Written by Jason McGathey | 06 July 2010

Though plenty of attention has been paid to Charlotte's light rail system recently, a serious look at its busing operation is long overdue. Particularly in a down economy where many city residents are jobless, and gas prices are often prohibitive to even those with steady employment and a reliable car, our CATS system would seem a basic necessity. However, inefficient routes and gaping holes in its schedule leave many residents frustrated, to the point that they have given up on the service.

Any city worth its salt has a well functioning public transportation system of some sort, primarily because at some point the burden of commerce at its heart is too great to accommodate a bunch of single car drivers. And while it is true that Charlotte, which likely has one of the worst traffic situations in the eastern United States, is a gridlocked nightmare mostly for other reasons - to wit, the flood of people descending from and then exiting to the suburbs every rush hour, coupled with a poor infrastructure - there is no question that this antiquated transportation program is in serious need of beefing up, and is part of the problem as well.

On two separate occasions this week coworkers have grumbled to me about the considerable time and effort wasted relying on CATS to take them across town. Another friend of mine was routinely waiting outside shortly after 5am every morning to make it to work by 8. Like me (and surely a huge chunk of Mecklenburg County residents), they all have in common having moved here via other major cities. We took it at almost a given that in any metropolis you'd be able to get around readily without your own wheels.

I know that Charlotte has an idiosyncratic layout, which generates a whole slew of issues on its own. But so do Manhattan, and Chicago, and San Francisco, and I've either experienced first hand or heard from more than one reliable source that it's in fact easier to get from one end to the other, of these much larger cities, than it is Charlotte. As someone who's driving down Independence Boulevard a number of times a week, I'm often puzzled by this giant bus lane that never seems to have a bus in it. The light rail has done better than projected - though this, too, would seem to indicate to our often myopic leaders that maybe CATS deserves a second glance - yet unless you live at one end of its relatively small run and work at the other, that line is probably of little use to you.

So what it is the answer? It certainly isn't the trolley that Mayor Foxx has been so adamantly proposing for months now. I have to think that with all the money that was poured into the so far underperforming Nascar Hall of Fame, not to mention its own personal freeway exit, that some funding could have been drummed up, say, for an extra right hand (no more center concrete wastelands, please) lane added to major clogged arteries like Tryon, South, and the like. Aside from all that, who's to say we always need government to come bail us out? Maybe it's time a private company stepped up to the plate with viable service of its own. I believe they and everyone else would be pleasantly surprised by the success of such a venture, and the impact it would have on our bumper to bumper grind.

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