Light rail, redux

Dear Mayor Kleinschmidt and Council Members:
Four years ago, when my wife accepted a job at UNC Hospital and we began planning our move to Chapel Hill with our young children, we looked for a neighborhood close to the hospital with sidewalks and good access to public transportation. We settled on Meadowmont because it met all of these criteria, and because sixteen years ago this Council made the wise decision to reserve a transit corridor through the edge of the neighborhood. We bought our house in the hope that we and our children would be able to walk to a nearby light rail line and travel to UNC, to Duke, and to points in between without having to deal with ever-increasing traffic or the dangers of having our teenagers drive themselves.
This Council should reaffirm its long-standing decision to run the proposed light-rail line through Meadowmont for the following reasons:

• This route was integral to the Council’s decision to allow Meadowmont to build at higher density, and it will cause the least disruption to Chapel Hill residents’ settled expectations.
• The route through Meadowmont has a better chance of getting significant ridership than the Hillmont stop.
• The route through Meadowmont will improve traffic safety, will pose no danger to children or the elderly, and will benefit all residents.
• The comparative environmental impact of the Meadowmont and Hillmont routes is uncertain, and this Council should not eliminate the Meadowmont route until a full environmental study is completed.

It is important to remember that this plan should not surprise a single Meadowmont resident. The transit corridor has been on every official map of the Meadowmont development since the initial approval of the Master Land Use Plan in 1995, long before the first resident moved in and the first shop opened for business. Special road signs throughout Meadowmont display a map of the transit corridor and direct the curious to call the town’s Planning Department for further information. In fact, when the Cedars came before Town Council for a Special Use Permit to build on land along the transit corridor, the Council required that the purchasers of the homes along the transit corridor be given special notice of the corridor’s existence.
History
Meadowmont's Master Land Use Plan was approved in 1995, and in the ensuing 17 years the neighborhood has developed in close conformity with these original plans. The Cedars Retirement Community, the elementary school, and most houses, apartments and offices are in their planned locations. Everyone who moved into Meadowmont had fair notice, as we did, that a transit line was planned. By contrast, the residents of Downing Creek and the other neighborhoods near Hillmont certainly did not expect a rail line to come near their property, especially after the issue was decided by Town Council in 1995.
The transit corridor was a part of Town Council’s effort to make Meadowmont an integrated part of Chapel Hill. Unlike some other developments, Meadowmont was designed with multiple connections to other neighborhoods for pedestrians, bicyclists, cars and transit users. The transit corridor is a crucial part of this connectivity plan.
The placement of the corridor was an inseparable part of the Council’s decision to grant dense development rights to Meadowmont’s developers. Given that Meadowmont’s development has hewn closely to its plan, the light-rail line should run along the original planned alignment absent compelling reasons to do otherwise.
Ridership
No transit system is successful without riders, and a stop at Meadowmont offers the light-rail line its greatest possibility for success. With more than 1,000 residential units housing more than 2,000 people and hundreds of daily visitors using Meadowmont’s offices, restaurants and retail shops, Meadowmont will be the largest mixed-use community along the new line. Most of Meadowmont’s shops and offices are adjacent to the proposed stop, and the Master Plan envisions two more office buildings right nearby. The UNC Wellness Center and the Rizzo Center are two very popular local destinations that would be well-served by the station. By contrast, a station at Hillmont would service few Meadowmont residents and none of its businesses.
One example is the popular Brixx restaurant in Meadowmont Village. It is convenient 0.12 mile walk through a well-lit business district from the restaurant to the proposed Meadowmont station. By contrast, it is a 0.8 mile walk to the proposed Hillmont stop, through an underground pedestrian tunnel west of Meadowmont Lane reached using isolated and unlit walking paths. Houses on two typical streets in Meadowmont – Little Branch, which is closer to the Meadowmont stop, and Old Barn Lane, which is further west, are both well within the 0.5 mile walking distance. Both are much further from a Hillmont station. Overall, according to the 2010 census data, about 1,900 people live within a half-mile of the proposed station, most along Meadowmont’s superb system of sidewalks and greenways.
And then there's the issue of reaching the Hillmont stop. How will people cross NC-54? At Barbee Chapel, the road is eight lanes wide and a total of 128 feet. At the standard pedestrian crossing time of 3.5 feet per second, that means a crossing signal would need to be at least 43 seconds long. Alternatives are an underground tunnel or an elevated pedestrian bridge; the first is expensive and the second is inconvenient, hostile to users with disabilities, dangerous when icy, and generally unpleasant. The NC-54 corridor study suggests improvements, but the suggestion for a superstreet at that intersection has not been well-received, and it is hard to imagine what could be done to make that interchange friendly to pedestrians.
At present, the Hillmont area has fewer residences within a half-mile walk of the proposed station stop. While the “as the crow flies” distance for some may be reasonable, the circuitousness of the local roads makes the actual walkable distance far greater. Moreover, Hillmont’s SUP provides for limited retail, restricting the attractiveness of Hillmont as a stop for visitors. As for the land north of NC-54, the University of North Carolina has no public plans for the Lloyd plot, and any Ayden Court development would be a long walk from the station and, presumably, insufficiently dense to provide many transit users. From a ridership perspective, there’s simply no comparison.
Safety
The light rail line will be safe. For many years, my wife and young children lived near two heavily-travelled light rail lines in Brookline, Massachusetts, right near an elementary school. We had no problem crossing the tracks multiple times per day -- and the kids loved to ride the trains.
The proposed light rail’s passage through a populated area will not put drivers or pedestrians in danger. Its route will be clearly marked, pedestrian walk signs and traffic lights will direct traffic, and the trains are hard to miss. Given the route layout, the trains will not be moving fast. The portion of Meadowmont Lane where the LRT will cross to head east towards Durham is does not get much pedestrian traffic. A soccer dad or mom speeding down Meadowmont Lane and talking on the cell phone while driving kids to school – a frequent sight – is far more dangerous.
Some letter-writers have discussed the supposed danger the rail line will pose to children, but that is an unfounded claim. The proximity to Rashkis Elementary School is a nonissue. There are only a few apartments in the Bell Meadowmont complex which are inside Orange County, and the other residences in the CHCCS school district lie outside of the transit corridor. They pose no more danger to children than the multitude of cars driving throughout Meadowmont.
The residents of the Cedars retirement community will continue to have easy access to the amenities in Meadowmont Village. It should not be more difficult to cross 22 feet of track than it already is to cross five lanes of roadway on 79-foot-wide Meadowmont Lane.
Finally, the LRT will offer a safe form of independent transportation to the two groups of people who have limited mobility -- teenagers and senior citizens. The Cedars’ own newsletter points out that pre-planned group trips have had poor attendance, and a nearby LRT stop would give residents there easy access to UNC Hospital, Duke Hospital, DPAC, South Square and other locations on their own schedule. This increased mobility will be a boon for people of all ages who cannot or do not want to drive.
Cost considerations
The Council should deemphasize the projected cost difference between the two alternatives. The $40 million difference is small in the context of the a billion dollar plus project, and only 25% of that money will come from local sources. It is also unclear whether the cost estimates include the price of the costly intersection improvements that would be necessary to make a station accessible from Meadowmont. Moreover, any estimates at this stage are necessarily tentative, and a difference of a couple of percentage points should not be dispositive.
In any event, the price differential may be the difference between an LRT system that has a vibrant, interesting, attractive and ridership-boosting destination at Meadowmont, and an LRT system that stops alongside a busy highway. When the TTA performs a more detailed look at the two alternatives and performs extensive analysis of the ridership potentials at the stops, I am confident that Meadowmont will prove to be a more attractive choice and a better candidate for federal funding, making it well worth the extra money.
Environmental impact
I do not profess to be an expert on the differing environmental impact of the two options and their impacts on the wetlands along the LRT route. However, any analysis of the environmental impact of either route must take into account not just the potential negative impact on wetlands but on the positive effects of the options on carbon emissions and automobile use.
Both C1 and C2 traverse wetlands. While C1 may require the construction of a longer section of elevated track over wetlands than C2, it is too early to tell which option will have greater impact on the wetlands, or whether running the light-rail line alongside an existing road as C2 proposes would have substantial environmental benefits. Excluding C1 from consideration because some Meadowmont resident fear the impact on the wetlands would be premature without a much more detailed environmental study.
Moreover, other elements relating to the light-rail line’s complete environmental favor the C1 alignment. For one, C1 has a much better opportunity to encourage commuters and visitors to Chapel Hill to exchange vehicle trips with rail trips. While Meadowmont has thousands of residents, employees and daily visitors within easy walking distance of the proposed Meadowmont station, there is little development near the C2 stop. Meadowmont not only has residents who might commute to Duke or UNC on a high-frequency rail line, it also has offices that will bring commuters and retail outlets and restaurants that will bring in other visitors. Bus service from Meadowmont to other points in Chapel Hill, like Franklin Street and the University Mall area, would move people throughout the Town. These transit trips will take place of car trips both inside and outside Chapel Hill.
At present, it’s hard to see what vehicle trips a Hillmont stop would replace. Even if it is built out – a big question – Hillmont will have neither the commercial nor residential density of Meadowmont, and the highway just to the rail line’s north would stymie future development. Moreover, given its location, a fully-developed Hillmont would encourage sprawl further east and create more congestion down the already crowded NC-54 corridor, particularly if park-and-ride spaces are added to the development. Furthermore, a Hillmont development with a large park-and-ride lot would increase impervious surfaces and water run-off, with potentially greater adverse effects than the C1 traverse.
Conclusion
The TTA’s light rail transit system is an exciting mass transit proposal with great potential benefits for Chapel Hill and the University of North Carolina. An LRT system is permanent and expensive, so it is important that stations along the transit line be selected with the overriding goal of securing the long-term success of the system to create a viable transportation alternative in our area. When the dense, mixed-use development proposed at Meadowmont was debated by Town Council in 1995, a fixed-guideway transit system running through its heart was an integral element of its creation. Sixteen years later it remains the best route for a successful transit system. It’s one of the key reasons I moved to Meadowmont, and I urge the Town Council to select the C1 route through Meadowmont as the Locally Preferred Alternative.
Very truly yours,
Geoffrey F. Green