Posted: January 14th, 2010 Greg Lacour

What will Charlotte’s infant mass transit system look like 20, 30, 40 years from now?

Will it be a drab, utilitarian collection of buses sporadically serving only people who can’t afford to drive?

Or will it be a source of civic pride, a system with trains, trams, trolleys and buses, something that catches the eye and defines the city, something people want to use?

Urban designer Darrin Nordahl prefers the latter.

In lectures and in his recently published book, “My Kind of Transit,” Nordahl argues that the transit systems that last are not necessarily the ones that move the most people or, in the short term, save the most money. They’re the ones that allow riders to converse, view their cities in new ways, relax, connect to their communities – as in San Francisco, New Orleans, London and Hong Kong.

With Charlotte at the start of an effort to build a 10-mile streetcar line, the Civic By Design Forum hosted Nordahl (via a Skype connection) on Jan. 12 at the Levine Museum of the New South. The forum, www.civicbydesign.com, is a biweekly meeting at the museum to discuss growth issues.

About 30 planners, engineers and concerned citizens attended, and Nordahl told them, “You guys are in a very envious position right now … This is fantastic stuff.”

He was talking not just about the proposed streetcar, which would link the west and east sides through uptown, but a new development that could jump-start construction even sooner than city officials had expected.

The federal government is offering $130 million in new stimulus money for transit projects that can reduce congestion on roads and highways. The City Council is expected to vote Jan. 25 on whether to pursue a maximum $25 million grant from the fund. That money, with a 20-percent local match, would pay for a 1.5-mile section from Elizabeth to the uptown Transit Center, said Brian Nadolny, the CATS official overseeing the project.

CATS will hold public meetings this year on the streetcar project, and Maddy Baer, a Charlotte resident who attended the forum, said she hopes to make some of the meetings. She’ll come armed with some of Nordahl’s ideas. “I do like the idea” of a stylish mode of transit, she said. “I think when you have something unique, people talk about it … I’ve traveled widely in other urban areas, and I’ve lived in New York and Chicago. So I’m coming from the perspective of using transit systems.”

Some of Nordahl’s main ideas (for more, see www.darrinnordahl.com):



**A transit system has to have “short headways” – short waits for the next vehicle. When people have to consult schedules or wait for more than 15 minutes, they don’t use transit.


**Planners should think of transit vehicles as another kind of public space that looks and feels distinctive and pleasant rather than just a way to herd people around the city. The vehicles themselves should be as small and intimate as possible.


**Routes should be varied and enjoyable. He cited New Orleans’ famous streetcar route down oak-lined St. Charles Avenue and contrasted it to Las Vegas’ little-used monorail line, which runs through a gallery of storage sheds and utility poles.


**Considerations like seating, lighting, color and windows are critical.

“When all these things come together, you have a lot of opportunity,” he said. “It really provides a connection between passengers and their environment that you can’t get in a private automobile.”

Tweet

Previous Page