lane designs than to the light rail.

CATS claims that the new line will stimulate $4 billion worth of economic development in the corridor. But that’s a zero-sum game. Even if there is new development in the corridor (which will probably be due more to subsidies and changes in zoning codes), that doesn’t mean light rail is stimulating growth of the region as a whole. Instead, new development in the corridor would have taken place with or without the light rail; at most, all the rail line does is influence where the development takes place.

Compare, for example, Charlotte with Raleigh, which doesn’t have light rail. Both urban areas are about the same size and are among the fastest growing urban areas in the country. Between 2010 and 2016, Charlotte grew by 6.9 percent per year, while Raleigh grew by 7.3 percent per year. The lack of light rail doesn’t seem to have hindered Raleigh’s growth.

In short, CATS spent a lot of money on light rail when it could have had a better transit system by relying on buses. It deliberately ignored the bus alternative after 2002 even though its early studies showed that buses were not only less expensive, they would attract more riders than rail. Now the region is saddled with the high costs of operating and maintaining more miles of rail line when transit ridership is declining. This is hardly worthy of celebration.