Lessons from Charlotte's first light rail line

Former Mayor Pat McCrory's 5 tips for making transit successful

You’re reading Transit Time, a weekly newsletter for Charlotte people who leave the house. Cars, buses, light rail, bikes, scooters … if you use it to get around the city, we write about it. Transit Time is produced in partnership between The Charlotte Ledger and WFAE.

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As Charlotte contemplates expanding transit, former Mayor Pat McCrory shares how the city did it nearly 30 years ago; ‘I decided to do one hell of a sell’

Former Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory (center), flanked by former U.S. Senators Elizabeth Dole and Richard Burr, cuts the ribbon on the opening of the Blue Line uptown in 2007. (Photo courtesy of Charlotte Area Transit System)

Questions about what rail lines to build. Troubles forging consensus with local leaders. Challenges with getting the state legislature to approve a transit referendum. Skeptics saying it’s too expensive and not worth it.

At the beginning of 2025, those are some of the hurdles confronting Charlotte’s transit plan — a $25 billion vision that would expand rail and bus lines and build more roads.

But it’s not the first time Charlotte has encountered many of those very same obstacles.

In the late 1990s, a fresh-faced new mayor, Pat McCrory, led Charlotte to develop its first light rail line, the Blue Line. Then, as now, the city had to persuade state legislators, choose a route and overcome opposition.

Mecklenburg voters approved a sales tax increase in 1998. The first phase of the Blue Line, running from uptown to I-485 in south Charlotte, opened in 2007.

In a talk last month at a real estate conference in South End, and on a recent episode of his PBS Charlotte political talk show “Unspun,” McCrory shared the history of how Charlotte got it done nearly 30 years ago — and how that experience could inform today’s efforts.

In today’s edition of Transit Time, we’re letting Charlotte’s longest-serving mayor discuss that topic in his own words.

With the permission of PBS Charlotte, we’re sharing some of his insights. McCrory, a Republican, served as Charlotte’s mayor from 1995 to 2009 and went on to serve one term as governor, from 2013 to 2017.

Turning the vision into reality: ‘the best of Mayberry and Metropolis’ — former Mayor Pat McCrory in his own words:

Our vision was the following — and I’ll put it in the terms I used to use: We wanted Charlotte to be the best of Mayberry and Metropolis. …

I didn’t want Charlotte to be another Atlanta or another New York or another Boston or whatever. I wanted Charlotte to be unique, in which we had big-city opportunities, but we also had a small-town environment and quality of life.

I wanted the best of both worlds. …

We developed in the ’95/’96/’97 time period a 25-year transportation land use plan. And what that land use plan did was have five corridors coming out of downtown Charlotte.

You’ve got to recognize that at that time, downtown Charlotte was a business center. It emptied out at 5 o’clock. There was almost no residential living. It was a business park. You could take a nap on Trade and Tryon at 5:30 and not worry about getting hit by a car.

This area [South End] was just known as “South Boulevard.” … This was really the site of Charlotte’s first industrial park, kind of what we see on Westinghouse Boulevard today.

We had steel factories. We had an automobile factory. We had a race track. We had a Duke Power facility, which I started at in 1978 on a utility line truck.

I called it the “corridor of crap.” And I got in a lot of trouble about that. I was pretty blunt back in those days. …

Looking north along Camden Road toward uptown, 1994. It is now the center of South End. Former Mayor Pat McCrory had called nearby South Boulevard “the corridor of crap.” (Photo courtesy of Charlotte Center City Partners)

So our plan was this: Along the corridors, we’d have high-density housing and business. In between the wedges, we’d preserve the residential integrity of small town Mayberry — protect the walkable communities. In fact, I got in a lot of trouble, you might remember, for requiring sidewalks — especially in the ’70s, ’80s, ’90s, when developers weren’t doing sidewalks. …

We had to make a decision about transit. And the business community said, “Well, we want to be like Atlanta. Let’s take the train to the airport.”

North Charlotte said, “Well, let’s take it to Lake Norman.”

[Speedway Motorsports CEO] Bruton Smith [said], “Let’s take it to the Speedway.”

East Charlotte [said], “My gosh, Eastland Mall is starting to fall apart. Let’s take it to Eastland Mall.”

There’s a lot of politics. And I said, “We’re going to take it where the numbers work — where we can get federal matching funds and where we can get ridership.” And to everyone’s surprise, the numbers came back saying South Boulevard. South Boulevard? That’s where the numbers worked.

We had a lot of blue-collar workers. We had density already, but I had already called it the “corridor of crap.” How am I going to sell South Boulevard?

It was a hard sell. So I went to Bill Lee, who was my boss’ boss’ boss’ boss’ boss at the time at Duke Energy, and I just been elected mayor. And I said, “What do you think? Should we do this light rail line?” And he said something that stuck with me. He was a man of incredible wisdom. He was old as hell. He was 5 years younger than I am right now.

He said, “Mayor, we can wait until the pain arrives, and do it then, and it’ll be an easy sell. … Or you can do it now, before the pain arrives. … If you do it now, Pat, it’s going to be one hell of a sell.”

So I decided to do one hell of a sell. …

[On] this corridor, we had the train tracks. A guy named Tony Pressley, who was the first developer who really saw the vision around here, he bought some land and had a little trolley car. And that brought excitement. It took something real small to bring excitement. We sold that hard, and that was the beginning of the process.

And then I went to the state legislature and asked for permission for a half-cent sales tax, and that was the beginning of the war to get this done. …

It was a battle. Neither the Republicans nor Democrats in Raleigh wanted to touch it, and so we sold it: “Just give us the opportunity to vote on a half-cent sales tax referendum.” And I got a couple of legislators, Republicans and Democrats.

I bought a lot of wine up in Raleigh and kept pouring the wine and said, “Fight the battle for us.” And they agreed to, after the third or fourth bottle of wine, which I billed the city of Charlotte for. And we put a campaign together, and we didn’t think it had a chance in hell, and it passed with 68%.

People at that time saw that I-77 can only have so much traffic. And we sold it as not solving our traffic problem; we sold it as an alternative to our traffic problem. I said, “Twenty-five years from now, the light rail line will always be a 15-minute ride, but I-77 will be even worse than it is,” and I think that’s happened.

I also predicted that we’d have $2 billion to $3 billion of new investment along this corridor, and I thought I was exaggerating. Now, [economist] Mark Vitner is in the audience. What do you think, Mark? $10 billion to $14 billion of new investment. …

The first day we opened up, I didn’t sleep that night. I thought I’d be run out of office because I thought no one would ride on the first day.

The establishment of the light rail line is credited with helping create billions of dollars of development in South End. (Ledger file photo on Camden Road, 2021, by Kevin Young/The 5 and 2 Project)

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On the creation of the Rail Trail as an ‘afterthought’

We were over budget [and] a year behind schedule. Steel prices were going up, and I was having weekly meetings with my transit guy [Ron Tober], and I was just getting killed politically.

And he said, “Well, we’ve got some great news. We got some bike racks for the new transit cars that are being built right now.”

I said, “Great. Where in the hell are the bicycle people going to ride? On South Boulevard?”

And he went, “Good point.”

I went, “We need a trail all the way along for the bikes.” And also, I was concerned that we were exaggerating a little bit the new development potential. I was afraid the only development that would occur would be at the stops that we had between [South End] and I-485, and I said, “If we do a trail or a cement walkway and bike path, maybe a developer will build in the middle of the two stops, and then people can walk or ride. … That’d be so cool.”

And Ron went, “We don’t have the money.”

I went, “Oh, we can find the money.” Maybe I shouldn't — I took it out of the art program for the light rail line, because it’s art. [audience laughter]

And I think some of the developers might have contributed. And then I put it in the consent items [on the city council agenda]. City council never reads the consent items. … So we put the trail in the consent items, and I think we voted on it without anyone knowing it, because at that time, we probably wouldn’t have had it passed, because we were already over budget. But it’s probably the thing I'm proudest of as an afterthought.

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On Pineville’s decision to reject the Blue Line:

We had a great mayor in Pineville. I had to work with all the regional mayors to get the half-cent sales tax passed, because it’s a county tax. In Pineville, I said, “OK, we’d like this to go across I-485, to Pineville.” I-485 was just completing at the time. Ballantyne was really non-existent.

And I said, “If we go into Pineville, you’re going to have to change your density zoning.”

And he went, “Nah, we got the Carolina Place Mall. That’s all we need.”

And I went, “You’re crazy.” That mall — Henry Faison, a visionary developer, he built all the malls, including Eastland Mall. Henry had told me, “There won’t be any malls in 25 years. Malls aren’t going to be built anymore.” …

And the Pineville mayor said, “I’m not going to change my zoning.” So that’s why it stops at I-485.

I said, “If you’re not going to change your zoning, we’re not going to invest in a multi-million-dollar bridge across 485.” What I didn’t tell him is we were out of money anyway.

Pineville could have been maybe [like] South End is today. Who knows?

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On advertising on the trains:

I didn’t want advertising on the trains because I wanted to keep the brand clean.

They reversed our decision for a little bit of money, but I still think it clutters.

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On the top 5 things to make transit successful in the future:

Tonight on our Unspun Countdown, the top five things we all need to do to make transit successful in the future.

Former Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory, who led Charlotte as it built its first light rail line, outlines his top five factors in making transit successful, on an episode last month of his talk show “Unspun” on PBS Charlotte.

Let's start out with number five.

5. We need future routes based upon the data, not politics.

Twenty-five years ago, I went to go visit Miami and Denver and Atlanta. And I found out the routes that didn’t work were the ones that the politicians chose, not what the data showed working. The same rule applies 25 years later as we pick the new routes for the future.

4. Job, services, education must be on the routes.

One of the mistakes I think I made 25 years ago, I wanted to convince the board of education to put more of our K-12 schools on the light rail line. They didn’t do it, but I think we need to do that more often. Put the jobs, put the education, put the services, including medical services, right there on the light rail lines of the future.

3. A dedicated tax plus ridership fares.

In other words, the tax needs to help pay for it, but the fact of the matter is the riders also need to help pay for it. The worst thing we can do is to make this thing free, or people try to ride light rail for free. That is not a confidence-builder for the entire region of taxpayers who don’t ride light rail. Everyone must participate in paying for it.

2. Pedestrian friendly connectivity.

Listen, when you get off the light rail stops, you’ve got to be able to walk somewhere or ride your bike somewhere. That’s what we did with the Charlotte [Rail] Trail. We didn’t do it to UNC Charlotte. I hope if we build a future line to Huntersville or Cornelius or to Matthews, we also make it walkable along the line.

1. Passenger safety.

It must be safe to ride, and public safety must be the priority regarding any crime. We can’t afford to have crime on the light rail lines or at the stops.

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Related articles:

• “Catching up with the father of South End, Tony Pressley” (Sept. 29, 2021)

• “What’s next for Charlotte’s transit ambitions” (Feb. 25)

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You can watch McCrory’s full “Unspun” episode on transit, which includes his interview with former CATS chief Ron Tober, person-on-the-street interviews and reflections on what worked and what didn’t:

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