At last Wednesday’s meeting, though, the standing-room-only crowd included several representatives of the Charlotte Area Transit System (CATS), among others. The catalyst? Perhaps it was the blessing of the long-planned commuter rail from downtown Charlotte to Mooresville at last month’s meeting by Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx. Or, maybe it’s the continued interest in the project expressed by the actions of the office of North Carolina Transportation Secretary Gene Conti, in part in the form of Paul Morris and his team of transit consultants at Raleigh-based Greenleaf Strategies.
Most likely, though, it’s about money. At last week’s meeting, the group, made up of elected representatives and administrators from all jurisdictions along the Red Line, officially repositioned the effort from a transportation-oriented project to one driven by more intense development along the corridor in an effort to efficiently accommodate the coming growth and the economic development that can follow. The task force unanimously endorsed four policy issues which, according to task force member and Huntersville Transportation Planner Bill Coxe, refocuses the dialogue on the original mission of rail transit in the Charlotte region.
“If you go back to the 2025 transit land use plan in 1998, and I know it intimately because I helped rewrite the thing over the course of a weekend, the plan said we are the Charlotte region and all of this development is coming to the region, so how are we going to cope with it?” says Coxe, who worked with the Charlotte Department of Transportation at the time. “Will we cope with it by developing all these transit corridors parallel to freeways or it will be developed in a fashion such that we can create communities along these corridors that are more sustainable and fiscally responsible?”
Coxe recalls that the ensuing public debate reshaped the argument for and against transit as one of purely transportation, one that could not, and would not, significantly relieve surface road congestion. The hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars in public investment in the entire network wouldn’t do nearly enough to address an infrastructure undersized for the region’s growth.
“The message got parsed quickly into perhaps more easily comprehensible images and because it’s a leap of faith to understand that the investment the public makes causes the world to behave differently,” Coxe says. “Yes, that got lost, but here is the new distinction, and that is they are coming, how in the world are we going to cope?”
If all that sounds like social engineering through infrastructure investment, in part it is. Transportation and transit planners will tell you their experience tells them that the market will respond to the form new infrastructure takes. Coxe has in the past cited I-485 in south Charlotte, which he helped plan, as an example. Aside from traffic engineers, few believed suburban sprawl would explode between Pineville and Matthews as it did, clogging the four lanes of Charlotte’s outerbelt almost as soon as the first legs of the freeway opened.
It’s such historical examples that convince planners that the “if you build it they will come” philosophy applies just as much to rail as it does to roads. Cornelius Mayor Jeff Tarte, a member of the task force, says there is plenty about a commuter rail service to north Mecklenburg and beyond to appeal to fiscal conservatives.
“From a conservative’s perspective, rail as an economic catalyst is the prime reason to explore and potentially invest in rail transit solutions,” says Tarte. “In the end, the north rail line and the build-out of the entire transit system is going to come down to one issue ... dollars. The dollars associated with the cost to build and the return on investment associated with development and job creation.”
Under the plan to be recommended to the MTC next month, the local jurisdictions will be required to produce roughly one-third of the estimated $360 million to build the Red Line, including rail upgrade, grade crossing improvements, stations and rolling stock. The other two thirds would come from the State of North Carolina and CATS. Local taxpayers would not be tapped for the remaining one-third. Per Morris’ recommendations, that revenue would be generated though one or more “value capture” methods including tax increment financing, special assessment districts and other revenue-generating concepts that tap into future value of redevelopment along the corridor.
Policy issues approved by the Red Line last week include: treating the rail corridor as an economic development initiative as opposed to strictly a transportation resource; promoting the Red Line as a dual benefit corridor for both transit and enhanced freight capacity; unifying the jurisdictions along the corridor into a cohesive “joint powers authority”; and declaring that the state should assume the lead role in order to piggyback on the its credit rating.
Conti has expressed high interest in the Red Line serving as part of an expanded freight rail network in the state, and now the proponents of the corridor have an additional friend in the Department of Transportation. Morris, the hired consultant to the Red Line, is now the state’s new deputy secretary of transit. Through the end of the year, he will also continue to serve as the consultant to the task force.
“Paul offers great experience and leadership to our effort as well as defining the real opportunities in our efforts,” says Davidson Mayor John Woods, chairman of the Red Line Task Force. “He has shown us how a transportation project can also and mainly be an economic development project. His new role with NC DOT is very interesting and simply belies the fact that DOT has a particular interest in helping us develop a multi-modal system involving multiple jurisdictions cooperating to create transportation improvements leading to significant economic development potential.”
Next week: The Red Line’s friends in high places and how “value capture” works across multiple jurisdictions.
