Sustain Charlotte asks City Council to support purchase of Red Line tracks and sales tax legislation

This week, Sustain Charlotte sent a letter to Charlotte City Council members encouraging them to vote in favor of the sales tax legislation and the purchase of the O Line railroad tracks from Norfolk Southern needed to build the Red Line. We believe these steps are necessary to seize this long-awaited opportunity to build a safe, affordable, equitable, and healthy transportation system. Read the full letter below. 

Dear Mayor Lyles and Council Members,

After years of debate regarding a one-cent sales tax increase for transportation investments countywide, we are writing to strongly encourage you to support both the purchase of the O Line railroad tracks from Norfolk Southern needed for the Red Line and the draft sales tax legislation.

The draft sales tax legislation is not perfect—it is a compromise. It’s not everything we wanted. However, given current political realities, we believe it is the compromise needed to secure a much-needed and significant new source of funding to invest in our transportation system.

For more than a decade, our inability to reach a countywide consensus on this tax has caused us to fall further and further behind in providing residents with the safe, affordable, efficient, and clean transportation choices they deserve. 

As you know, our population has continued to soar, causing a tidal wave of new development. This growth, combined with the lack of sufficient funds to also invest in the transportation infrastructure needed to support it, has led to more wasted time sitting in traffic for those who drive. It’s led to more drivers, people on foot, and people on bikes dying due to streets not designed for safety. It’s led to residents struggling to breathe because of our heavy reliance on private vehicles — the leading source of air pollution in Mecklenburg County. And it’s led to those in our community without a car struggling to reach their job, grocery store, medical appointments, and more.

It has been suggested that because of the 40% funding cap on rail projects, the portion of the Silver Line between uptown Charlotte and Matthews cannot be built as rail and would need to be Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) instead. However, no decision has been made about the Silver Line, and we urge you to work with other decision-makers to explore every option to build this line as planned. 

That said, a well-designed BRT system could possibly be a good alternative to rail and is worth exploring given the constraints placed on rail in the proposed legislation. These constraints will require a fresh look at our current countywide transit plan and we will advocate for this to be done through a transparent public process with significant and inclusive input from residents across the county.

Rejecting this compromise legislation now, because the Silver Line to Matthews may not be rail, would very likely result in no new funding for transit and other transportation infrastructure for many years. This would perpetuate the status quo and the existing inequities in our transportation network.

We would also like to see a commitment, including funding, to mitigate the displacement of existing residents and ensure affordable housing in the neighborhoods through which new rail investments will run. Not doing this for the Blue Line led to involuntary displacement, and we must not repeat this mistake. New transportation investments must correct current inequities in access to transportation choices that have resulted from past decades of underinvestment and transportation decisions that harmed lower-wealth neighborhoods.

Walking away from this legislation now would mean further delaying vital investments that are already long overdue and the myriad costs associated with inaction will only continue to grow.  

The time to act is now. 

Please seize this long-awaited opportunity to build a safe, affordable, equitable, and healthy transportation system by supporting the purchase of the Red Line tracks and the proposed sales tax legislation. 

Thank you for your service and please do not hesitate to contact me to discuss this further.

Sincerely,

Shannon Binns 

Founder + Executive Director

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