rev:text
| - One can't expect much from public transit in a city this size, I suppose. That said, some comments, from a business traveler:
The airport is not served by the new light rail. One has to take a bus, either to the city or to a light rail stop, which of course is an express bus with an elevated fare. You could buy a day pass for the entire transit system at a decent rate, but you can't buy it at the airport. So out of towners like me are not well served.
The express busses from the airport are at least reasonably fast and direct, but I had a torrid time with a couple of other busses I tried, one of which was almost a half an hour late (but the one before it was not late, or I would have caught it), and another of which had a route that was different from the posted map and didn't bother to let anyone know about it.
The Lynx, their light rail, is new and cool-looking but not free of drawbacks. For one thing, it doesn't really go to many useful places. The only extant route runs from the center of town through some anonymous suburban park and rides with not much going on around them. It does not go to the airport or the university. Probably okay for car-based commuters that live here, but not that useful to me. At the end of the line, they were clearly continuing to build, so perhaps the system will grow into something.
For another, the suburban stations are quite high off the ground, and with no escalators, you're either walking up quite a few stairs or waiting on the one elevator. At least the elevators worked. The trains themselves are quite nice, very quiet (I missed one because I was on those long stairs and didn't hear it coming), and run with appreciable frequency. The stations are very modern, and voice notifications abound. They run off an odd honor system policy; you buy a ticket and no one really checks. In theory you'd get a citation if you failed to pay. Why fare gates weren't an option I don't know.
All told, you might look at CAT and think it's cost efficient, but travelers might be better served by other modes of transportation until Charlotte builds more rail.
|