The main reason that my wife and I moved to Concord was for a job in Charlotte. I’m pretty sure that this is a common reason for lots of the population growth in the county.
Of course, this means a lot of commuting into Charlotte, and lots of money spent on gas.
If gas prices continue to climb, I know that this is going to make commuting long distances less and less attractive… And make houses that require long commutes to work less desirable. (and thus, Slowing/stopping residential growth)
I know that the County is trying to keep and attract new jobs into the county, which is a great goal! But given our proximity to Charlotte, the number of commuters will be a major factor.
What could the county do to handle this situation?
1) Improve the commute.
Look at smoothing traffic snarls the major arteries that take people into/out of Charlotte on a daily commute. 85 Northbound is a parking lot every day during the evening commute, starting around the Speedway exit. 29 and 49 are marginally better, but with frequent stoplights and events at the speedway, these are not exactly smooth flowing traffic either.
2) Promote Telecommuting
Obviously, this is not a solution for many jobs. However, there are a large number of jobs within Charlotte that could be done on a telecommuting basis, particularly a lot of jobs with some of the Banks, and other similar positions. Of course, we could not make an employer offer telecommuting, but are there things we could do to enable it? Expansion of Broadband Internet Access? Additional Tax Breaks for Home Offices if someone telecommutes regularly?
I’m not sure if these are all feasable, I’m just kind of brainstorming at the moment. Maybe work w/ some of the employers in Charlotte to open satellite offices, where instead of driving all the way uptown, workers could go to a building in Cabarrus county that has “Hotel Cubicles” that they could work from on an as needed basis.
Every car off the roads is less gas spent, and less road development/maintenance the county has to deal with.
3) Mass Transit.
I’m not a huge fan of the CATS/LYNX system as it stands now. I rode 80X from the Speedway Park and Ride into Uptown for about a year. There’s a lot of things that are wrong with the system, and I know it’s under CATS control, not Cabarrus county control. However, this might be something we need to look at working with Charlotte on. But if it was made a more robust and usable system, that might be another option.
There isn’t a lot that the county can do to change the Gas Prices, but we can think now about how to react to it down the road.
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9 responses so far ↓
1 Aaron // May 12, 2008 at 10:08 am
Good Post Tony, All are good points. I started working 4 10 hour days (relativley speaking) instead of 5, 8 hour days (again, ha ha, relatively speaking) to cut out a days commute.
I’d love to telecommute 2-3 days per week since I live 36 miles from the office each way. My little old beater truck gets about 28 mpg but thats still almost 10 bucks per day to commute.
It’s a bad thing either way for me. The old beater is paid off thus my commuting expense only counts fuel, maintinence and insurance. To buy one of those earth saving hybrids would skew those costs another 200 bucks per month into the negative but I’m still paying huge prices for fuel so it’s a damned if you do and damned if you don’t scenario.
My hours are also insane and sometimes I don’t leave the office until after 9pm so there’s no hope of catching a bus to Concord then. That is the problem with public transportation. You’re on someone else’s schedule. There’s no room for flexibility.
The cheapest and most effective solution is still widening the roads. Even the “eco-nut’s” who are cheering for light rail are failing to see that a car idling on the interstate is getting zero miles per gallon. Each Friday you can see a few thousand cars getting that MPG rating on I-85, I-77 and I-485.
It’s an issue of the Democrat Controlled NC Legislature being more concerned with talking about things versus doing things. The entire DOT is managed much the way a group of 8 year old boys manage their clubhouse(not well).
I’ve said before that I’d be in favor of a 1/2 cent to 1 cent sales tax increase if (and only if) 100% of it went to a transportation improvement plan that addressed I-85 from Poplar Tent to the Cabarrus/Meck County Line and paid for the extension of GW Lyles Pkway to Hwy-29 first and formost and THEN focused on major roads throughout the county that are commuting headaches for the MAJORITY of Cabarrus County residents not just Bruton Smiths economic issues and Bank employees.
Judging by the rhetoric around the Concord City Council Chambers, it looks like a huge chunk of the cash would go to choo choo trains from Charlotte to the Speedway. That’s OK for me considering I work less than 4 miles from the southend station. With a rail station at the speedway, I could ride from there to Southend and hop a bus. But I’m in the minority of folks who’d benefit from it. Like all the tradesmen (electricians, plumbers, HVAC etc) who have service trucks. Not to mention the folks who work 20 miles from a light rail line.
Of course, shiney new neato thingy’s will always be a higher priority than any actual solutions.
2 Brad Spry // May 12, 2008 at 11:11 am
I’ve been thinking about a car pool website where people can connect. My original idea focused on my fellow employees, but it could obviously be expanded. The problem with such websites however is people have to discover them and actually use them. The whole process could however be turned on it’s ear using available data. Privacy implications aside, what you would need is two pieces of information: where people live and where people work. For my work implementation, I already know where everyone works, so that was easy. It’s the other half, where people live, is what I’ll have to jump through firey hoops for. If all of the issues were resolved however, a “recommendation” could be generated for people who live close to each other AND work near each other. I know it’s very Big Brother, but high gas and parking fees drive one to think this way.
3 Aaron // May 12, 2008 at 2:13 pm
That is a good idea. It would be interesting to have an at a glance map that shows a non-zoomable map with pushpins at locations where folks live. A prospective user could look at it and see a general vicinity of where that person is in relationship to them. Once the user signs up for the site then the person could see destinations where folks are looking to go. Once they have all this information they could decide what they want to do and contact the other party via e-mail with the specifics.
The nuts and bolts would be a nightmare but the usefulness of the site might be worth it. If it weren’t for my crazy hours I’d love to carpool.
It’s a lot cheaper to drive from Mt. Pleasant to Concord and park at a grocery store and carpool with someone than it is to drive from Mt Pleasant to Concord.
What’s interesting is that we’re finally seeing the market do what the politicians have been trying to do for years and failing miserably. That being: getting folks to actually look at and review exactly how they commute. Score anotherone for Friedman!
4 Justin Thibault // May 12, 2008 at 2:57 pm
Aaron -
It’s not just the government.
My second car - a 1996 Ford Probe - is an interesting case in how the automotive companies tried, too. The Ford Probe was supposed to position Ford well in a world of $4/gallon gasoline by offering a “sporty compact” coupe. Gas was a buck/gallon throughout the production of the Probe (1989-1997).
The companies that took those early positions then moved to making SUVs, because they could make serious money with them. They made very lucrative financing on these over-priced cars and put people in them who had no business owning a $60K car that got 10 miles/gallon - especially with prices around $2/gallon…let alone $4/gallon.
Previously, car companies hedged their bets by the great resale value of huge cars. That won’t be the case for long. I predict that the next financing “crisis” - and I’m not kidding - will be among buyers of big SUVs.
Watch this.: Here’s an “everything’s great” article about used SUV sales from November of last year when gas was just south of $3.00 and here’s an article from last week when gas prices are closer to $4.00. For some reason, moving from $2.50 to $3.50 gallon made a much bigger difference than moving from $1.50 to $2.50 in those sales.
The biggest asset that most people have is their house, and there’s turmoil there. The second largest, in many households, are the cars. There’s coming turmoil there, too.
Most domestic automakers make their money from financing and leasing, they are still trying to move these products because their market are over-sized cars.
Sooner or later, something is going to give; and it won’t be pretty.
5 Aaron // May 12, 2008 at 4:14 pm
That’s funny. My first Car was a ‘93 Ford Probe!
I really miss it these days because if I ran it just right I could top 30mpg. The best I’ve ever gotten was my 1991-2 Honda CRX. Just around 34mpg highway. I’ve been searching for one good and cheap and these day’s they are getting hard to find.
6 Justin Thibault // May 12, 2008 at 4:36 pm
Mine was an ‘82 Celica. I’m growing fond of easy-to-repair, Japanese-designed cars (the Probe was mostly Mazda) as I drive my wife’s ‘01 626.
Apparently, I’m not alone.
7 Sam // May 12, 2008 at 10:04 pm
I would have a 25 mile commute one way, but I am able to hop on the lite rail for half of that now. I also work from home about one day a week instead of going all the way into Charlotte all five. I would like the four 10 hour days as well, but I don’t see that in my near future with this current job.
8 Mike Lyda // May 13, 2008 at 6:51 pm
@Justin — “Sooner or later, something is going to give; and it won’t be pretty.” .. the auto auctions are already loaded with fairly new SUVs and trucks that have been repossessed. It’s been happening for some time, but I think you’re dead on the money here. We’ll begin to see even more people defaulting on their vehicles because they can’t afford the fuel and monthly car payment.
The county needs to focus more on pedestrian centered design. If we can get people to live close enough to shops, restaurants, banks, etc so that they can walk or ride bikes (safely) then it would be a major step forward.
9 Justin Thibault // May 13, 2008 at 9:44 pm
Mike - Here’s what I’m wondering…since domestic automakers finance their cars through their own firms and they are all having serious financial difficulty - will there be a call for another Chrysler-style bailout? And how does that work now that the domestic manufacturers are more multi-national than when I was in diapers.
As for walkability of neighborhoods, that has to be worked into the zoning and permitting. It’s too lucrative for developers to put in a bunch of serpentine cul-de-sacs and move “product”. I got lucky enough to live in a development with a phased-in, multi-use model that would make the developer much more money; but over a longer period of time.
The flip side of that argument is that large-scale “walkable” development is higher-density and people have historically been trying to move away from that.
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