Transit Time: Can a runner beat the new streetcar?

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 among The Charlotte Ledger, WFAE and the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute.

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4 miles, 2 competitors: one on foot, and another barreling down the tracks. Which is faster?

Human Emily Cantrell, 39, takes on the new Siemens S700 streetcar in a 4-mile race from Elizabeth to Historic West End.

by Tony Mecia

On paper, it had the makings of an epic contest.

What happens if you pit a Charlotte runner against the new CityLynx Gold Line in a 4-mile race from Elizabeth to Historic West End? Who would win the glory and lifetime bragging rights in this latest battle of humans vs. machines?

Would it be a 39-year-old real estate lawyer who is training for a marathon? Or a Siemens S700 streetcar with a top speed of 25 mph?

Last week, Transit Time engineered a race between the two. And the results … well, they weren’t even close.

If the concept of pairing a runner with a Charlotte streetcar sounds familiar, it is. When the original Gold Line opened in 2015, CharlotteFive enlisted runner and writer Katie Toussaint to race the 1.5-mile course from the Charlotte Transportation Center to Novant Health’s Presbyterian Hospital. She finished in about 9 1/2 minutes, or 2 minutes ahead.

Now, with the Gold Line spanning a longer distance, we sought to revive the challenge. We reached out to Toussaint, who has since left CharlotteFive and is now a health writer, yoga instructor and nutrition coach. But she was unavailable to run: She’s recovering from an ACL reconstruction after a kickball injury.

So we canvassed our exercising contacts and found Emily Cantrell, a real estate lawyer with Troutman Pepper who lives in South End. She says she runs about 30-40 miles a week, is training for a marathon in Martha’s Vineyard later this month and — most importantly — cheerfully signed on to the ridiculous premise of racing a streetcar. In our initial conversation last month, she even started trash talking: “That trolley better grease its wheels!”

In preparation for the showdown, Emily said she carbo-loaded the night before: “I ate a lot of pasta.”

Taking advantage of cool morning temperatures, we scheduled the race for 7:30 a.m. on Sept. 3. As Emily and the Transit Time crew walked across the Hawthorne Lane bridge to the starting line, the streetcar was getting ready to leave. And since it runs only every 20-40 minutes and some of us had real jobs to get to, Emily quickly sprang into action.

She even graciously allowed the Siemens S700 a brief head start, as she waited for her Garmin watch to figure out her location. Then she sprinted off.

Emily quickly caught up and zoomed by as it made its first stop. For blocks, she could hear it dinging behind her. Then — a big miscalculation: She failed to make the turn from Hawthorne onto Elizabeth Avenue. She realized her error and backtracked, but it cost her precious time. Would that misstep be her undoing?

Hardly. Over the next few miles, she kept putting distance between herself and the streetcar, as it made 17 stops and waited for traffic lights. (It would have been speedier if lights gave priority to the streetcar, but they don’t.) By the time she hit uptown, her lead had widened to several minutes.

As she made the final climb past Johnson C. Smith University, she felt confident. Victory!

Here’s the video recap:

We clocked her at 29:38. Her Garmin said she ran a 7:13 mile (not counting stops for traffic). She said the cool weather helped. But she didn’t need it.

The streetcar finished in 36:58 — more than 7 minutes slower.

The streetcar is now 0-2 against human runners. It’s going to have to wait awhile for a shot at redemption: Phase 3, which will lengthen the Gold Line route to 10 miles, is years away.

BETTER LUCK NEXT TIME: Emily Cantrell welcomes the Siemens S700 streetcar to the finish line.

— Ely Portillo, Cristina Bolling and David Griffith contributed to this article and the video production.

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In brief…

• Blue Line development bonanza. It’s obvious that the Blue Line extension helped supercharge development north of uptown. But in which neighborhoods, and by how much, is tougher to pin down. Using data, maps and charts, the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute looked into where development has exploded along the Blue Line extension — and where it hasn’t. (Urban Institute) 

• Reader traffic questions: Axios Charlotte took six reader traffic complaints and asked transportation officials about them, including trees hanging down and blocking lights and stop signs, Parkwood Avenue by Optimist Hall and East Boulevard by the light rail tracks in South End. (Axios Charlotte)

• Drone breakthrough: Atrium Health Wake Forest and UPS Flight Forward achieved what the N.C. Department of Transportation hailed as a “major milestone” last month: “completing the first ever drone delivery of Covid-19 vaccines.” A news release from NCDOT said: “The short flight took the drone from one portion of the hospital to another.” (NCDOT)

• Light rail stop by new Plaza-Midwood development: Current plans for the Silver Line light rail between Matthews and Belmont call for a stop by the proposed Commonwealth development at Central and Pecan avenues in Plaza-Midwood that was detailed this week. The latest plans call for the train to run along the north side of Independence and have a stop at Pecan Avenue.

• Regional transit plan coming soon: The Centralina Regional Council and CATS will make their Connect Beyond regional transit plan available to the public on Monday, Sept. 13. Recommendations for the 12-county region are already online and include a focus on building out a coordinated regional bus network and investing in high-traffic transit corridors that cross county lines. They’re hoping the plan will be adopted by regional government organizations by November. Up next: questions about how to pay for a regional system and who would run it. (Urban Institute) 

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Discussion on Charlotte transportation

Programming note: The UNC Charlotte Urban Institute’s Ely Portillo, WFAE’s Steve Harrison and The Ledger’s Tony Mecia were guests on today’s “Charlotte Talks with Mike Collins” on the topic of “The Future of Transportation in Charlotte.” It will be rebroadcast at 7 p.m. today on WFAE (90.7) and will be available online.

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