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Traffic Congestion and Highway Construction


monsoon

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Pretty cool by 2021 the whole way from Greenville, SC up to 85/40 will be 6 plus lanes except for the last 10 miles from Kings Mountain to the stateline.  Any word if that is ever going to get expanded?  I've been going to Greenville for a project almost weekly and those 40 miles of construction can be a nightmare!

Edit: Just found it, 2026 construction start for that last 10 miles of continuity haha..

Edited by SouthEndCLT811
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9 minutes ago, SouthEndCLT811 said:

Pretty cool by 2021 the whole way from Greenville, SC up to 85/40 will be 6 plus lanes except for the last 10 miles from Kings Mountain to the stateline.  Any word if that is ever going to get expanded?  I've been going to Greenville for a project almost weekly and those 40 miles of construction can be a nightmare!

Edit: Just found it, 2026 construction start for that last 10 miles of continuity haha..

Mid-2020s. 

I’ve also heard that Georgia wants to widen I-85 out to the SC border at some point in time, leaving only the small gap between the GA/SC border to just before Greenville. 

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1 minute ago, Matthew.Brendan said:

There is massive expansion of I-85 actively under way seemingly all the way from NC/SC border to Atlanta.

I was just about to post going down there last month was like one giant construction zone. Add on top of it I left Buckhead at 4:45 and that added to the frustration!  But yeah GA is currently expanding to 130 so like 50-60 miles from the border.

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Just like Charlotte and the NC DOT Atlanta is building toll express lanes all over.  First it began with I-85 northeast through Gwinnett County now more are opening.

""The $834 million project, which began construction in 2014, will feature 29.7 miles of toll lanes along interstates 75 and 575 in Cobb and Cherokee counties.Motorists who have bought a Peach Pass from the State Road and Tollway Authority will be able to enter the lanes and pay tolls electronically that will vary according to the level of traffic. Only transit vehicles, registered van pools and law enforcement vehicles will be exempt from the tolls. The DOT opened the first toll lanes project along I-85 in DeKalb and Gwinnett counties in 2011. Early last year, a second toll-lanes project opened along I-75 in Henry County. A 10-mile extension of the I-85 toll lanes from Old Peachtree Road in Gwinnett north to Hamilton Mill Road is due to open to traffic this fall, Joe Carpenter, director of the DOT's Public-Private Partnership Division, told members of the State Transportation Board Wednesday. More toll lanes along Georgia 400 and I-285 will follow between 2024 and 2028, Carpenter said. "We're building a connected system around metro Atlanta," he said. "These all go together."""   from the ATL Business Chronicle last week 

In addition to the 77 toll lanes to the north to Mooresville, NC DOT plans lanes down 77 south from uptown to I-485 where the lanes will extend to Matthews and US 74 which will connect to Monroe Expressway Bypass.  I dont like tolls but they will be a big part of highways around here in the future.   Charlotte and the NC DOT is following Georgia's lead.  

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2 hours ago, KJHburg said:

Just like Charlotte and the NC DOT Atlanta is building toll express lanes all over.  First it began with I-85 northeast through Gwinnett County now more are opening.

""The $834 million project, which began construction in 2014, will feature 29.7 miles of toll lanes along interstates 75 and 575 in Cobb and Cherokee counties.Motorists who have bought a Peach Pass from the State Road and Tollway Authority will be able to enter the lanes and pay tolls electronically that will vary according to the level of traffic. Only transit vehicles, registered van pools and law enforcement vehicles will be exempt from the tolls. The DOT opened the first toll lanes project along I-85 in DeKalb and Gwinnett counties in 2011. Early last year, a second toll-lanes project opened along I-75 in Henry County. A 10-mile extension of the I-85 toll lanes from Old Peachtree Road in Gwinnett north to Hamilton Mill Road is due to open to traffic this fall, Joe Carpenter, director of the DOT's Public-Private Partnership Division, told members of the State Transportation Board Wednesday. More toll lanes along Georgia 400 and I-285 will follow between 2024 and 2028, Carpenter said. "We're building a connected system around metro Atlanta," he said. "These all go together."""   from the ATL Business Chronicle last week 

In addition to the 77 toll lanes to the north to Mooresville, NC DOT plans lanes down 77 south from uptown to I-485 where the lanes will extend to Matthews and US 74 which will connect to Monroe Expressway Bypass.  I dont like tolls but they will be a big part of highways around here in the future.   Charlotte and the NC DOT is following Georgia's lead.  

The difference being I-85 in Gwinnett County and Fulton County was 6-7 lanes wide before the managed lanes were built. People in North Meck wouldn't be complaining if NCDOT had ever widened 77 beyond the size of a rural interstate north of exit 23 before trying to double tax everyone up here.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I'm enjoying watching this debacle unravel. At the very least I predict one new free lane...in a perfect world two.

I could maybe get on board with the idea of just pay for what you use in taxes. For example: I have no kids, so no school taxes for me. Let the ones who use the schools pay for them. I live in a relatively crime free neighborhood, so bill me if I need you to come to my house Police Dept. See how idiotic it sounds for those who don't happen to need this road to float the idea they shouldn't have to pay (or pay less)? 

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On 8/25/2018 at 8:53 PM, southslider said:

^There has always been opposition to not adding a third general purpose lane like all other freeways in Mecklenburg. 

But where was the outrage? Nobody got pissed off until the contract with Cintra was signed and it was too late.

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1 hour ago, Spartan said:

But where was the outrage? Nobody got pissed off until the contract with Cintra was signed and it was too late.

As it was mentioned earlier, GA will have almost the entire Atlanta metro equipped with Peach Pass Toll Lanes and the lanes will continue to expand up 85, feasibly up to Charlotte someday. The Peach Pass in GA is partnered with the NC Quick Pass. I am a big fan of these lanes in congested areas around ATL. GA has funded these lanes with a State Toll Authority, and NC should have created a similar authority to partner in the expansion with the state. NC launched toll lanes so poorly AND PUBLICLY, that future toll lanes in the state and region will have serious headwinds. Overall tolls are the way of the future in extremely high growth areas and NC needs to focus more on urban highways and urban to suburban and less on highways to nowhere in the middle of nowhere. 

As a random aside, I really wish US 74 from Asheville to Wilmington as a limited access highway would continue to be a focus, even if it meant as a tollway similar to the Florida turnpike. 

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Lake Norman foolishly trusted their officials to treat them equally. But ultimately, there was outrage, and it changed everything from mayors to the governor.

Atlanta added free-lane capacity before adding toll lanes. There is no project similar to 77, where the first widening is tolled.

When only one firm replied to NCDOT that should've been the red flag. Charlotte will own this mistake and pay for it.

 

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Atlanta did its widening back when the gas tax actually generated revenue and construction costs were much lower.   

And if anything, Atlanta's roads have helped prove the case that is now known to be a fact, that induced demand means freeway expansions lead to their own congestion, no matter how many lanes you build.    The toll lanes will work beautifully to keep traffic moving, and all they have to do is pay for it with the savings from what they would have spent on gas taxes if they had been made revenue neutral to keep up with growth.

Obviously the real screw up was the private enterprise owning the project and not the toll lanes themselves which allowed for the project to actually happen, rather than waiting in line with the rest of the projects in the region in a tight budget era.    But tolls have paid for roads for a very very long time, and then we had a brief generational experiment in using gas taxes to pay for free lanes, and that has experiment has failed, with cities being absurdly congested, and a massive subsidization of sprawl at the expense of the core city.     

I'm excited that the long VMT commuters that cause the roadway to be very inefficiently used will be paying for its expansion. 

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