southslider

Don't forget Charlotte couldn't have wires crossing their parade / festival street for Gold Line. Any vertical elements to truly protect bike lanes along Tryon, so as not be a delivery truck lane, would face the same challenge.

Like running from the altar before your "I dos"

Call it Atherton Station but build it closer to Publix.

The Silver Line will be able to travel much higher speeds than BLE just by not being in the middle of a road, but rather running along the side of expressways and on new alignments completely removed from slower speed roadways.

^3 free lanes works as an urban-minded maximum inside Mecklenburg, or at least inside of 485. I'd even support reconfiguring existing expressway segments of 4 or more free lanes to instead be reconfigured to 3 general purpose lanes ("free") and 2 express lanes ("toll").

What if NCRR replaced Silver Line to Airport on new tracks for commuter rail separate from Norfolk Southern? If Silver Line no longer runs through Uptown east-west, maybe the western half should be split up between commuter rail to Airport (and Gaston), plus Gold Line spur to West Charlotte. NCRR could follow the LPA from Gateway Station to Belmont, while Gold Line could return to Wesley Heights, as well as other west corridors with stronger TOD potential.

^I agree express lanes are here to stay but don't think they work for larger freight trucks. As a regular 77 Express Lanes user, I have encountered trucks improperly using the lanes multiple times, and each of those times, it felt very unsafe. The merging distances and sight lines for the access points and bollard posts aren't designed for trucks. The higher speed limits and operating speeds of the Express Lanes also don't work well to mix slower vehicles. It's already a bit awkward to encounter slower moving buses, but of course, buses have important public benefit. Ideally, through freight should use a bypass, and localized freight should use smaller vehicles, like Amazon Prime vans. Many smaller commercial fleets from repair services to deliveries regularly use the lanes.

Notice all but 2 of 100 NC counties grew in housing, despite only 49 of 100 growing in population. With most household sizes becoming smaller, any population growth requires significantly more housing.

Thankfully, Charlotte is becoming a large city when development more naturally happens around transit. In this way, Charlotte is blessed with timing, or to have not built out too much until development trends also shifted to be more urban. Still, Charlotte is also coming of age, when highways are not expanding as quickly and funding harder to come by. I think this policy context means that transit should be designed around ridership first and minimize cost, while still incorporating good station area planning second.

Overlapping with Blue Line in Uptown both lowers cost and boosts ridership.

Part of the hesitancy in buying an EV isn't just vehicle range, but also the inconvenience in figuring out which charging station works for which EVs. Americans want the convenience of charging stations to match the versatility and abundance of gas stations.

For teardowns of a single-family home to build a mini-mansion, I couldn't agree more with preserving even smaller trees. But for true urban infill that helps build the ten-minute neighborhood, just add some street trees.

Given higher housing costs and a volatile job market, my guess would be travel time to work has been increasing almost everywhere. Telecommuting may have spread out peak travel and even reduced the number of commuter trips (certainly not freight), but the distance and duration of home-based work trips seem to be still likely going up.

^Mooresville to Charlotte trail looks a lot like a rail trail.

XCLT2 as in Silver Line trail?