A new report on urban mobility
The Texas A&M Transportation Institute recently released its periodic report on urban mobility. When we completed our initial review of the report, we found that our region continued to score quite well.
Among the 47 very large and large urban areas across the US surveyed in the report, Raleigh was essentially tied with Richmond for the lowest annual congestion per commuter, at 42 hours per year, with Durham also having very low congestion values. Our region also had the third-lowest travel time index — which compares peak to free flow travel conditions to give a sense of how severe peak congestion is — with only Memphis and Richmond scoring lower. Read more in this week’s blog.
Upcoming BRT events
The City of Raleigh held an excellent open house earlier this week on the upcoming Southern BRT corridor that will connect Garner and Raleigh. They will hold another event for the Southern BRT corridor on Monday, November 17 from 5 pm – 7 pm at the Peach Road Park and Cultural Center, at 911 Ileagnes Road in Raleigh. The very next day, Tuesday, November 18, from 11:30 am – 12:30 pm, Durham County will hold an online meeting on a new BRT visioning plan for the county. You can join the Durham County meeting via this access link, learn more about the study here, and catch-up on the ongoing Central Durham BRT project here.
Don’t Forget Your Daily 540 Vote
The North Carolina Turnpike Authority (NCTA) is currently in the running for AASHTO’s 2025 People’s Choice Award for the recent opening of the 540 Southern Wake freeway, also known as “Complete 540, Phase 1”. Until Monday November 17th, you can vote once per day for Complete 540 Phase 1 on AASHTO’s website.
If selected, the NCTA will be awarded $10,000 to be donated to a charity or scholarship fund of their choosing. Please consider sharing with your colleagues, clients, and colleagues. Let’s vote early and often to honor and support a great project.
The region has made a targeted, vital investment in its mobility future via accelerated, direct funding of the 540 freeway via toll revenue. We will need more of this going forward — that is, more toll-funded and financed infrastructure — for our growing market. The RTA Regional Leadership Team will be discussing this in more detail later this month.
Thank you, as always, for your continued support of regional business leadership on transportation. Have a great weekend, everyone.
Let’s get moving,
Joe
