You know those National Geographic guys who’ve been hunting the elusive giant squid at the bottom of the ocean for years, hoping to get a single shot of the creature to prove to the world that it actually exists? Well, I know what they feel like. A reader who lives in the SouthPark area challenged me a few weeks ago to catch just one person riding a Mobie. Just one.
The Mobies are scaled down versions of Charlotte Area Transit System (CATS) buses. In theory, they exist to shuttle shoppers and workers between the mall and shops and restaurants in a five-mile loop around SouthPark mall. According to CATS official records, 5,136 riders have supposedly parked their cars and ridden the four Mobies since October 29. If that’s true, we want to know what happened to them. Over the last three weeks, I’ve spent about 15 hours either riding or trailing the buses, which CATS purchased for a total of $1 million with money raised from the half-cent sales tax for mass transit. I’ve ridden them at just about every conceivable time they run, hoping to catch just one elusive rider. I’ve even prowled the Mobie stops, wondering if people gave up waiting for the thing once they realized they could probably walk just about anywhere the Mobie could take them in less time than the 12 to 14 minutes they’d spend waiting for it.
Because CATS and a group of area businesses split the $500,000 per year cost of running the things, the ride is free, so there’s no toll that documents the number of riders. Instead, the Mobie drivers are supposed to mark a sheet with a pencil each time a rider gets on.
On two occasions, Mobie drivers I’ve questioned have claimed they’ve had another rider that day. Once, when I rode the bus around noon, a female driver claimed she had had one other passenger before me that morning. Another time, a male driver said a handicapped woman, the only passenger he’d had so far that day, had just gotten off his Mobie before I boarded.
That doesn’t quite gel with the CATS figures. Supposedly, 141 people rode the bus in October, after the lines opened on the 29th. Some 2,211 people rode them in November and, in December, 2,784 people rode. To achieve those numbers, over 80 people a day would have to ride the thing, or 20 per bus.
“I had 20 people once,” the female driver told me.
Of course, as Keith Parker, Chief Operating Officer of CATS points out, the Mobies started running during the Christmas shopping season. And people don’t just change their travel patterns right away.
“When we start a new route, it takes a while to attract enough riders to sustain it,” said Parker. “If we just disbanded them all after a month or two, none of the bus routes would run.”
SouthPark resident David Barnhardt isn’t buying the CATS numbers. He regularly walks through the area around the mall when he’s exercising, and he’s been watching for longer than I have.
“I don’t believe that,” he says when told how many people supposedly have ridden the Mobies. “The best thing they’re doing is to tint their windows so you can’t see (if anyone’s inside).”
The success of the Mobie or lack thereof is a sensitive subject with some city and county officials, who are betting more than a billion dollars on people’s willingness to get out of their cars and ride transit, even for short distances. If folks won’t park their Volvos and Lexuses at the mall or at area offices and ride over to Phillips Place for lunch, they certainly won’t ride buses or rail from home to work — or from home, to work, to lunch to work to home.
“Just wait until the light rail runs empty,” says Barnhardt.
I’m not giving up that easily. But if someone doesn’t get on a Mobie soon, I’m going to start to wonder what it will take to get folks out of their cars.
Shotgun, anyone?
This article appears in Feb 15-21, 2002.
