Transit Time: Reader mailbag 📫
Feedback from our readers on recent articles
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.
Your turn: Readers weigh in on Tim Moore’s ‘roads-first’ ideas, the push for more transit and the environmental effects of working from home
It’s time to open the Transit Time virtual mailbag, with emails on articles from the past month. To share your thoughts, you can always reply to this newsletter, and we might feature your comments in the future.
In response to “‘It has to be roads’: N.C. House Speaker Tim Moore explains his views on why road-building needs to be Charlotte's top transportation priority” (Feb. 29)
“This guy is making major decisions based on cutesy anecdotes and supposed conversations. He says we don’t want to be Atlanta (amen!), but he wants to just keep building roads like <checks notes> Atlanta did. These decisions must be more informed than whims and pithy slogans.”
“Mr. Moore is correct in several aspects, and I’m glad to read his willingness to include rail in a package of solutions. He’s also right that we don’t want to like Atlanta — everyone says that— but then his major priority on big roads guarantees that we will. A ‘roads-first’ strategy has to move away from simply widening and widening and widening ad infinitum and focus more on building a network of local connectors. … Someone once said that doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is one definition of insanity. Could he/she be talking about us?”
“Tim Moore is so on the wrong page. As a Republican speaker of the N.C. House, he was 100% for a Spanish company to build extra lanes on the federal expressways through N.C. in return for an absurd cost to drivers of tolls for 50 years. Now, he is running for Congress, and he thinks he has all the answers for local roads.”
“Tim Moore has refreshing common sense.”
“Every study I have ever read reaches the same conclusion: More roads lead to more cars and more congestion. Does Tim Moore have a stake in the road construction industry?”
“His comments are mostly factually incorrect or else logically contradictory. The idea that Atlanta’s problems are due to a lack of roads is clearly ridiculous. Just count the lanes on the downtown connection. Count the ramps on any I-85 interchange. They keep adding lanes, and yet. …”
In response to “Why relying on cars alone ‘simply doesn't work’: Urban areas like Charlotte require rail, buses, greenways and bike options, says Sustain Charlotte's executive director” (March 7)
“Thank you for this. As a community, we must see the big picture.”
“Why doesn’t public transportation work? Public transportation is not convenient for families. Public transportation doesn’t go to popular areas at the right times (the airport for example). Public transportation is not safe, especially for young women. Buses are very expensive to maintain. There’s a shortage of maintenance techs and drivers. Binns does not address the negatives.”
“Thanks for the thoughtful article. I would love to see someone make the argument that there is some fraction of car drivers who would be willing to give up their vehicle trips for an alternative. If we could spend a small fraction of our transit budget to help those people ditch their car trips, the roads would be emptier for ‘the rest of us.’ They want to give us more space on the roads. Why not take it? And it is cheaper than building new or wider roads.”
In response to “Why aren’t green groups pushing remote work?” (March 14)
“Why don’t you investigate the benefits of working back in the office, including better mental health?”
“The ‘Number of Days by Air Quality Index Color’ graph shows an immaterial difference in Air Quality Days between 2013 and 2022. It implies ‘work from home’ during Covid had no impact on Mecklenburg County air quality. The National Academy of Sciences paper seemed to use assessments from other sources and did not cite methodologies and study sources. They generated a lot of pretty graphs, but all the minutia and detail seemed to be trumped by hard, consistently measured and compiled data generated by Mecklenburg County.”
“Our city bureaucrats want to tax us to spend $13 billion on transit now used by 2.1% of people living in greater Charlotte. Wow. So far, common sense has stalled ideology. I hope that continues.”
“Are there studies to support the belief that there is less collaboration when employees work from home? Before I retired, I spent 100% of my time in meetings, usually conference calls, usually on mute working on deliverables, which is what my compensation was based on. If I needed to ask a co-worker a question while on a conference call, I used the corporate messaging system. Is that collaboration? If so, I think employees already have remote collaboration figured out. Bring on full-time work from home, and let Charlotte spend the money it saves on transit and road maintenance on parks, affordable housing and toilets for the unhoused uptown.”
“For the foreseeable future, Charlotte is a car-centric city. We do not have a viable regional transportation plan like in New York City and Philadelphia, and spending $13 billion on light rail to surrounding counties in North and South Carolina without the financial participation of those entities is not feasible. It’s time to revisit our transportation proposals.”
“An aspect missing from the discussion is the effect of work from home on the long-term health of the organization. There are numerous studies (and common sense) that indicate that institutional knowledge is not effectively shared or passed down to younger workers. I am sure all the posters here and the speakers at the hearing are effective, self-motivated and ethical employees. Perhaps that is not universal behavior, especially in larger organizations.”
“Not everyone has the option to work from home due to the nature of their work. … Nearly 80% of Mecklenburg workers do not work from home. As reported in the New York Times just last week, these workers tend to have less education and are less likely to be white. … These workers need more safe, reliable and affordable options to get to work. … The fortunate minority of local workers whose jobs allow them to work from home still want and need transportation choices to reach other destinations, whether that be medical appointments, the grocery store or a soccer game.”
If you have a comment on Transit Time or any other newsletter from The Charlotte Ledger, you’re welcome to drop us a line at editor@cltledger.com, or hit “reply” to the email newsletter, or post in the comments (Ledger paying members only).
Schedule note: With Easter approaching, as well as public school spring breaks, the next issue of Transit Time will be published on Thursday, April 11.
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Lively, thoughtful responses -- take a bow, readers!
The theory of public transportation is great but the practice fails more often than not in this country. The light rail in Charlotte did in fact inspire hundreds of millions of dollars in capital investment. Great for the tax base. But on an operating basis ridership doesn’t come close to supporting the cost. Ridership hasn’t grown because the demand is just not there no matter how bad you want it.