Charlotte City Council is scheduled to discuss a potentially transformative transit plan at their meeting Monday, ahead of a scheduled vote on Sept. 3.
They should reevaluate it before it’s too late.
The plan, which has been one of the city’s biggest aspirations for some time, would build and expand commuter rail and provide increased funding for bus service and roads. If the plan is approved, draft legislation would be sent to the North Carolina General Assembly for permission to place a sales tax referendum on the ballot. If that permission is granted, Mecklenburg County voters would have to approve a sales tax increase in order to fund the plan.
It’s long awaited, and much needed, especially as Charlotte continues to grow. But the version of the plan they’ll discuss Monday isn’t the right one.
Perhaps one of the biggest flaws of the plan is that it does not have the approval of a key suburb. Matthews is not on board, and for good reason, because the plan would replace the uptown-to-Matthews segment of the proposed Silver Line with bus rapid transit. As WFAE’s Steve Harrison reported, that plan faces doubts, particularly about whether it’s even feasible to build true BRT along that corridor. And that doesn’t just impact Matthews — it would strip east Charlotte of certain transit benefits, too.
The plan also does not rectify one of the Silver Line’s biggest problems: the fact that it does not actually go all the way to the airport. Instead, the “airport” stop would be located a mile from the terminal, and people would have to take an additional form of transit, like a bus or people mover, to close the gap.
If a transit system’s success is determined by its ridership, and ridership is determined by how convenient it is for people to use it, then the decision to bypass the actual airport may very well hinder its success. Why would people choose to take two trains — or a train and a bus — to get to the airport when a single car ride is still more convenient?
Sure, you can’t make everyone happy, and you probably can’t address every single transit need in the entire region in a single plan, either. Particularly not when the plan states that only 40% of sales tax revenue would go toward light rail, hindering Charlotte’s ability to fund the full extent of its original vision. The reason for that is to try to appeal to the GOP-led legislature, which has historically been bearish on sales tax referenda and has stated that the city’s plan should focus more on roads.
It’s understandable why the city is so eager to move ahead with this plan. The Red Line finally seems like it might actually be possible, which means towns in northern Mecklenburg County are finally on board. It’s the most momentum the plan has had in a while, so why wouldn’t they want to capitalize on it?
But Charlotte may only have one chance to get this right. If the General Assembly allows a sales tax referendum, and voters approve it, that’s it. They can’t come back in five years and expect voters — or the legislature — to approve more. Sure, maybe some version of the plan may sound better than nothing right now, but will that still hold true in the long run?
What’s most troubling, though, it’s still not entirely clear which projects would be funded by the sales tax and which ones would not — or why some projects appear to be prioritized over others. Local leaders say that will happen after, not before, the General Assembly approves the referendum. City Manager Marcus Jones said a new regional transit authority would be the ultimate decision-maker over what projects will be funded by the plan, but that authority doesn’t exist yet, nor would it exist when the sales tax referendum would hypothetically appear on the ballot. That alone begs the question: why approve a plan when key details of the plan remain undecided? Why ask legislators to approve a referendum for a plan that hasn’t been solidified yet? When you ask someone to essentially approve billions of dollars of spending, it’s usually a good idea to let them know what exactly you plan to spend it on.
Charlotte can do better than a plan built on broken promises and unanswered questions. It has to.
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