Articles About Transportation
For three years, transit advocates have lobbied for the proposed Silver Line to bring passengers closer to uptown — instead of the planned route that would follow Interstate 277. The Charlotte Area Transit System refused, saying the I-277 route north of uptown would spur more development. The transit system also said bringing the train into […]
This might surprise some people who think bicycling in Charlotte is serious, or scary: Riding is fun! If you come and ride your bicycle with me, you’ll most likely have a good experience. I’ve been leading bike rides since 2013, sometimes three per week. I also teach CyclingSavvy, a skills course that equips riders to […]
Update: On June 13, Charlotte City Council approved changes to eliminate the petition process for traffic-calming requests) Where you live in Charlotte has a big effect on whether neighborhood safety measures like speed humps, stop signs and lower speed limits are installed nearby. Charlotte’s traffic-calming policy has been in place since 1997, and remains “very […]
As Charlotte’s transit system struggles to attract bus riders back post-COVID, officials are considering adding more on-demand options and replacing some low-ridership, fixed-schedule routes with services people could summon when needed. The idea is still in its early stages, but it could eventually lead to replacing some full-sized buses with smaller, nimbler vehicles. It’s part […]
Charlotte-based architect and urban planner Martin Zimmerman talks with Melissa and Chris Bruntlett about their latest book and their family’s first few years living and navigating Delft, a 1,200 year-old city in the Netherlands, mostly by bike, at speeds rarely exceeding ten miles per hour. To the casual tourist, this human-scaled city of 104,000 calls […]
When WFAE, The Charlotte Ledger and the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute launched a joint newsletter last year to cover transit and transportation, we assumed that the main focus would be the 1-cent transit sales tax vote. Well, that vote didn’t happen and the transit plan is in a bit of limbo, but we’ve still found […]
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 within the city are currently made using single-occupant vehicles, transportation staff said at the City […]
March 2022 is arguably when Charlotte and the country turned the corner on the pandemic. With Omicron waning, Charlotte’s major banks brought back their employees, at least on a hybrid schedule. Bank of America returned vaccinated workers on March 1. Wells Fargo came back two weeks later. March is a good baseline for what a […]
The future of transportation has arrived in Charlotte — but the future comes with a few asterisks. This year has already seen a slew of announcements about futuristic transportation options in the Charlotte region (to say nothing of a new robot security guard uptown and bots writing local media stories). It feels like we’re nearing […]
John Holmes III was a budding urbanist in Charlotte, reading books like “Street Fight” and wondering why we built our cities to drive everywhere. A U.S. Marine Corps veteran working at Chick-fil-A, Holmes was trying to reconcile his workplace’s busy drive-thru with his own ideas about building better cities. When he posted his opinion online […]
Charlotte’s $13.5 billion transit and transportation plans might be on hold, but plans for how to build the signature Silver Line light rail are still pushing ahead. Officials from the Charlotte Area Transit System reviewed a new study about how to facilitate transit-oriented development around each of the Silver Line’s 31 planned stops. The 29-mile […]
How do you make a sprawling city that came of age in the automobile era less car-dependent? One approach: Don’t devote so much space to cars. That’s the thinking behind the Joinery, a new, 83-unit apartment complex that’s opening just north of the Parkwood station on the Blue Line light rail. The six-story building has […]