Is This the Right Time to Invest Local Money in a Large Scale Project?

Most of us know that our country is in the middle of a Constitutional crisis. The executive branch of our federal government has frozen all federal grant programs, fired federal employees from multiple branches of government, and generally created so much confusion that it feels like we’re living in Wonderland. Some of the chaos is on temporary hold thanks to the courts, but no one knows how long those temporary holds will last or what impact even the temporary disruption will have on local funding for social services, transportation funding, health care and more.

In this environment, I question the wisdom behind the town of Carrboro putting a resolution to spend $10,000 on their consent agenda for February 4 for a feasibility study to build a rails-to-trails along the UNC Cogen railroad tracks–a project that UNC has said is at least 20 years out.

The proposal for the feasibility study comes from the Durham-Chapel Hill-Carrboro Metropolitan Planning Organization that has recently been rechristened as the Triangle West Transportation Planning Organization; the good folks who brought us the very expensive and failed light rail plan a few years ago. The Triangle West feasibility plan goes beyond what would normally be included in a feasibility plan. It also includes a concept plan (what normally comes after a feasibility study) as well as a public awareness campaign. It invests local staff time as well as funds to design the trail before anyone knows how much such a project could cost or how long it would take to build.

According to the materials in the Town Council’s agenda for Tuesday night, the multimodal/multi-use trail will utilize “existing pedestrian/bike routes, bus transit and local streets to create connections that provide alternatives to single occupancy car trips for commuters, opportunities for recreation and create local and regional tourism destinations.” But then they throw in a kicker…

“As part of the scope of services, the consultant will identify the highest and best reuse of the rail line for a greenway, which could include bicycle and pedestrian trails with or without an adjacent transit component such as light rail or pop-up railway or other appropriate passenger vehicle type.” (emphasis added)

Adding light rail or a pop-up railway changes the scale of this project significantly. There is no stop built into the plan for making the decision to pursue anything beyond the greenway. How many years and how much of our money did this same group take to develop a feasibility study for the Durham-Chapel Hill light rail project?

Having spent several years trying to shepherd the unpaved Mountains to the Sea Trail through Orange County, I assure you that this proposed 10.8 mile Cogen trail through rural Orange County, western Chapel Hill and downtown Carrboro is going to be expensive, even if it’s only a greenway.

With the Mountains to the Sea Trail (MST), we started working on a connection between Saxapahaw and Hillsborough for the MST trail in 2016. The county invested in a parking area about 6 years ago. But there is still no trail. And this Cogen Trail, whether it is designed as a walking trail, a light rail route, or both, will take longer and be significantly more expensive.

I love trails and spend as much time as possible on them. Under different circumstances, I would give this project (minus the light-rail kicker) my whole-hearted support. But we live in a research university town outside another large, concentrated research community. There are going to be impacts from the upheaval in Washington DC. This is not the time to invest local money into a project of this magnitude, not when we don’t know how many local residents are going to be financially penalized by the federal turmoil.

Carrboro has always prided itself in taking care of those who cannot take care of themselves. The Town Council needs to step back from this feasibility study at least for a few months until we all have a better grip on how money is going to flow from the federal treasury into our local governments. Wasting $10,000 on a project that cannot come to fruition in the foreseeable future in the face of job losses, increased costs for health care, and other traumas is not justifiable.

As an Aside
Mayor Anderson in Chapel Hill wrote a lovely, compassionate email to let her constituents know the town is working with their state and federal representatives to clarify the impact the chaos of the past two weeks will have locally. I appreciate her leadership on a situation that has so many of us shaken and confused.