Look anywhere in Triangle, and it won’t take long for you to see the signs of a growing region. Cranes tower over downtown Raleigh and Durham, expanding the skyline. Crews clear another swath of trees to make room for another townhouse development.
Another sign of the rapid growth: Heavy congestion on the Triangle’s roads.
We asked our viewers and followers to share their biggest Triangle traffic headaches. You shared many trouble spots:
- The stop-and-go traffic along Interstate 40 between Raleigh and Durham,
- the long-delayed widening project on I-440 in west Raleigh,
- the tangle of traffic that chokes the Durham Freeway near the I-885 and N.C. 147 interchange.
One spot people mentioned more often than any other was the I-40/U.S. 1 interchange between Raleigh and Cary. Drivers trying to get on or off I-40 West have about 600 feet to weave across heavy traffic.
“That’s when you [tell] your passenger, ‘Hey, do you see anybody coming? Check all windows,’” said driver Ginia Cooper-Gay, who said it’s a tricky interchange to navigate. “You need a co-pilot!”
Chris Lukasina is the executive director of the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization (CAMPO), the group of Triangle-area municipalities making plans for how our region will deal with growth in the decades to come. He says the DOT is going to get rid of that tricky interchange and replace it with a much better design.
“That will provide some relief for a lot of folks and make getting through that interchange a lot easier,” he said.
They’re also planning to keep lanes open during construction. It’s great news for drivers, but here’s the catch: It won’t be ready until 2030 at the earliest.
Lukasina says identifying transportation problems is the easy part. The hard part is figuring out how to pay for it.
“We have to have a long-range plan, but we also have to have a budget,” he said. “We have to stay within that budget.”
Future transportation improvement plans
The NCDOT has hundreds of projects on the books for the Triangle area. They’re spelled out in the State Transportation Improvement Plan, which outlines construction funding and priorities for transportation projects across the state. The state analyzes potential projects and assigns a score to each, weighing safety, congestion and local priorities. A project’s score is the main factor that determines if and when it will get built, but budget limits also affect the scheduling.
There are some major projects under construction right now that should provide some significant relief.
The I-440 widening project between Walnut Street and Wade Avenue now is expected to be finished in spring 2026. The last section of N.C. 540 connecting I-40 near Clayton with I-87 in Knightdale should be finished in late 2028. Milazzo says his group also is advocating for improvements to Glenwood Avenue between I-540 and I-440.
Another big innovation in transportation is under construction in Raleigh. The city describes Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) as a “high-capacity bus-based transit system that delivers fast and efficient service.” Dedicated lanes and traffic signal priority will allow buses to run reliably approximately every 15 minutes.
Joe Milazzo, executive director of the Regional Transportation Alliance, which advocates for transportation projects on behalf of the business community, calls it “buses resembling trains.”
“It is a great solution, provides flexibility, also provides that transit priority so people can rely on it,” he said.
Raleigh’s first BRT corridor is under construction along New Bern Avenue, linking the city’s east side. Other BRT routes will connect with northern, southern and western Raleigh. The city expects the buses to start rolling as early as 2028. Eventually, it will connect with downtown Cary.
Durham and Chapel Hill also are planning to build a BRT system in the coming years. Milazzo says connecting those systems will provide a flexible solution for people to get around the sprawling region.
“[BRT would be] at least an alternative for some trips,” he said.
Lukasina said a commuter rail could be a piece of the puzzle in the future. Wake and Durham counties’ transit plans propose studying commuter rail in the region. That would put passenger cars on existing railroads, shared with freight traffic, focusing frequent service during the weekday commute.
GoTriangle studied commuter rail in 2023, finding big benefits but also significant challenges in building it within the timeframes and budgets of the counties’ transit plans. Instead, CAMPO is working with the NCDOT to explore ways to enhance passenger rail service that would connect the Triangle’s cities and towns.
Lukasina says another major upgrade eventually coming to the Triangle the idea of “managed freeways,” using technology to manage traffic flow. It would allow officials to adjust speed limits and lane use dynamically to keep traffic flowing as well as possible.
“Helping to avoid those bottlenecks or minimize the time we have those bottlenecks out there will really help improve the traffic flow,” Lukasina said.
It’s just roads that have to be expanded and improved Milazzo says keeping up with the Triangle’s growth means upgrading all forms of transportation. A big focus for the Regional Transportation Alliance is pushing for improvements at RDU. The new runway and expansion of Terminal 2 are major steps to accommodate growing numbers of passengers.
“Airport expansion never ends, because this market never stops growing,” Milazzo said.
As the Triangle grows, Milazzo said the business community wants these projects take “less ‘forever.’” He says as frustrating as the Triangle’s highway headaches can be, they are a sign of a healthy region.
“Having growth is a wonderful thing. It certainly beats the alternative for a market,” he said. “We all would like to see things go faster, but if we work together and keep focused on it, we can get the solutions we want.”