Still a ways to go to meet transportation needs

For Charlotte's business community – and a number of residents – the area's biggest transportation goal is summed up by the phrase: “Close the Loop.”

That phrase, worn on buttons minted by the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce, refers to a five-mile section of Interstate 485 in northeast Mecklenburg. When built, Charlotte's outerbelt will be finished, and the Queen City won't have to complain it's the largest city in the nation without a loop.

Gov. Bev Perdue promised in February that the N.C. Department of Transportation would start construction on that last piece of outerbelt by the end of the year. Construction wasn't supposed to start until 2015.

But reality appears different. If Charlotte wants its outerbelt finished early, it will likely have to sacrifice another project scheduled for the next year or two, such as the widening of Interstate 85 in Cabarrus County or the reworking of Independence Boulevard into an expressway.

Charlotte-area transportation officials are debating whether to make such a choice.

The other major Charlotte highway bottlenecks aren't scheduled to be improved for several years. One reason is that the N.C. Department of Transportation is short on cash, due to falling revenues from the gas tax and a tax on the purchase on new cars.

The busiest stretch of expressway in the state is I-485, from South Boulevard to Johnston Road, in south Charlotte. That section of highway carries 120,000 cars daily, with only four lanes total. The DOT isn't scheduled to widen that section until 2015.

In north Mecklenburg, a commute on Interstate 77 can be grueling. That section of highway also has only four total lanes north of the outerbelt. There is no money budgeted to widen it, though a developer planning a mixed-use project in Cornelius has proposed building an extra lane on I-77 and having the state paying the money back later. It's unclear if that plan will come to fruition.

The money crunch that's impacted the completion of I-485 has impacted other transportation plans.

The Charlotte Area Transit System, which opened its first light-rail line in 2007, had planned to build two more rail lines in the next five years and a streetcar by the end of next decade.

But the severe recession has cut into the transit system's sales tax revenues, and the cost of building the lines has increased. As a result, CATS will be able to build one train line early in the next decade. The wait for a second line could be as long as 2023.

CATS is considering building either an 11-mile extension of the Lynx Blue Line to University City or commuter rail line to the Lake Norman towns of Mooresville, Davidson, Cornelius and Huntersville.

The city of Charlotte has taken over the streetcar project from CATS. This summer, City Council approved spending $8 million for engineering work on the streetcar, which would run from Beatties Ford Road to Eastland Mall, via uptown. The total cost of the street could be as high as $500 million. The city doesn't know yet how it will pay for the project.

While new big-ticket transit projects are far off, newcomers can take advantage of Charlotte's transit, which is large for a city its size. In addition to the light-rail line, which handles 15,000 passenger trips, CATS offers a number of express buses. These routes are targeted towards commuters, with few stops and more comfortable seats than regular buses.

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