Capital Boulevard — February 2026 update
Improvements to Capital Boulevard continue to be the top regional freeway priority of the Regional Transportation Alliance.
As we have noted for several years, accelerating the US 1 / Capital Freeway in northern Wake County will remain our top regional freeway priority until it is fully under construction.
This week the News&Observer had an excellent overview article and accompanying video on the status of the freeway upgrade.
We were quoted and referenced several times in the article:
Converting the road into a six-lane expressway with a speed limit of 65 mph is a top priority for the Regional Transportation Alliance, an arm of the Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce. The alliance supported using tolls to begin construction sooner, as did the Raleigh City Council last May.
But state lawmakers, led by Rep. Mike Schietzelt, a Republican whose district covers parts of northern Wake, moved to block tolling. Schietzelt said community leaders, business owners and residents he spoke with generally opposed the idea.
The House passed a budget bill last May that included a provision that would have prevented the state from turning U.S. 1 into a toll road. The bill didn’t pass the Senate, but the message was clear, said Joe Milazzo, executive director of the Regional Transportation Alliance.
“That amendment clarified a very broadly-held legislative perspective,” Milazzo said at RTA’s annual meeting last month.
….
Construction of the road between I-540 and Burlington Mills Road is expected to start in 2031, followed by the northern sections a couple of years later.
Once construction begins, NCDOT estimates it will take six years to complete the highway and access roads.
Milazzo said the Regional Transportation Alliance hasn’t given up on finding ways to get the highway built sooner.
“RTA is looking for other solutions with key partners and key elected leaders,” he said. “Innovative funding, perhaps innovative financing or project delivery to accelerate this project. More to come on that.”
And this is absolutely correct. The regional business community is looking at a variety of acceleration options. Could there be a loan solution, an innovative project delivery option, a combination, or another method? We shall see, and shall continue to push forward, because relief is essential, and accelerated construction means both sooner relief and guaranteed results.
NCDOT has been an outstanding partner in their efforts to find ways to keep this project moving, and ideally faster. They are accelerating advanced right-of-way acquisition and the development of a parallel utility corridor. As we noted in an RTA blog update last fall, while the prior toll conversation has ended, it has provided necessary focus on the importance of the roadway across the public and private sectors.
We spoke with NCDOT leadership earlier this month about the importance of the corridor, and in March we expect to have several conversations about potential ways to move this project forward. Thank you to our members and partners for their openness, ideas, and sense of purpose for this vital multimodal freeway improvement.
Let’s get moving,
Joe Milazzo II, PE
RTA executive director
RTA is the voice of the regional business community on transportation
