Chapel Hill should bid on hosting a Winter Olympics. Sure, we’d need to build a couple of ski 
slopes, one with fancy rails and jumps. We would have to retrofit the Dean Dome into an ice-skating rink. And we’d need to build a housing complex for the athletes, though we could repurpose it into affordable housing after the games or convert it to student dorms to reduce the pressure students put on housing markets in neighborhoods near campus.
Most likely, we could do all of this for well under the $3.3 billion that GoTriangle projects we’ll need to build a light rail for UNC and Duke.
But last Wednesday, the Metropolitan Planning Organization yanked our Olympic dreams like so many Russian athletes accused of doping. Instead of the town raking in tourist revenue for two weeks during what is traditionally Chapel Hill’s slowest season for visitors, the MPO has committed Orange County taxpayers to a hefty tax hike and ongoing maintenance costs for the proposed 17-mile Durham-Orange Light Rail Transit system.
To add insult to injury, the MPO threw our Bus Rapid Transit plans under the train. In order to increase the likelihood that DOLRT would win money from the state, the MPO declined to ask the state for funding for BRT.
The Durham mayor played the “weighted vote” card, a legal option that gave his city 16 votes, Chapel Hill six votes, Durham and Orange counties four votes each, and two votes apiece for Chatham County, Carrboro and Hillsborough. GoTriangle and the N.C. transportation board each got one vote. The tally in favor of tossing BRT was 21-16. Durham city and county and GoTriangle voted for, and all of the others present voted against (which included the towns of Chapel Hill, Carrboro and Hillsborough, and Orange and Chatham counties). No one could recall a time when any member organization had used its weighted vote before.
The staggering bill for a train that will benefit so few taxpayers seems all the more appalling as we enter the municipal budgeting period when we are acutely aware of all we wish we could afford to make our vision for a livable town a reality: a new police station, sidewalks, recreation space, electric buses to improve air quality and reduce global warming, more greenway miles for safe bicycle transit, expanded cultural arts options, and the insatiable need for more affordable housing.
The MPO vote last week made it all the harder for Chapel Hill and Orange County residents to go for the gold standard of quality of life. Instead, taxpayer money will be diverted to fuel a train that few people who live and work in Orange County will ever ride. With the weighted vote, Durham pushed us off the winners’ podium.
— Nancy Oates
David
/ February 20, 2018If DOLRT can’t win funding on its own merits without undermining other needed transit services, maybe it’s not worth doing. At what point do we say that the cost of going forward with DOLRT–including the opportunity costs of alternative transit service forgone—exceeds the likely benefit?
plurimus
/ February 20, 2018This isn’t a transit project this is economic development for Durham, hijacking transit money. The “weighted” vote shows just how crooked the Durham Commissioners are and how far they are willing to go to coerce us into subsidizing their economic development.