The breathless cheerleading for the $456 million taxpayer-financed Red Line led by Anthony Fox, John Woods, Beverly Perdue’s Department of Transportation, and indulged at times by our own Mayor Jeff Tarte, should stop now. Let’s all reflect on Greece’s experience.
This gigantic government project intends to build commuter rail from Mooresville to Gateway Station (near Johnson & Wales,; several blocks from Trade and Tryon with no current or even planned connections anywhere). Less than five percent of commuters are forecast to ride routinely.
The hopes and dreams around the Red Line are all about enough real estate development along the rail, so that special assessment taxes and the incremental tax revenue from the newly constructed buildings and apartments would hopefully pay half of the $456 million in new bonds to build the line and the additional (still unknown) annual operating deficits. Existing state and county tax dollars would pay the other half. We have to be extremely careful and skeptical at every step.
If the costs follow the Blue Line experience, then the project will total more than $900 million ultimately, and we have no way of knowing what new real estate development will be — the Blue Line experience was fueled by an historic real estate bubble, and yet is still not promising years later as we see the foreclosures, rising crime, and failed commercial and residential buildings along the line.
We do know that the Blue Line (less than half the mileage) cost $463 million (more than double the original estimate) and taxpayers now pay more than $20 each and every time a rider gets on the train for a single trip — 83 percent of the Blue Line’s annual operating costs must be covered by taxpayers in perpetuity. There are also stories of restaurants (e.g. Sonny’s) on the Blue Line which saw 25 to 30 percent loss of business when the line opened due to increased crime and vagrancy
Our crucial imperative is that Cornelius taxpayers must not be the “backstop” (in no way, shape, or form) on the hook to pay for the bonds and the annual operating deficits for decades to come. In terms of potential risk, the Red Line is eerily similar to Davidson’s and Mooresville’s tragic and catastrophic decision to purchase MI-Connection.
In short, aggressive Red Line promotion rests on exotic and unproven financing strategies, and we continue to hear the mantra of “it’s all about economic development.” Yet, supporting facts are non-existent and the sad history of huge government rail projects around the U.S. is that local taxpayers are ultimately hit between the eyes in perpetuity once the project is built.
— Dave Gilroy, Cornelius
