Mystery train.

• Position: Charlotte, North Carolina's light-rail transit - Special Report: Charlotte

A question weighing heavy on the minds of many Charlotte leaders: Can light rail help solve the city's transit woes?

Each morning as he comes to work, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Planning Director Martin Cramton Jr. has ample opportunity to observe mass transit in action. Outside the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Government Center, buses trundle by, belching diesel fumes and disgorging workers to their jobs downtown.

But Cramton sees beyond the gritty present to transit's future: His vision includes gleaming light-rail cars that he hopes will ply the region's major corridors sometime early in the next century.

Light rail is key to keeping Charlotte competitive, he believes. "Light rail would put us in a position to have the kind of mobility 20 years from now that will put us head and shoulders above the Houstons and Dallases and other places that have chosen pretty much all-automobile futures." Eventually, he predicts, light rail "could have the same impact on this region that the interstate highway program had when it was put in place in the mid-1950s."

But in today's Queen City the car is king. The city's bus system carries about 30,000 riders a day, including no more than 10% of downtown workers and perhaps 1% or 2% of all workers. To close a budget gap, City Council has decided to trim service on or ax entirely nine routes to save $474,000 a year, pending the results of public hearings.

Still, light rail has become one of the hottest debates raging in Charlotte. Proponents argue a fixed-route, electric system similar to those in Portland, Ore., and San Diego would ease congestion and air pollution in the next century. Critics contend that light rail is an expensive boon-doggle unsuited to low-density Charlotte. "Charlotte does not possess the necessary concentration of housing or employment required to make mass transit feasible," Eric Karnes, president of Karnes Research, and lawyer Ralph McMillan argued in a Charlotte Observer opinion column.

Why is Charlotte fixating on light rail while chopping away at its bus system? Light rail can carry more riders faster and is more reliable. More important, though, is that its image may be more appealing to downtown's white-collar, middle-income workers. Developer Mark Erwin, head of the Charlotte Chamber's transportation committee, says, "Mass transit here is fairly confined to people who can't afford the alternative. We try to promote that we want people higher on the economic scale to ride the bus, but in fact they don't."

Says David Miller, a consultant with the national consulting firm of Parsons Brinckerhoff Quade and Douglas, hired to study light rail for the city, "Buses have no sex appeal. We've seen it time and time again in other cities. Light rail does."

The city's ambivalence about mass transit is clear. But its lackluster commitment to transit today will almost certainly make its dream of a world-class light-rail system a mirage. Some even fear it could eventually drive businesses away from downtown and jeopardize the city's competitive position.

"We're at a crossroads," says Bill McGee, assistant to NationsBank Chairman Hugh McColl and a member of the Business Transportation Council, a national group. "The bus system has worked very well for our needs for over 30...