Charlotte Rail Trail
The Rail Trail is a 4.5 mile long
hardscape pathway that runs parallel to Charlotte’s light rail system, the LYNX
Blue Line. Its original purpose was simply to provide access from nearby
streets to four rapid transit stations. However, since the Blue Line began
operating in late 2007, the Rail Trail has been added onto, studied, enhanced,
formalized, codified, de-formalized, imagined, envisioned, and transformed. The
current Rail Trail little resembles the utilitarian path of 2007. It is now an
important part of Charlotte’s urban fabric, a destination linear park bisecting
South End, one of Charlotte’s hottest neighborhoods.
Thousands of new residents, living in
gleaming new apartment buildings and townhomes within a stone’s throw of the
Rail Trail, use it for jogging, cycling, commuting, dog walking, hanging out,
dining, drinking, and shopping. For many of these South Enders, the Rail Trail
is literally at their front door, since zoning laws often require direct
connections from adjacent buildings to the trail for both commercial and
residential buildings. Shops, restaurants, breweries, and nightclubs all
connect to the trail, which serves more like a street in some sections than a
trail.
The Rail Trail is a place where urban
design concepts are tried and tested, where lessons are learned and adjustments
are made. It’s a platform that supports interesting and unusual public spaces
and “interventions”, where formal regulatory requirements sometimes clash with
free-form guerrilla placemaking, spontaneity, and grassroots (and often
anonymous) art and sculpture.