Charlotte Traffic: What’s The Plan? – Charlotte Magazine

Charlotte’s road system is a patchwork tangle of winding streets increasingly clogged with vehicles. How much worse can it get before it gets better?

Charlotteans love to complain about traffic. The maze of south Charlotte streets seem designed to infuriate and delay. Daily rush-hour traffic inchworms on Interstates 77 and 85. City Gold Line trains compete with private vehicles for lanes. The aggravations highlight the reality that more people are moving here than the transportation system can handle.

We have every reason to carp, but it won’t solve the problem. An upgraded system—and perhaps changed habits—would help. Charlotte city officials have a vision for the next few decades: an equal mix of car and public transit, vastly expanded rail lines, and an enhanced bus system. The problem is that they need state legislators to sign off on an added sales tax to help pay for it, and lawmakers aren’t so keen on rail. (Or Charlotte.)

For now, the plans to improve transportation here are, you could say, stuck in neutral. It seems like a good time to examine our roads: their histories, the ways they function—or don’t—and their futures.

It’s an appropriate time to register the stakes, too. Data the city used in its 2022 mobility plan show that, on average, Charlotteans spend 22% of their household income on transportation costs and 51% on the combination of transportation and housing. That’s more than even high-growth “peer cities” like Austin, Denver, Minneapolis, and Nashville. Working out the transportation problem will determine whether some of us can continue to live here.