TRANSPORTATION

This story was originally published in Transit Time, a newsletter jointly produced by the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute, WFAE and The Charlotte Ledger. Mercedes and Ed Hampson moved to the Cresswind 55+ community near Mint Hill in November of 2020, and when one of their two cars kept going on the fritz, they faced a […]

There’s consensus in the new crop of local transportation plans: Whether we’re talking about trains, buses or roads, we’ll have to cross county borders and state lines to fund and operate an effective transit system. But in the traditionally siloed Charlotte region, how do we actually create some kind of regional entity — and who […]

Charlotte’s proposed $13.5 billion Transformation Mobility Network is in limbo. City staff and council members seem paralyzed about when to approach Raleigh — and with what message. Congestion relief? Economic development? Economic mobility? There is, however, another way. The city can just build the plan itself, or more realistically build part of the plan itself. […]

Charlotte City Council on Tuesday approved two auto-centric developments in transit-oriented zones along the Blue Line light rail, a move some advocates fear will set a bad precedent as the city tries to move away from its dominant car culture. The developments — a Fifth Third Bank on Woodlawn Road with a drive-thru and a […]

Pedaling through uptown last week alongside cars and pedestrians, I felt something that I’ve rarely felt before on city streets: Relaxed. That’s because I was riding not in lanes of traffic or in a tiny, painted “bike lane,” but in a full-sized, two-way, striped and painted lane for bicycles, separated from cars by a concrete […]

Abundant, convenient, cheap — or even free — parking, right where you want it, so you can drive up to your destination and find a space right by the door. Sounds great, right? Maybe so — unless that abundant parking is killing your city. Donald Shoup is a distinguished research professor at UCLA in the […]

With 2021 fading into the blessed rearview mirror, it’s time to take a look ahead at what transit controversies, developments and questions are looming further down the track in 2022. The past year was, once again, wracked by the pandemic and uncertainty about how — even whether — Charlotte can fund the infrastructure to move […]

Charlotte leaders say they won’t know the full impact of a nearly $12 billion funding shortfall for state road improvements until sometime next year, but a pair of projects in University City give a hint on what the funding gap might look like in concrete terms. Think delays for needed roads, bridges and interchanges, plus […]

If all the pieces fall into place, some day in the future a new light rail train will pull out of the station at the Central Piedmont Community College Levine Campus in Matthews and head south into Union County. It will turn down a two-lane country road lined with pine trees; run alongside U.S. 74, […]

New projections from North Carolina’s Department of Transportation show the state is $12 billion short on funding its next slate of transportation projects — nearly double the gap reported earlier this year. It’s a serious shortfall that’s expected to leave plans for roads, bridges and other infrastructure throughout the state waiting on the drawing board […]