NC: Feeling slighted, residents north of uptown wonder why they won’t have a Red Line stop

In the basement of a Presbyterian church off West Sugar Creek Road, students — about 25 of them — learn how to weld, drive a forklift, repair HVAC systems and fix electrical problems.

About a mile and a half away is the city’s recently acquired rail line. The track, bought from Norfolk Southern Corporation in September, will carry Charlotte’s first commuter line — ferrying people from uptown to Davidson.

But the city’s plan for the Red Line does not include any stops near the school or in the largely low-income areas just north of uptown. The first proposed station is more than 6 miles north near the intersection of Nevin and Gibbon roads, outside neighborhoods whose residents often depend on public transportation, according to the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute.

“We want the rail to pick up folks outside of where we are,” said Zeke Burns, founder and CEO of the OMITT Trade School, located at Sugaw Creek Presbyterian Church, adding: “Don’t skip us. Our folks need it the most.”

Brian Nadolny, Charlotte Area Transportation System project manager, said he has heard concerns in public meetings about the lack of stops just north of uptown. CATS officials are reviewing the proposed station locations and may add or remove a stop or change their locations, he said.

One station CATS is discussing adding is at Camp North End, 75 acres of offices, housing and retails businesses located north of uptown and just south of the several low-income communities.

But much of the 6-mile stretch between uptown and the first proposed station is zoned for industrial use and is “not conducive to transit-oriented development,” Nadolny said.

“We don’t want to have a stop that doesn’t make any sense,” he said.

The Red Line: From uptown to Davidson

City officials first proposed the Red Line in 2008 as a 25-mile commuter rail line running from uptown to Huntersville, Cornelius, Davidson and Mooresville. The plan sat stagnant for years due to a lack of funding and because Norfolk Southern was unwilling to sell the tracks.

But the rail company agreed to negotiate in 2023, leading to renewed interest in the project and the planned Red Line, which will end in Davidson not Iredell County.

The Charlotte City Council approved the purchase of 22 miles of rail corridor from Norfolk Southern for $74 million in September. City officials paid another $17 million for 1.6 acres along Graham Street near the Gateway Station, where the line will end in uptown. Charlotte will be reimbursed for the purchases if local leaders are able to get a sales tax increase passed.

Construction could start in three or four years. The line will include eight stops besides the uptown station. All will be about 2 miles or more from majority-Black neighborhoods whose median household incomes are about half or less than half of Mecklenburg County’s average.

The area near Druid Hills, west of the tracks, for instance, has a median income of about $28,000, census data show. East of the tracks, communities near Sugar Creek and Hidden Valley, have a median income of $40,000 a year.

Tom Wilson is a member of the Hidden Valley Neighborhood Association and helped the trade school relocate to the area when it moved from west Charlotte. The lack of stops in those poorer neighborhoods doesn’t make sense to him.

“You’re going to spend all this money to build a rail, but then it doesn’t stop in the areas that could benefit most from it,” Wilson said. “It just goes by them. Some would call it economic segregation.”

Public transportation is useful to get people to work, medical care and more. Residents in those neighborhoods need more, he said. It’s common to see groups of people waiting at area bus stops, he said.

Burns, founder and CEO of the trade school, said some students live in the Huntersville area and would benefit from a rail that runs north and stops within walking distance or a short bus ride to the school.

City transportation officials are aware that some in the area want a station nearby, Nadolny said.

CATS is open to reviewing any new station location that residents propose, but no one at the eight public meetings the city held this year has suggested a specific site, Nadolny said.

“They mostly say, ‘We want to have another station,’” he said. “And we just keep saying, well, if you make a recommendation, we can, we can study that.”

Rail’s history with discrimination

Robert Cervero, professor emeritus at the University of California Berkeley, has studied public transit for decades and advised Charlotte leaders on bus and long-term transportation projects in the late 1990s.

He acknowledged that commuter trains such as the planned Red Line serve a different purpose than light rail trains, such as the Lynx Blue Line. The Blue Line, which was completed in 2018 and stops less than a mile from the trade school, runs from the Pineville area northeast to UNC Charlotte.

Commuter lines are meant to efficiently move people from home to work and back, reducing the number of cars on city streets, Cervero said. Because commuter trains are larger and heavier, they take more time to speed up and slow down, Cervero said. So the distance between stations is often greater.

But, he said, he’s not surprised that where Charlotte is proposing to place stations — and where it is not — concern some.

“I would assume different interest groups representing minority interests would be actively involved and really questioning whether this is just outright discrimination,” Cervero said.

The U.S. has a history of racial discrimination when it comes to where it places rail service, he said. For many years, cities did not want to put stops in low-income neighborhoods, afraid they would provide residents who live there easy access to upscale communities.

Charlotte has its own history of Black and low-income residents seeing rail service as favoring other groups, said Isabelle Nilsson, UNC Charlotte associate professor.

In a 2022 study published in the journal Travel Behaviour and Society, Nilsson and a colleague found Black and lower-income residents felt Charlotte’s growth, including the construction of the Blue Line, benefited younger, wealthier residents, but not them.

“Are we doing it again? Are we not listening to the residents and what their needs are?,” Nilsson asked during an interview with The Charlotte Observer.

Industrial but with residential growth

A major reason no stations are planned for just north of uptown is because much of the corridor along North Graham Street, which borders the track, doesn’t have high residential density and is occupied by businesses that aren’t big employers, Nadolny said.

On North Graham Street drivers pass companies that rent scaffolds, fabricate steel, create custom shelves and sell and retread tires for commercial vehicles.

There is a “massive area of just all industrial,” Nadolny said. “There’s no neighborhoods in here. There’s employment in these industrial buildings, but they’re very, very low density, and they’re just not conducive to transit-oriented development.”

But there are hundreds of single-family homes on side streets and, in some cases, wooden frames of apartment buildings under construction.

Combined, the Druid Hills, Tryon Hills and Sugar Creek areas are home to more than 8,000 people, census estimates show. And, according to an Urban Institute analysis of Mecklenburg County building permit data, more residential units are coming.

In 2023 in Druid Hills, the county issued nearly twice the number of new residential permits per 100 acres than the county average overall, data show. The Sugar Creek area, where the trade school is located, logged 15 times the number of building permits than the county average that year.

“Right on top of the line, it looks industrial,” said Matthew Palm, an assistant UNC Chapel Hill professor who specializes in transportation planning. “But there are people within a short distance of the line. The more I think about it, the harder it is to justify leaving out this community.”

City leaders are discussing adding one Red Line stop at Camp North End, located on North Graham Street just outside the Interstate 277 loop. The former industrial complex includes art studios, retail businesses and apartments.

The site’s developer, Damon Hemmerdinger, previously told the Observer that he met with city officials to advocate for that.

A station at Camp North End would provide access to the property and to neighborhoods just north of uptown, where no stops are proposed, Nadolny said.

“We felt like this is a really strong station, so we want to add it,” he said. “It’s not officially been added yet, but we’re, we’re in the process of studying that.”

Feeling overlooked

People at the OMITT Trade School feel neglected, said Rose Jones-Edwards, the school’s executive director.

The school graduates about 25 students a year and helps place them into jobs as plumbers, electricians, welders and the like. More than 100 others become certified forklift drivers.

About 20% of students take the bus, Jones-Edwards said. Others borrow cars from family members.

Enrollment is a chance for many to get skills required for stable, decent-paying jobs. A share needs the school, and the national certifications it provides, to help turn their lives around, Jones-Edwards said.

A train, even if it stops a mile away from the school, could help her students, she said, and other city residents who need public transportation the most.

“Why would you have it run from downtown and then go six miles before it stops?” she asked. “Who is the audience that’s being served by that?”

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