Cabarrus Cheap Seats

A phone call with an Asian client kept me at work until about 8PM.  Given that, not much time for blogging.  I figured with everything that’s gone on with the Speedway, that I would share a little blast from the past.

This is back from May 2005.  It’s the second post I’ve ever written; but it’s a funny contrast to the situation now.

Enjoy.

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May 31, 2005

Last week, Bruton Smith, Chairman and CEO of Speedway Motorsports, Inc., proposed building a monorail between the proposed NASCAR Hall of Fame and the Charlotte Motor Speedway here in Concord [link to story] The funny part is that he didn’t just ask for one, but he offered up $50 million to start construction.

Now, before you start thinking North Charlotte is going to turn into EPCOT, let’s keep a few things in perspective here. One mile of light rail costs $44 million to build - at least when Charlotte does it. Monorails can be about three times that cost. So, our local billionaire isn’t going to foot the bill himself. Another theory - Tommy Tomlinson of the Charlotte Observer considers that Bruton Smith may be crazy. Then again, all of this was brought about because of the bid for the NASCAR Hall of Fame. Charlotte is up against Kansas City, Daytona, Richmond, and Atlanta. Maybe he’s crazy like a fox, constructing a ruse to make Charlotte just that much more attractive to NASCAR. Solid arguments for why Charlotte should be home to the NASCAR Hall of Fame aside; because there’s no other place that’s historically suitable for it, why would Bruton Smith propose such a thing?

Just to clear things up, Bruton Smith is no tree-hugging, social engineering, George Soros-type of billionaire. He made contributions to prominent Republicans like Elizabeth Dole, Kay Bailey Hutchison, and Dick Armey in the past ten years. He also got into a well-publicized fight with Charlotte officials over some trees he cut down near the Speedway last year. So, he ain’t doing this because of his abiding love for the city government.

Is there an operational, privately-funded, public mass-transit system in the United States? Some would argue that public-transit is a service which would be revenue-neutral - at best. People on the conservative end of the political spectrum have always been skeptical unless it’s the Metro in DC. People on the liberal end want mass-transit to serve all of the places that nobody really wants to go - think MARTA. But consider for a moment a public-private consortium, a rail system built by business interests with zoning and some public financing, focused on getting people where they would want to go (not necessarily to work) and what type of development would get built around that? Would it be plagued with all of the political silliness that tends to follow commuter-rail projects? How would it change the character of the community? Would it make other communities in the nation more or less likely to look into commuter rail?