TRANSPORTATION

Nowhere in Charlotte embodies the city’s awkward and aspirational transition from car-centric Sun Belt suburbia to denser, walkable urbanism quite like a pair of fried chicken restaurants in Cotswold. Located next to each other near the intersection of Randolph and Sharon Amity roads, Bojangles and Chick-fil-A have both filed rezoning requests to demolish their existing […]

When it comes to public transit in Charlotte, trains get the spotlight while buses carry the majority of passengers. That’s why the city plans to invest more in improving the bus system in coming years, adding frequency and experimenting with measures like bus-only lanes and traffic lights that give buses priority in order to improve […]

The city of Charlotte has a problem: Despite pledging to end traffic deaths by 2030, we’re on pace to see as many or even more people killed on the roads this year than last, and officials say speed is the single biggest contributing factor. Could automated cameras to catch speeders and nab red light-runners be […]

This project is part of the third cohort of Gambrell Faculty Fellows. Read about the fellows progam and other projects here. In a fast-growing, automobile-centric city like Charlotte, it’s tough to get around without a car. That’s why Dr. Mona Azarbayjani and Dr. Hamed Tabkhivayghan, professors in the College of Arts + Architecture and William […]

It’s been more than two years since Charlotte signed up for an ambitious goal: Eliminate deaths and serious injuries from vehicle wrecks by 2030. But this week, local officials told City Council members that the city is on pace in 2021 to equal or exceed the number of people killed last year. In 2020, 81 […]

Charlotte’s new east-west light rail is still decades away from completion, but a City Council committee on Monday got a closer look at some of the numbers dictating how, when and where the rail line is likely to be built. Running from Gaston County, past the airport, skirting uptown’s northern end and then running southeast […]

Editor’s note: This story originally appeared in Transit Time, a weekly newsletter produced in partnership by the Urban Institute, The Charlotte Ledger and WFAE. On the surface, Charlotte — a fast-growing, finance-powered, landlocked metropolitan region — might appear to have little in common with Sodor, a fictional island off the coast of England with a […]

Leaders in the Charlotte region are finalizing the details of the first coordinated transit plan to go well beyond the city limits, a document they hope to adopt this fall. Connect Beyond, a 12-county initiative led by the Charlotte Area Transit System and the Centralina Regional Council, will release its full report on Monday. The […]

The pandemic has transformed so much about the world, including how we work, where we work, and how we commute. As a result of these shifts, Charlotte area transit use has fallen to less than 50% of pre-pandemic levels. And while debates continue on whether these effects are permanent or temporary, city planners are pushing […]

This story was originally published in the Transit Time newsletter, which is produced in partnership between the Charlotte Urban Institute, the Charlotte Ledger and WFAE. Find out more and subscribe here. As Charlotte prepares to invest billions more into building new light rail, local planners are also betting big on another, more humble transit technology: […]