Traffic Congestion and Highway Construction

[kermit]

17.5 years to go…

Quote

Charlotte transportation leaders laid out an ambitious goal this week: By 2040, half of all trips in the city should be taken in something besides a car.

That would be a major shift. Right now, somewhere around three-quarters of trips withing the city are currently made using single-occupant vehicles, transportation staff said at the City Council transportation committee meeting.

“We know we can’t continue to move sustainably that way,” said Ed McKinney, Charlotte’s deputy transportation director. “Let’s be very aspirational.”

spending more than half that time thumb twiddling around the Silver Line aint gonna get us there.
https://ui.charlotte.edu/story/charlottes-big-goal-make-half-all-trips-something-besides-car

Edited May 11, 2022 by kermit

[CLT2014]

33 minutes ago, kermit said:

17.5 years to go…

spending more than half that time thumb twiddling about the Silver Line aint gonna get us there.
https://ui.charlotte.edu/story/charlottes-big-goal-make-half-all-trips-something-besides-car

Lewis' best answer to the City Council asking how this is possible:
"Lewis said that the Envision My Ride recommendations will go a long way towards improving the transit system, but added there’s no “magic bullet or quick answer.”

So basically Envision My Ride + no other ideas is going to get us to 50% not driving? LOL. I guess easy to set a goal for 2040 when you aren't planning to stick around to see it through. Dude will definitely quit or be fired by that point.

This graph is depressing. By 2018 and 2019... CATS buses had become so irrelevant that ridership was the same as when the county had 300,000 less people. 

Edited May 11, 2022 by CLT2014

[kermit]

If we don’t hurry up on that bike infrastructure folks are going to not get their amazon deliveries…  (very light blue text)

 

Edited May 11, 2022 by kermit

[CLT2014]

Watch out Jimmy Johns... Amazon is coming for your workers. 

[TGIBridays]

5 hours ago, kermit said:

17.5 years to go…

spending more than half that time thumb twiddling about the Silver Line aint gonna get us there.
https://ui.charlotte.edu/story/charlottes-big-goal-make-half-all-trips-something-besides-car

Honestly, the biggest part of getting to that goal in my eyes (recognizing that my situation is not necessarily the norm and that I may be very wrong) is housing/density. If I was able to more easily afford* to move my family closer in, it would be much easier to ditch my daily car commute.  I live in Stallings, so yeah , the Silver Line would also be an option if built, but it would probably still add significant time to my commute and I'll still need to drive to a park and ride.  That said the proposals from the envision my ride bus system overhaul, I think would do a lot to help as well. Hopefully the UDO combined with envision my ride allow for a denser, less car centric Charlotte in the next decade and a half even if the silver line never happens. That said, from what I've seen from the UDO, I feel like it needs to get a lot more aggressive (meaning less restrictive basically) in order to really facilitate this level of mode shift.  And even then, with NCDOT and the NC GA having such a stranglehold on so many of the roads and a lot of the transit funding, I don't have a lot of hope that we'll get there in 17 years. 

*Not to say my family couldn't make it work to move into Charlotte at this time, but housing prices are ridiculous right now and most people don't have the resources we have. 

Edited May 11, 2022 by TGIBridays

[joenc]

https://www.neom.com/en-us/regions/whatistheline

Learned about this recently.

Seems like a good idea.

[TGIBridays]

1 hour ago, joenc said:

https://www.neom.com/en-us/regions/whatistheline

Learned about this recently.

Seems like a good idea.

Just make sure you're not a journalist critic of the old crown prince MBS... otherwise you might end up in several pieces scattered along his linear utopia.

 

That said, the idea looks cool.  Though I'm always super skeptical of greenfield utopia proposals. Ideas for how to realistically renovate the places we currently have interest me more. 

Edited May 11, 2022 by TGIBridays
Added an actual thought about the proposed idea.

[kermit]

1 hour ago, TGIBridays said:

Though I'm always super skeptical of greenfield utopia proposals.

They never seem to actually work when put into practice, Chinese ghost cities are perhaps the most recent, large-scale, example of the failure of greenfield cities.

The geometry of this proposal is also kinda weird. I while I understand the linear layout allows transit to be built efficiently, the edge effects of the linear layout end up reducing density and making the place less walkable than a more compact orientation (star shaped, hex shaped, etc).

https://allthatsinteresting.com/chinese-ghost-cities

Edited May 11, 2022 by kermit

[KJHburg]

Most Chinese cities have huge streets flowing through them 6-8 lanes.  My brother lived in a city of 6 million Dongguan the main streets are 4-6 lanes.  Why I arrived from Hong Kong via British style bus the door opened onto this huge 8 lane street that I had to cross! 

[Richhamleigh, DC]

Not sure if this has been shared here but it's another NCDOT Survey --  https://publicinput.com/NC-CleanTransPlan-Survey

Here was my comment...  

The way we build our towns and cities today wastes infrastructure investments and land.  It's a fiscal waste.  Development follows transportation -- if all you build are roads, the only kind of development you're going to get is going to be dependent on cars.  Almost 1/2 of the entire population of the USA can not drive or afford to drive a car.  The average annual cost to own and operate a car is $9000.  If the only job you are qualified for is a service job and/or the only place to get training or an education to improve your lot is located where you can only get there by car, think about it -- car cost, housing, medical, food -- suddenly, most people can't afford to work or they can't afford to improve their lives or they can't afford to eat.

70 years ago people had the choice to live in towns and cities where they could walk or bike or take a street car (or drive a vehicle) to work, shop, school, church, play...  Our ancestors could build better lives for themselves and their children because they had physical access to opportunity.  Now, we are isolated by distances - the elderly, children, poor, handicapped -- isolated because we allowed the car to become the dominate mode of transportation and only built transportation infrastructure to support automobile transportation.  Then we only allowed or subsidized development for cars and designed streets hostile to anyone but motorized vehicles.  People don't all choose to live in suburban cul-de-sacs and be forced to drive everywhere or be isolated - they don't have a choice anymore...unless you live is cities like Charlotte.

 

[JRNYP2C]

Interesting take on Indianapolis BRT on Carolina Impact this past week.  

https://www.wtvi.org/pbs-charlotte-carolina-impact-season9/

It's been quite a while since I've been in Indy, and was surprised how much it has grown.  There are some compelling reasons BRT works there and could work here.

 

[KJHburg]

22 hours ago, JRNYP2C said:

Interesting take on Indianapolis BRT on Carolina Impact this past week.  

https://www.wtvi.org/pbs-charlotte-carolina-impact-season9/

It's been quite a while since I've been in Indy, and was surprised how much it has grown.  There are some compelling reasons BRT works there and could work here.

 

absolutely could work here.  Raleigh is rolling it out.  We could reach more neighborhoods and areas across town than rail ever will.  With fares paid at the stations, frequent service, nice stations it absolutely needs to be considered as the cost of rail has gotten completely out of line and is unaffordable really. They even use all electric buses in Indy which is great.   CATS needs to strongly consider this and I think our current leader needs to go for various reason.  Someone call this Inez in Indy. 

[davidclt]

41 minutes ago, KJHburg said:

fares paid at the stations, frequent service, nice stations

This is Charlotte, we can't have nice things because the power brokers would think that we're making it too nice and cushy, wasting money making it too useful and attractive. It's Charlotte's nature to be absolutely penny wise and pound foolish! This sounds actually nice and useful.

Edited May 16, 2022 by davidclt

[carolina1792]

16 hours ago, KJHburg said:

absolutely could work here.  Raleigh is rolling it out.  We could reach more neighborhoods and areas across town than rail ever will.  With fares paid at the stations, frequent service, nice stations it absolutely needs to be considered as the cost of rail has gotten completely out of line and is unaffordable really. They even use all electric buses in Indy which is great.   CATS needs to strongly consider this and I think our current leader needs to go for various reason.  Someone call this Inez in Indy. 

The first Raleigh BRT line is insanely a good deal for the City of Raleigh/Wake County. At about $60 million to construct, the city is only paying about $20 million of that from the general budget/transit tax coffer. The rest the feds are providing the funds. For the Raleigh Union Station Bus Station Project, the same deal. GoTriangle will only pay for a portion of the station cost while the feds will provide generous grant funds to assist. The private portion of the bus station project which includes a 37 story residential tower and a hotel will all be funded by the developer. 

It's such a no-brainer even the more conservative Wake County Board of Commissioners have started a BRT 'extension' study that will piggyback off the 4 planned Raleigh BRT lines so that they extend into the rest of the county. At least 2 line extensions are under consideration at this time.  Because BRT is so budget friendly this appears to be a logical step for everyone involved in the project--even though the first BRT line in Raleigh hasn't even started construction yet (expected late 2022).

We're talking about the same distances that the Silver Line will cover but at about 10% of the cost and depending on how the Silver Line is built--probably faster too.  

[JHart]

22 hours ago, carolina1792 said:

We're talking about the same distances that the Silver Line will cover but at about 10% of the cost and depending on how the Silver Line is built--probably faster too.  

Yeah we really could use some BRT here, especially due to our current hub-spoke road configuration. Road diets and BRT on all of our spokes could be implemented in the next 10 y ears and a fraction of the cost of the silver line on Park, South, Tryon, West, Providence, etc.. Of course we would probably screw it up and go for the Indy model to keep lanes for cars, or build our first BRT station and let the busses share the road with regular traffic..

[kayman]

On 5/16/2022 at 6:00 PM, davidclt said:

This is Charlotte, we can't have nice things because the power brokers would think that we're making it too nice and cushy, wasting money making it too useful and attractive. It's Charlotte's nature to be absolutely penny wise and pound foolish! This sounds actually nice and useful.

On 5/16/2022 at 5:19 PM, KJHburg said:

absolutely could work here.  Raleigh is rolling it out.  We could reach more neighborhoods and areas across town than rail ever will.  With fares paid at the stations, frequent service, nice stations it absolutely needs to be considered as the cost of rail has gotten completely out of line and is unaffordable really. They even use all electric buses in Indy which is great.   CATS needs to strongly consider this and I think our current leader needs to go for various reason.  Someone call this Inez in Indy. 

You all do know that the NC GA current party leadership has intentionally made things harder for Charlotte to do anything but especially these types of short-term transit solutions? It's also not a coincidence that Wake County (Durham and Orange counties) have impact fees on major developments meaning a minimum vehicle per hour (vph) thershold on roads & other infrastructure, a regional transportation demand management (TDM) plan with micromobility options (which was completely funded by the state in the early 2000s), GoTriangle (formerly Triangle Transit Authority) to coordinate regional transit trips (funded by sales taxes in Wake, Durham, and Orange counties), and several local mechanisms to allow more flexibility.  TPTB want dysfunction with transit and development here because Charlotte would get too nice and attractive. 

Instead of complaining, go lobby your legislators for those things for Mecklenburg, Gaston, Cabarrus counties including the LYNX Silver Line constructed. Then we might have a fighting chance to improve things in Charlotte. 

Yeah...

Edited May 20, 2022 by kayman

[thenewkage95]

Sorry if this has been posted before. I just came across this diagram of proposed/designated future interstates across the state. This diagram was posted by NCDOT from 2017. I can't help but notice every single major metro except for the Charlotte metro is having future interstates built. With the Charlotte metro producing 1/3 of the state's GDP alone, this has got to be some sort of economic bottleneck. I'm not saying more highways are definitely the answer, but this map definitely suggests what others have been saying about how the NC GA continually tries its hardest to choke the Charlotte metro and prevent any growth. The fact that Charlotte still keeps up with (and in many ways exceeds) growth in Raleigh/Durham is a true testament to how resilient and attractive the Charlotte area is.

[KJHburg]

and now there is I-685 from Greensboro southeast to Sanford and beyond to I-95 following existing US 421.  

[tozmervo]

Good lord, does the planned I-74 route really take that baffling route swinging to Wilmington and back through Brunswick county? 

[jthomas]

6 hours ago, tozmervo said:

Good lord, does the planned I-74 route really take that baffling route swinging to Wilmington and back through Brunswick county? 

Yes - the legislation authorizing I-73 and I-74 specifies their endpoints to be Myrtle Beach and Georgetown, SC respectively (I think I have that right). It looks beyond stupid on the map. Fortunately, it wouldn't be too hard to do the logical thing, which is to terminate I-74 in Wilmington and to sign the southern Brunswick section as an extension of I-140.

[Third Strike]

4 minutes ago, jthomas said:

Yes - the legislation authorizing I-73 and I-74 specifies their endpoints to be Myrtle Beach and Georgetown, SC respectively (I think I have that right). It looks beyond stupid on the map. Fortunately, it wouldn't be too hard to do the logical thing, which is to terminate I-74 in Wilmington and to sign the southern Brunswick section as an extension of I-140.

Wouldn’t surprise me if NC never builds the rest of I-74. I believe that alignment runs through some wetlands, so that may kill any interest in completing the project. SC has shown some interest lately in getting I-73 built out, at least from Myrtle Beach to I-95. Would rather see NC and SC work together to get that last leg of I-73 completed (and for NC to upgrade US-74 to freeway/interstate standards).

[DownEast]

I-74 has a good chance getting finished at least to just west of Wilmington as interchange improvements are under construction and continue to be let by NCDOT. Chauncey Town Rd. interchange starts early next year I believe.  Past that though is anyone's guess. Long term plans for 17 suggest a full freeway from I-140 to SC. Their seems to be consensus among road geeks that 74 will not make the awkward turn toward SC.

Edited May 24, 2022 by DownEast

[kayman]

On 5/23/2022 at 6:38 AM, thenewkage95 said:

Sorry if this has been posted before. I just came across this diagram of proposed/designated future interstates across the state. This diagram was posted by NCDOT from 2017. I can't help but notice every single major metro except for the Charlotte metro is having future interstates built. With the Charlotte metro producing 1/3 of the state's GDP alone, this has got to be some sort of economic bottleneck. I'm not saying more highways are definitely the answer, but this map definitely suggests what others have been saying about how the NC GA continually tries its hardest to choke the Charlotte metro and prevent any growth. The fact that Charlotte still keeps up with (and in many ways exceeds) growth in Raleigh/Durham is a true testament to how resilient and attractive the Charlotte area is.

I've been saying for awhile that Charlotte has the "it" factor in NC (and SC).  As much as the GOP-led NCGA attempt to starve Charlotte it still thrives and rapidly grows. It's why when the shift from the Old Guard to more urban-centric shift occurs in the NC GA then Charlotte will likely benefit the most.  US 74 finally being designated as a limited access freeway with parallel access roads from I-277 to I-74 in Richmond County will connect Charlotte to Wilmington (and Myrtle Beach).

Edited May 28, 2022 by kayman

[KJHburg]

well this is interesting.   NCDOT has received an unsolicited proposal for managed toll lanes on 77 south from Uptown to stateline.

https://businessnc.com/is-tolling-ahead-for-charlottes-south-i-77/

The interesting thing is I thought this was discussed a long time ago that any new expansion would be tolled express lanes that would connect the existing ones to the north to new tolled express lanes on 485 .  

[jjwilli]

11 hours ago, KJHburg said:

well this is interesting.   NCDOT has received an unsolicited proposal for managed toll lanes on 77 south from Uptown to stateline.

https://businessnc.com/is-tolling-ahead-for-charlottes-south-i-77/

The interesting thing is I thought this was discussed a long time ago that any new expansion would be tolled express lanes that would connect the existing ones to the north to new tolled express lanes on 485 .  

HOT lanes from the state line to Uptown has been NCDOT's plan for this stretch of road for a few years now but the funding year keeps being pushed out due to the lack of NCDOT funding.  Right now its slated to start in 2029. I guess this proposal would change it from being a State run project and instead through a public - private partnership like the northern section if I am reading the article correctly.

So either way we are getting toll lanes south of the city, the only question is when.