[Note: the following is a draft post, which may be updated during the second week of August 2026]
RTA members,
Thank you to everyone who attended our RTA Brunch this past Thursday, August 7.
It was wonderful to join nearly 300 regional colleagues from business, transportation, and government for our annual gathering.
One of the highlights was our keynote address from Andrew Miller, Ph.D., who offered his perspectives on transportation innovation and on our polycentric market. You can view the slides from his presentation here, and peruse several of his prior articles in a recent RTA blog post.
Andrew’s presentation was an excellent followup to the remarks from several members of our RTA Steering Committee, including RTA chair Sarah Gaskill with FUJIFILM Biotechnologies, Travis Crayton with the Research Triangle Foundation of North Carolina, and past chair Harold Hicks with RTI International. You can view their companion slides here.
After enjoying the presentations from our keynote speaker and Steering Committee leaders, and connecting with several members and partners after the event, I have compiled and suggest the following 10 takeaways and reflections that can help inform the execution of our RTA business plan in concert with our partners.
RTA 2026 Brunch – 10 takeaways
- Our polycentric region – the foundation of our market – requires a commitment to effective, reliable cross-regional connections for economic success.
- Automated driving, in the form of “robotaxis” and privately-owned autonomous vehicles, is not coming, it is here, although it is not equally distributed.
- Congestion will increase, because automation will make driving more attractive, for both more trips and more people.
- We will need to add more freeway lanes and highway capacity as a result.
- Transit can still work, even with the inevitable expansion of automation driving. Transit might even work better as congestion increases due to increased driving, so long as rapid transit is indeed reliable and rapid.
- To ensure reliable connections across the region, we will need dedicated or priority lanes for transit. That can include managed lanes.
- The exchange station makes sense and is essential. If we think about links and nodes, an exchange is the nodal counterpart of a dedicated lane for a transit link.
- Unreliable transit that is stuck in traffic with everyone else, will become less attractive, less utilized, and less supported as automated driving progresses.
- Our region needs to deliver – quickly – on our regional mobility infrastructure investments. The longer projects take, the more uncertain and risky their completion becomes.
- The Research Triangle region needs to present and offer itself as a testbed of automated technology. The industry will benefit, and so will we.
Click here for media coverage from the event: ABC-11, WRAL.
The regional business community remains fully committed to rapidly advancing the region’s mobility future for the prosperity of all.
Let’s get moving,
Joe
Joe Milazzo II, PE
RTA executive director
