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North Carolina
Charlotte Light Rail Line Exceeds First-Year Ridership Goals
Opened in November 2007, the 9.6-mile Lynx light-rail line between Charlotte's Uptown and suburban South End has easily exceeded its first-year ridership target of 9,100 weekday boardings, consistently recording more than 16,000 last summer and almost 15,000 a day this June, a slight drop due to higher unemployment and lower gas prices, reports Charlotte Observer writer Steve Harrison, with a recent survey finding 72 percent of the riders new to mass transit, and large majorities better educated and more affluent than bus passengers.
''It shows people that if you build it, they'll ride it,'' said Charlotte Area Transit System (CATS) Marketing Manager Olaf Kinard of the long delayed $463-million line, with 15 stations in well-off and working-class neighborhoods. ''The demographics say it's a service for everyone.''
The Blue Line passenger survey, conducted for CATS by a marketing firm last December and January, the writer reports, allowed basic characterization of light-rail, express-bus and regular-bus riders in three categories: origin, education and income.
Light-rail, express-bus and regular-bus passengers, respectively, include 72, 69 and 30 percent of Caucasians, or whites; 19, 25 and 62 percent of blacks, and 9, 3 and 5 percent of others; and 69, 52 and 25 percent of the college-educated; with related average household incomes of $65,000, $55,200 and $31,800 -- compared to Mecklenburg County's median income of $62,241.
The survey also found that 21 percent of passengers switched to light rail from buses and 6 percent from carpools or CATS vanpools.
Rail lines, the writer adds, usually ''attract more affluent passengers than bus lines,'' with critics complaining ''that tax dollars being spent on people who don't need transportation subsidy,'' and advocates arguing light-rail investment is important to spur transit-oriented development and reduce car dependency. -- Charlotte Observer, Charlotte Business Journal 7/23/2009
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