You’re reading Transit Time, a weekly newsletter for Charlotte people who leave the house. Cars, buses, light rail, bikes, scooters … if you use it to get around the city, we write about it. Transit Time is produced in partnership between The Charlotte Ledger and WFAE.
In-depth on the transit plan: From now until the November election, Transit Time will be taking a closer look at the proposed transit/transportation sales tax referendum to help you understand it better. Have questions or ideas? Drop us a line.
The transit plan on November’s ballot would aid biking, cyclists say — but safety can’t be built overnight
Todd Bayley attaches a rearview mirror to a bike at Trek Bicycle Store in Ballantyne. Compared to Charlotte, Bayley said he has felt safer biking in other cities, such as Seattle: “It would be really cool to see some of the stuff that they had implemented around here,” he said. (Photo by Rachel Black/The Charlotte Ledger)
by Rachel Black
This November, Mecklenburg County voters will decide whether to approve a sales tax increase that would pay for a long-awaited $25 billion transit plan, focusing on road enhancement, rail expansion and improvements for the bus system and microtransit.
For Charlotte cyclists, the plan includes a new bike network of 144 miles, bike racks in “mobility hubs” (enhanced bus stops), bike racks on the front of new buses and increased funding for sidewalks and greenways. If it passes, construction could start by the end of next year, and the changes would be put in place over the next 30 years.
But many Charlotte cyclists say their most pressing issue, safety, won’t be solved without a citywide cultural shift — which a sales tax increase and transit plan alone can’t accomplish. Although the city has become more bike-friendly in recent decades, it is still dominated by cars. Several cyclists said the road to well-integrated transportation options remains long.
For Addison Berry, service manager at Trek Bicycle Store of Charlotte, both drivers and cyclists in Charlotte could benefit most from increased awareness about biking and cyclist safety. He said the bike shop repairs a bicycle damaged by a “detrimental” crash involving a car about once per month — and he himself was recently hit by a car while on his bicycle.
“We talk to so many people who are riding 30 miles a day, if not more, and they just have complete horror stories. I don’t think it’s really something you can change overnight,” he said.
While these crashes occur in every major city, Berry and other cyclists believe lack of awareness and lack of respect for cyclists worsens the issue in Charlotte.
“For a lot of riders, even with bike lanes, it can be very dangerous,” he said. “I think cyclists can be better and be more receptive to drivers. Both sides need to come to some sort of an arrangement where you don’t feel like you’re going to really get hurt.”
Even so, Berry said he feels safer riding his bike rather than driving because car traffic in Charlotte is so congested. According to the Charlotte Regional Business Alliance, by 2050 (just five years before the transit plan would be completed, if approved) Mecklenburg County’s population will increase by about 600,000, to a total of about 1.7 million. Charlotte itself, which has a population of 940,000, is projected to hit the 1 million mark in 2028, according to a recent estimate by the Charlotte Observer.
“Ten years ago, it was a lot easier to ride in Charlotte proper. Now it seems like people are riding in two or three different areas that may seem safer,” Berry said. “In the past 10 years, it’s gotten more noticeable that it’s very congested, and it’s really hard to ride. The development is great, and I love seeing it, but I think it’s kind of overwhelmed now. The infrastructure isn’t necessarily there to harness that [growth].”
Calls for more awareness of cyclists
Backers of the transit tax referendum on November’s ballot say the plan would help ease traffic congestion by investing in infrastructure. It would expand rail and bus service and build and widen roads, intersections and other road-related projects — some of which would enhance options for bikes. The referendum would allow Mecklenburg County to raise the sales tax from 7.25% to 8.25%, an increase that the city projects would cost the typical household an additional $240 a year.
Local cyclists say they would welcome better options for biking, but that people in Charlotte also need to adjust their thinking to be more welcoming to bikes.
Lead production tech Todd Bayley said that raising awareness about cycling and cyclist safety — as part of a larger shift in normalizing cycling in Charlotte — should be a top priority, although he and others aren’t sure what form an awareness campaign might take.
“It’s not only the lack of infrastructure, it's also the fact that a lot of drivers just don't realize that there could be a cyclist. They’re just not used to it,” he said. “Even being a cyclist and looking out for cyclists, if I'm not expecting a cyclist on that road, then it’s kind of out of sight, out of mind, until boom, it’s right in front of you.”
A bicycle sits in a rack outside a bike shop. (Photo by Rachel Black/The Charlotte Ledger)
Building on lane expansions
The city has seen pushes to make it more bike-friendly long before the current transit plan took shape. The city approved the overall Charlotte-Mecklenburg Bicycle Transportation Plan in 1999, when it also established a Bicycle Advisory Committee to help city council integrate cycling as a form of transportation in Charlotte.
The county has been steadily expanding greenway trails, which now total more than 82 miles. And the city has been adding protected bike lanes in places including 5th Street, 6th Street, Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and College Street uptown — part of an eventual seven miles of separated bike lanes connected to nearby greenways, known as Uptown CycleLink. The cost of Uptown CycleLink was reported at $7.15 million in 2022 when a portion of it opened.
But many cyclists say drivers still aren’t used to bike infrastructure or sharing the roads.
Juan Contreras Juarez, vice chair of the Bicycle Advisory Committee, said although he’s hopeful about the overall plan’s effort to integrate all types of traffic, only a small part of it actually addresses cycling. The plan dedicates 40% of the money brought in to trains, 40% to roads and 20% to buses and other forms of transportation, which cycling gets folded into.
For Juarez, safety and added facilities are connected. While new facilities like additional bike lanes can increase safety, it’s not a full fix—and the most pressing issues are not only safety, but also connectivity throughout the entire city for cyclists, which the transit plan doesn’t explicitly address.
“It’s nice to have a protected bike lane, but to get from there to uptown to east Charlotte, there’s a gap, you’re not going to be able to make that crossing very well. You’re going to have to go along the gutter lane, and if you’re a family, you might not feel safe,” he said. “The focus should also be on identifying those major settings we do have and connecting those, so areas of Charlotte aren’t just islands of niceness. We want to make sure that everything gets connected instead of saying an area is nice to bike in, if you just stay in that area.”
Much of the biking in Charlotte is recreational. Census data shows that in Charlotte, 0.2% of workers commuted by bike in 2023.
More work to do
Even though on paper only a small percentage of the transit plan money is dedicated to cycling, Juarez says the other large-scale improvements still help cyclists overall. He likes the proposed improvements to intersections, which are often dangerous for cyclists; added pedestrian and bike crossings; and more funding for sidewalks, which cyclists can use in certain areas.
“If the Charlotte community does vote to pass this, there’s going to be a lot of work to be done on us as a community, and on the Charlotte community as a whole, to make sure that that 40% for roads, we’re using it as wisely as we can to benefit more than just cars,” he said.
Other cyclists take a more pessimistic approach. One who wished to remain anonymous told Transit Time that an effort to change the city’s view of cycling would have to start from the top down—he asserted police don’t take cyclist safety seriously, emphasizing the need for a larger cultural or mindset shift. He views the transit plan’s inclusion of cycling as a mere “PR promotion” for the city.
The cyclist was recently run off the side of the road by a bus driver who approached him from behind. But on top of issuing tickets for drivers who drive recklessly around cyclists, he said, more tickets should be issued for non-cyclists using bike infrastructure overall. For example, he said drivers who park in bike lanes should be ticketed, and runners should be reminded not to jog in bike lanes.
Vehicles parked in a bike lane on York Road. Some cyclists say that local law enforcement does not take their safety seriously and doesn’t issue tickets to people driving recklessly around cyclists or drivers who park in bike lanes. (Photo by Rachel Black/The Charlotte Ledger)
“It'd be great if they have a month like a cycling safety month, and cops went out there and just hit people with tickets, just for awareness,” he said. “What we really need is a police force that wants to back us and improve cyclist safety.”
Despite their reservations, though, all of the cyclists Transit Time spoke with plan to head to the voting booth in November to vote for the sales tax increase to fund the plan. Ultimately, more public transportation can mean fewer cars on the road to pose a hazard to cyclists.
Although it won’t be an end-all-be-all solution for cyclists in Charlotte, especially as the city rapidly grows, Juarez thinks it’s a step in the right direction towards a culture shift around cycling.
“If the referendum passes, that’s good. That’s more work for us,” Juarez said. “Now we get to guide the city and help them decide how to address these concerns that we have.”
Rachel Black is a freelance writer based in the Charlotte area. Reach her at racheltblack123@gmail.com.
Related Transit Time article:
“Finally, biking in uptown without fear” (January 2022)
In brief
🎧 Transit plan podcast debate: A new episode of the “Shaping Charlotte” podcast features a debate on the transit plan between attorney Larry Shaheen, who helped write the state legislation authorizing a referendum, and former Charlotte Mayor Pro Tem Braxton Winston, who says why he believes the plan misses the mark. The discussion is hosted by Clayton Sealey and Tesho Akindele. Listen here.
Effect of stabbing aftermath on transit vote uncertain: Charlotte’s $25 billion transit and roads plan, years in the making, now faces uncertainty as the light rail killing of Iryna Zarutska has triggered federal investigations, threats to strip funding and political backlash that could jeopardize November’s sales tax referendum. (Charlotte Business Journal, subscriber-only)
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With the rise of e-bikes and electric scooter (particularly those that are personally owned), commuting to work or short-errands will be grow in popularity where safe routes are available. My office tower (uptown) has had to expand the available bike rack capacity twice in the past 6 months to meet demand.
It’s simply a better & cheaper way to travel & park, at least in dry weather.
After the trolly debacle, was going to vote against the new tax. Now, I will definitely vote no. Charlotte is too big for bike lanes. Bike lanes also killed downtown Boston.