Title
Managed Lanes Strategy for Charlotte
Action
Action:
A. Hold a public hearing to receive comments on the managed lanes strategy and the vote of Charlotte’s representative at the next meeting of the Charlotte Regional Transportation Planning Organization,
B. Approve the Transportation and Planning Committee’s recommendations to endorse the managed lanes strategy, and
C. Direct the Charlotte representative’s vote to affirm the current strategy to implement Managed Lanes at the Charlotte Regional Transportation Planning Organization meeting.
Body
Committee Chair:
Vi Lyles
Staff Resource(s):
Danny Pleasant, Transportation
Norm Steinman, Transportation
Explanation
Action A
§ The City Council will receive public comments on the staff report that was presented and approved by the Transportation and Planning Committee, which endorses implementation of managed lanes in Charlotte.
Action B
§ On September 1, 2015, former Mayor Dan Clodfelter referred the topic of managed lanes to the Transportation and Planning (TAP) Committee to specifically discuss how High Occupancy Toll (HOT) Lanes will function in Charlotte.
§ The TAP Committee received presentations related to HOT Lanes on three separate occasions. The presentation topics included:
- How design, operations, and funding decisions are made;
- How these types of projects complement and support land use and transportation goals;
- Roles of the City, North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT), and Charlotte Regional Transportation Planning Organization (CRTPO) in the decision making and planning process, and
- Any policy or procedural matters for full City Council consideration.
§ On January 4, 2016, Charlotte Department of Transportation staff presented their final report and recommendations, as attached, to the TAP Committee for discussion and consideration.
§ The Committee voted 3-2 (Lyles, Autry, and Phipps voted yes; Kinsey and Smith opposed) to recommend the following statements:
- Adding general purpose lanes will not allow the region to keep up with the rapid growth we have experienced in the past, are experiencing now, and will continue to experience in the foreseeable future.
- Adding 1 or 2 general purpose lanes in each direction in Charlotte will provide only temporary relief. The physical space necessary to keep widening freeways is either no longer available in Charlotte or would be extraordinarily costly to purchase and disruptive to surrounding businesses and residents.
- Any additional capacity added to the freeways needs to be sustainable and effective for far longer than 5-15 years.
- We should encourage more express bus service and ridership, as well as more ridesharing trips. The Red Line and Silver Line transit projects will not be operating for many years near either Interstate-77 or U.S. 74, respectively. We also need to use Interstate-485 as a guideway for express buses and vanpools, because no rapid transit line is proposed for that corridor.
- Based on 20 years of actual experience in other cities in the U.S., HOT Lanes should achieve these purposes:
§ Provide reliable travel times based on maintaining operating speeds of at least 45 miles per hour;
§ Allow free access to CATS buses and CATS-sponsored vanpools, and carpools carrying 3 or more persons;
§ Allow free access to emergency responders (police, fire, ambulances);
§ Allow free access to motorcycles (as required by federal law); and
§ Allow access to automobiles with less than 3 passengers and single-axle trucks willing to pay a toll, established using a congestion pricing methodology.
- Going forward, issues involved with HOT Lanes projects will involve making ongoing decisions about who will be eligible to travel in the HOT Lanes, who will or will not have to pay the tolls, what the correlation will be between the tolls charged and the congestion levels in the HOT Lanes and the adjacent General Purpose Lanes, and what hours of operation should be applied to the HOT lanes.
- For these reasons, a more formal agreement outlining how future operational decisions are made should be developed once key decisions are made about the HOT Lanes strategy. These decisions would include:
§ Design,
§ Operations,
§ Eligibility of Use,
§ Enforcement, and
§ Customer Service.
Action C
§ On December 14, 2015, Governor Patrick McCrory asked the CRTPO to vote to reaffirm or reverse the Charlotte metropolitan region’s managed lanes strategy.
§ On January 20, 2016, the CRTPO will vote to reaffirm or reverse the regional managed lanes strategy.
§ Action C will direct Charlotte City Council’s representative on the CRTPO to vote to affirm the Charlotte region’s support of a managed lane strategy at the CRTPO meeting on January 20, 2016.
Implications of Reversing the Strategy
§ If the regional managed lanes strategy is reversed, the following will occur:
- Additional capacity and the ability to provide express transit service along Interstate-77 would be forfeited.
- Financial penalties ranging from $80-$300 million would be owed to the concessionaire.
- As per the Governor’s letter, he anticipates the General Assembly could ask local governments to absorb the costs of the penalties in some manner. This could include reductions to transportation funds, sales taxes, and/or other funding sources.
- The State Board of Transportation might lose confidence in the Charlotte region, and the other managed lanes projects could fail to receive support or funding.
- Alternative plans for additional capacity would be set back many years, effectively resulting in no additional capacity for already congested critical corridors (Interstate-485, U.S. 74 (Independence), and Interstate-77 South), and
- Charlotte would lose the long-term strategy for developing a network of travel lanes that offer reliable travel times along the region’s critical travel corridors.
Background
§ The managed lanes strategy was conceived from a regional, multi-jurisdictional effort that produced three managed lanes studies.
§ The regional managed lanes studies recommended building HOT Lanes in the Interstate-77 North, U.S. 74 (Independence), and Interstate-485 South corridors.
§ In July 2011, the CRTPO (formerly Mecklenburg Union Metropolitan Planning Organization) took action to amend the 2035 Long-Range Transportation Plan, to include projects consistent with the recommendations of the managed lanes studies.
§ In June 2012, May 2013, and April 2014, the CRTPO voted to reaffirm the managed lanes strategy for I-77 North.
§ On August 19, 2015 the CRTPO voted to adopt the 2016-2025 Transportation Investment Plan, which included funds to create a network of HOT Lanes in and around Charlotte.
§ Through the implementation of the State Transportation Improvement Program, NCDOT developed a public/private partnership strategy to advance the Interstate-77 North HOT Lanes project identified in the 2040 Metropolitan Transportation Plan.
§ On June 26, 2014, NCDOT entered into a contract with Interstate-77 Mobility Partners, LLC (Cintra) to design, build, finance, operate, and maintain HOT Lanes along 26 miles of Interstate-77 North from Interstate-277 to just north of Exit 36 in Mooresville.
Attachments
Attachment
Report to Mayor and Charlotte City Council on Implementation of Managed Lanes in Charlotte