Thursday, July 26, 2012

Kannapolis to Charlotte commuter rail. Imagine it.

Imagine this. It is some time in the future. You live in Kannapolis or a town nearby (like Landis or China Grove). To commute to Concord or Charlotte, you have to fight through heavy traffic in order to get there. The only other option is to take Amtrak, which has trains 3 times a day from Kannapolis to Charlotte (which can be minutes or hours late).

Charlotte is building an extension to their Lynx light rail service, which has transformed travel in the southern part of the Charlotte metro. This, however, will only extend to UNC-Charlotte's campus. Cabarrus County has a population of over 180,000 in the county and growing. Rowan County is also nearby, providing a good sized population base.

Imagine not having to deal with I-85 commuters. Imagine not having to deal with mall traffic. You could get work done, sleep, or look around seeing the beautiful sights between the two cities.

Concord is a city of about 80,000. It has a very good transit system for a town its size. From this train, you will be able to connect from the Concord North stop to the Concord Kannapolis Transit System along with several other transit systems, including buses to Salisbury.

There will be seven stops on the system. The system will go from uptown Charlotte to downtown Kannapolis. On my Google Map, I have more info about all the stops.

I believe local governments ought to look at building this. This would alleviate traffic on all the major roads, like 85, 29, 601, and others.

Here is a link to my map. https://www.google.com/maps/ms?msid=212787236114350670343.0004b77c6678dfed20cc7&msa=0&ll=35.764343,-79.134521&spn=1.388415,3.348083

Facebook group where you can comment about it: http://www.facebook.com/groups/136586749815491/ 

E-mail your local leaders!

1 comment:

  1. "Imagine this"

    The only thing I can imagine is the COST.

    ReplyDelete