Posted on Sun, Mar. 23, 2008

The CIAA and ACC basketball tournaments were great business for the Charlotte Area Transit System's showcase light-rail line.

During the ACC tournament last weekend, CATS estimated the Lynx Blue Line handled 90,000 trips over four days, the most passengers since its free opening weekend in November.

Trains filled with tourists have some real benefits for Charlotteans: Visitors aren't clogging uptown streets circling for parking. Perhaps the fans enjoyed their ride, and their train trip will help them form a favorable impression of Charlotte.

However, transit boosters and skeptics would probably agree the key to the train's success is how it performs on less glamorous days, when there's no reason to go uptown except work.

By that measure, the verdict on light rail is less clear, though it's trending in the right direction.

On light rail's opening day, CATS said it had roughly 500 cars in its park-and-ride lots, which have 3,200 spaces. Three weeks later I counted 986 cars. In late January I tallied 1,167, and a little more than a week ago I found 1,572.

Two Thursdays ago, when there was no special event in town, the parking deck at Interstate 485/South Boulevard was full, except for a few spaces on the surface lots. That's nearly 1,100 cars.

So how is that affecting congestion?

There are different ways to measure. Transit skeptics often divide total transit trips by the total number of car trips in a corridor. Transit boosters prefer to tout their market share of commuters, so they can discount delivery trucks, 18-wheelers and people passing through a region -- markets they can't compete for.

I'll take a stab at the train's impact on rush-hour traffic.

After all, from a congestion standpoint, I-77 can handle plenty of extra cars for much of the day. If someone decides to drive instead of taking the train at 1 p.m., there is room for them on the highway.

First, let's figure out how many cars are usually on the road.

The Charlotte Department of Transportation estimates there are 6,000 cars going northbound on I-77 during the peak hour of traffic, from 7:15 a.m. to 8:15 a.m. It guesses there are 15,000 northbound cars from 6:15 a.m. to 9:15. a.m.

It also says there are 1,500 northbound cars on South Boulevard at Sharon Road West during the peak traffic hour. I'll estimate there are 4,000 northbound cars during the three-hour morning commute.

That's 19,000 cars total on I-77 and South Boulevard northbound. If the Lynx has taken 1,600 cars off the road, that's about an 8 percent reduction.

But that's probably too optimistic.

Not all of the cars in the park-and-ride lots arrived during the peak of the morning rush hour. Some came for the 5:45 a.m. train; some came later.

The other caveat is that those park-and-riders weren't necessarily driving on South Boulevard or I-77 before they started taking the train.

A few were former bus riders who weren't driving before. Some probably took Tryon Street to uptown, or Park Road, or even Providence Road.

(The flip side is that there are probably a few former drivers who are taking the bus to light rail, so their cars aren't in the parking lots. There are probably also some former drivers who are now walking to the train.)

David Hartgen, a professor emeritus at the UNC Charlotte, was against keeping the transit sales tax. He believes that road congestion is becoming a huge problem for Charlotte, and that light rail isn't worth the hundreds of millions of dollars it takes to build it.

He said looking at the train's impact on peak-hour congestion is valid, though he believes an 8 percent reduction is too high.

Hartgen said he thinks a significant number of people came to the I-485 park-and-ride lot from Ballantyne and points farther east, and might not have commuted via I-77 in their car.

He also thinks CATS and the city of Charlotte need better numbers so they can gauge the impact to congestion. The city doesn't have a detailed count of I-77 traffic before the Lynx opened -- an oversight that Hartgen said is inexplicable.

CATS is planning later this year to take a detailed survey of its Lynx riders. It could ask about their previous commuting habits.

It also will be interesting to watch whether CATS can continue its rapid growth in its park-and-ride lots. With talk of $4-a-gallon gas, it stands to reason more people will give the train a look.

But one looming problem is that the two parking lots most convenient for commuters -- I-485/South Boulevard and Sharon Road West -- don't have a lot of room for new cars.

Are train riders willing to drive farther north to lots with plenty of spaces, such as Archdale and Arrowood? Or will they give up and stay behind the wheel? infotext1 tag with dummy text.