Is it worth raising the sales tax and spending billions of dollars to carry fewer than 4,000 riders? No, but politicians in Charlotte seem to think so.
“Mecklenburg County residents in North Carolina have been paying a 0.5 percent transportation sales tax since 1999. Now local leaders would like to triple that tax, thereby raising the total sales tax Charlotte consumers pay to 8.25 percent. If approved by the state legislature and voters, the new tax revenue would fund an expensive new transit line and other projects,” notes transportation analyst Marc Joffe:
The proposed rail service, named the Red Line by the Charlotte Area Transit System (CATS), would run 25 miles from a new intermodal station in Uptown Charlotte through the northern suburbs to Mount Morne in Iredell County….Beyond the $91 million required to purchase the land and tracks, the cost of starting commuter rail service on the Red Line is unknown. However, a 2011 Business and Financial Plan for an earlier incarnation of the project placed the cost at $452 million, based on then-anticipated 2018 prices….Given recent general inflation and the tendency for public works to grow, an updated estimate will undoubtedly be far higher, probably in the billions.
Ridership estimates were once 5,600, but commuting has become much less common since COVID, so ridership will be less than 4,000. And that’s assuming passengers will somehow reach the rail stations, which aren’t near the places where people live. As the Cato Institute’s Marc Joffe explains:
Since many of the stations are not adjacent to residential areas, most passengers would have to access the Red Line from another transportation mode, such as their personal vehicle or a bus. This suggests that the Red Line will not save commuters time versus other options.
Currently, commuters have the option of taking express buses along nearby Interstate 77 to reach Charlotte’s downtown. These MetroRapid Buses take advantage of I‑77’s Express Lanes, which limit traffic by using variable tolls on motorists. While we do not have ridership data for individual bus lines, one rider shared his impression that the 63X bus from Huntersville to Charlotte only ran about 30 percent full on average.
With a federal match unlikely in the Trump era, the Red Line will have to rely fully on the proposed additional one-cent sales tax. Before voters are asked to approve it, they should have full information about estimated costs and (realistic) ridership projections. If the Red Line does not pencil out (as we have strong reason to believe), voters should just say no.
The Biden administration has avidly supported such boondoggles. It committed to spending billions on a $12.7 billion project to expand the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) subway system near San Francisco. That made no sense, because BART’s ridership had dwindled, and it had become so wasteful that it consumed more energy per user than cars do. 60% of the people who used to ride it stopped riding during the pandemic and had not returned as of 2023, leaving trains mostly empty. Expanding BART would also siphon away passengers from less wasteful forms of transportation, such as buses that do not have the massive fixed costs associated with passenger rail systems.
The Biden administration also funded an $8.8 billion plan to expanding D.C.’s Union Station, which handles only a small fraction of the traffic it used to, has been described as as a “ghost town” frequented by “yelling psychos,” homeless people and drug addicts. When the Biden administration decided to do this in 2023, the subway line that runs through Union Station had only about 40 percent as many riders as it did in 2019s. Commuter rail lines running through Union Station had largely empty rail cars.
Trying to get people to ride mass transit systems was difficult even before the rise of remote work, because it takes so long to commute to and from work on mass transit. It can take an hour and a half to take buses or trains to work for a commute that would take only half an hour by car. Most train and bus stations are not right near where people live or work, and people taking mass transit often have to ride multiple different buses or trains to get to work.
