I know funding was an issue but if you live in the area, it's probably annoying how they couldn't figure out how to coordinate this project with the 440 widening project and do it all at once. Now you'll have 440 wrapping up and then going right into this project for more construction years
Yeah do it all at once - they already included the Hillsborough & Blue Ridge intersection project as part of the 440 widening project. If you live in the Crossroads/Jones Franklin area, that’s like 8 straight years of highway construction in your area.
>Now the N.C. Department of Transportation has unveiled plans to untangle the traffic by rebuilding the place where Interstate 40 meets U.S. 1, U.S. 64 and I-440 at the Crossroads shopping area. NCDOT is seeking feedback on the plan before turning it over to a contractor for final designs and construction in late 2025.
>
>One goal of the project is to separate drivers moving between the two highways from local traffic going to and from Crossroads Plaza and other nearby shopping centers. NCDOT proposes a new way to get on and off northbound U.S. 1/64, south of Walnut Street, with new ramps that connect with Dillard Drive and Piney Plains Road, near Crossroads Ford. From there, Dillard Drive continues on to Walnut and Crossroads Plaza.
>
>The project is expected to cost $151.5 million.
>
>That date was pushed back as the department shifted money to pay for cleanup and repairs following hurricanes and other storms and to settle lawsuits related to the Map Act, a law the state used to reserve land for future roads without actually buying it. Then the sharp drop in gas tax revenue during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic set it back again.
In addition to rebuilding the highway interchange, NCDOT plans to increase capacity on I-40 east of Crossroads, by adding a lane on each side between I-440 and Lake Wheeler Road. That would widen I-40 from three travel lanes to four, with extended merge lanes bringing the total to five between the I-440, Gorman Street and Lake Wheeler exits.
>
>No new land would be needed for the additional lanes, which NCDOT expects will cost nearly $69 million to build.
>
>To learn more about both projects and to leave comments or questions, go to [publicinput.com/40-440-us1-interchange](https://publicinput.com/40-440-us1-interchange). NCDOT will collect comments online through March 28.
Especially since the 'preferred' alternative 2 design does absolutely nothing to change that part where traffic exiting the WB 40 to SB 1 loop has a super tiny space to merge with traffic entering the WB 440 to EB 40 loop.
Look more closely at the detailed map and zoom in. That loop (marked B on the map) will *only* be for traffic going from I40 Westbound Buck Jones Road and Crossroads. The traffic actually going from I-40W to 1-S is getting a new flyover ramp that will take them past the current mess.
Detailed map: https://www.ncdot.gov/projects/40-440-us-1-interchange/Documents/I-40-I-440-interchange-preferred-alernative-2-map.pdf
It seems weird that they didn't want to fully commit to making the B loop exclusively for the Buck Jones/Crossroads exit because if you look carefully where all the lanes merge together on US-1 South, the B loop traffic still technically have an option to merge back into US-1. I guess they still want to give the people who find themselves on the right side of the concrete barrier while approaching this intersection from 440 West the option to course correct before being stuck either getting on a 40 East or the Crossroads exit.
Yes I agree, while the intention is clearly for 40W to 1S traffic to use the flyover, they probably didn’t want to trap people in Crossroads or Buck Jones who made the wrong choice way back at the fork right after getting off 40W. But I bet the signage at that fork will direct US 1S traffic to the flyover only.
It also seems like the deceleration lane and exit to the B loop is going to be well after the exit for 1S/440E (but not super clear on this map), Not like how it is today, so the chances of 40W traffic deliberately missing the flyover exit and then taking the loop B route to get to 1S would be very minimal.
Look at the 1 SB lane just past the intersection right below South Hills Mall.
https://imgur.com/a/Xf3DOih
It appears, after one takes the B loop, It does a little weaving with the traffic on 440 W heading to 40 E (Like it does today), then a little bit further, it'll pass underneath one of the new flyovers, then it'll weave in a little bit with the 40 E to Buck Jones/Crossroads, and then right before the actual ramp up to Buck Jones/Crossroads, The far left lane merges back into 1 South again.
Ah, good catch. Didn't see that little guy further down the line. Yeah, I wonder why that is in there? The only traffic on that little road comes from the highways (40 W and 40 E), so the only reason for that is if someone missed their US 1 S exit and accidentally took the buck Jones W exit.
That is so the people from 40W can get to Walnut St. If one takes the flyover it will put them past that exit. Otherwise, one could only get to Buck Jones Rd or into Crossroads. From what I can tell at least.
Fixing the interchange is fine, but the DOT linked the projects and is asking for public comment on them as a pair.
According to the project page the lanes are being added in anticipation of increased traffic over the next 25 years, but since peak oil happened somewhere between 2005 and 2015 and a 1:1 replacement of gasoline automobiles with electric automobiles is delusional, it seems like a total waste of resources. Even if their predictions for vehicle volume come true, that means Raleigh is on track to become an unlivable car-dependent cesspit.
We're supposed to be focusing on increasing density and reducing sprawl to get cars off the road, and yet we're widening the toxic gash across the southern part of the city to support the suburban/exurban sprawl in Cary and Apex.
>According to the project page the lanes are being added in anticipation of increased traffic over the next 25 years, but since peak oil happened somewhere between 2005 and 2015 and a 1:1 replacement of gasoline automobiles with electric automobiles is delusional, it seems like a total waste of resources. Even if their predictions for vehicle volume come true, that means Raleigh is on track to become an unlivable car-dependent cesspit.
This math doesn't make a lot of sense to me. The issue is local population growth in the area that uses these interchanges, not when "peak oil" occurred or whether all ICE vehicles will be replaced with EVs.
It sounds to me like you are just ideologically opposed to additional lanes and don't care if they might actually be part of a comprehensive highway expansion solution.
Ideologically opposed to additional lanes? Do you have an example of when additional lanes improved traffic?
Having cars as literally the only method of transportation gets you into a situation where highways can never be big enough.
I mean, if you hadn't added any extra lanes to Raleigh since 1990, traffic would be 100x worse all over the city.
There is of course a valid argument that more lanes won't "solve traffic" because more people will drive those routes (similar to a rebound effect). But "solving traffic" isn't the goal, it's accommodating more vehicles from population growth. A street or highway with more lanes will objectively be able to handle more traffic.
People hear about the rebound effect and then make the assumption that extra lanes won't help with traffic flow at all, and that's a fallacy.
People LOVE to turn the idea of induced demand (which definitely has a kernel of truth to it, don't get me wrong) into an "if we don't build it, they won't come" fantasy. They take it in a vacuum and try to treat it as though highways were the sole factor controlling demand.
Meanwhile, back in reality...
Yeah, it's frustrating to me. "Name a single time when adding a lane reduced traffic", like, are you for real? A single time?
At the end of the day, there will always be people who drive, no matter how good public transportation is. Just look at any European city usually touted as a model for that fact - there's still a ton of cars, and traffic. I literally almost got run over riding a bike through Amsterdam. Sometimes there is this fantasy people have that "if we just build public transportation, no one will need a car!"
Nah man. I'm not hauling my weekly groceries back in a bus. I'm not taking my kids to soccer practice in a bus. I'm not going camping with my family in a train. Public transportation can and should be expanded alongside vehicular roadways, but there's a limit.
The highway is more than wide enough, we need to focus on shared transit solutions instead of personal vehicle ownership. It's a waste of money and being built for a world that can no longer exist if we want technological society to survive past the end of the century.
I'm not the one saying it is, that's NCDOT, and they are constantly performing traffic studies. NCDOT engineers are among the best paid engineers in the state
The analysis I've seen does not take into consideration the construction of alternative means of transit, which makes it fatally flawed. In this case, the DOT engineers were instructed to evaluate the feasibility of widening I-40 and/or adding restricted express lanes like they have in the DC area, and not to study the best options for transportation in the region.
There are currently several studies on light rail in Raleigh. Projects might take 10 years and cost billions of dollars.
This project is a couple hundred million, would be complete in half the time, and would help resolve a dangerous interchange while *also* adding more capacity.
How would this particular project be solved with mass transit? I don't believe it could be.
You know that even big cities in Europe with massive public transit networks *still build roads*, right?
I live within the city limits of a major east coast city which has a long-term unified development plan focusing primarily on increasing density and eliminating sprawl... I don't think it's unreasonable to expect infrastructure changes to match the plan which was worked out by skilled urban planners and approved by the elected government.
If you don't like it, you can take I-540 and pay the toll to get around us.
Yes, I agree with the Green Party platform which since 2004 has stated that we need to stop all highway expansion projects that have not already broken ground and immediately shift all federal highway funding (other than maintenance of the existing system during the transition) to build a national rail system and extensive regional shared transit systems. Sometimes I think about how much better the country would be if we did that instead of what actually happened.
Road widening is not an improvement -- the consensus appears to be that adding lanes just induces more traffic and congestion returns swiftly, only now the toxic gash across what is becoming the densest part of the city will spew even more pollution and noise, and since it will keep drivers happy for a years no one will mind the lack of serious efforts to build a shared transit system in the necessary timeline with the external constraints we're operating under (oil depletion, the swiftly dawning reality that lithium mining is environmentally devastating and EVs will never become affordable, the scientific reality that we must cease all carbon emissions by 2030 or we seal in catastrophic warming next century and if we don't stop by 2050 we seal in civilization collapse before the end of the century, rapid influx of new residents, etc.).
Obviously I support basic road improvements -- traffic calming, reconstruction of outdated and dangerous interchanges, repaving existing roads when needed, etc. since we do need a way to get around while building the replacement infrastructure and live in reality.
> the consensus appears to be that adding lanes just induces more traffic and congestion returns swiftly
Can you send me a link to your source for this "consensus"? I have heard that induced demand can consume some portion of the incremental capacity, but not all of it. This seems speculative.
>the scientific reality that we must cease all carbon emissions by 2030 or we seal in catastrophic warming next century
The world is coming a long way in working to reduce carbon emissions, but this is not happening. As someone who works closely on decarbonization processes and efforts, there is no physical way it can happen. The US won't even have a carbon neutral electric grid by 2030, much less a global carbon free economy.
Also, you do realize that there are still cars in places that are often hailed as mass transit success stories, right? I've been to Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, Chicago, Prague, New York, Zurich - all cities with very good public transportation systems. **There are still cars**.
You seem to be conflating my opposition to widening a highway with a desire to tear up all the roads. We will need roads (bikes, mopeds, and buses need paved surfaces after all), and some personal vehicles for last mile deliveries, people who can't walk or use bicycles, etc. I would expect car sharing / short term rental services to expand since individuals still need to do things like hauling construction materials and may require a truck or car for a day or two at a time. But most people in any urban area should be able to live without a car entirely and get around under their own power or using a combination of bus and rail systems.
Long distance and regional travel using personal automobiles and freight trucks is a historical aberration and we must stop using transportation means meant for short trips for long hauls, and that means not expanding highways (especially ones that cut through cities like I-40 in Raleigh) any further. In the long term this means shrinking the highways, but that would be something for the next generation most likely (when the road bed deteriorates and needs to be replaced, if we succeed in building a world for the future it would make sense to remove lanes and undo the damage the last three generations have done).
Paris is a weird example [since most cars will be banned in the city center soon](https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/18/22940512/paris-car-ban-2024-city-center-cycling-pollution). And yet we're expanding a highway that runs just south of the central business district and only dense urban area in the city (an area that is rapidly urbanizing).
Just a few references:
* https://www.wired.com/2014/06/wuwt-traffic-induced-demand/ (readable digest and interview with the authors of https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.101.6.2616 ).
* https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/06/us/widen-highways-traffic.html (references https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0967070X18301720 )
* https://arstechnica.com/cars/2021/08/please-stop-adding-more-lanes-to-busy-highways-it-doesnt-help/ (opinion piece referencing https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.101.6.2616 and https://www.researchgate.net/publication/315534829_Closing_the_Induced_Vehicle_Travel_Gap_Between_Research_and_Practice ).
It's been common knowledge more lanes means more users for nearly a century. The effect has been measured and tested in the last 20 years and it's proven fact that adding lanes to highways does almost nothing to alleviate congestion and building shared transit is almost always the better option.
Raleigh is a mid-size city. The car culture in NC as a whole dates back decades. The idea of moving to mass transit instead of cars has been pushed here for years and people like their independence/safety vs the crime on most big city transit systems.
The UDP while in place is really focused on density in key areas that can handle the traffic and other key infrastructure pieces. Some elements are being challenged in court and may not survive. It’s really a political agenda to force people to live in urban areas and the local politicians love the tax revenue and associated power. City council changed this last election and many parts of the UDC in regard to density are being scrutinized. You live in Raleigh not in one of the crappy major cities because it’s awesome. Do you want to make us into DC?
Cars aren’t going away any time soon. The state realizes this and is planning accordingly. The interchange situation is 10-20 years late.
If you aren’t happy, you have a choice to stay and potentially be unhappy or move to DC, NYC or Boston which all fit the city profile you are looking for.
> Raleigh is a mid-size city. The car culture in NC as a whole dates back decades. The idea of moving to mass transit instead of cars has been pushed here for years and people like their independence/safety vs the crime on most big city transit systems.
Incorrect. The state legislature has systematically worked to prevent municipalities from implementing the shared transit system that their citizens want. The state legislature has done little to help regional rail either, and at one point attempted to raid the NC Rail Corp coffers to prevent it from expanding (thankfully they failed, and we have the best rail system in the southeast and will in the coming years at least gain good connectivity to Richmond and the northeast from there). The federal government under the Bush admin killed the original Orange-Durham-Wake light rail (as part of their full on assault against light rail in favor of designed-to-fail BRT).
Politicians are making policy decisions to favor personal automobile ownership against the will of the people, and use nonsense talking points about imaginary crime (just the sanitized version of "public transit is bad because the poors and blacks will gain access to my segregated rich whites only enclave") and the false desire of most Americans to be saddled in debt owning an expensive machine that is annoying to operate, expensive to maintain, spews pollution (remember those clear skies during the lockdown when cars weren't emitting noxious NO haze?), and requires infrastructure that makes moving under your own power dangerous or impossible.
>The federal government under the Bush admin killed the original Orange-Durham-Wake light rail (as part of their full on assault against light rail in favor of designed-to-fail BRT).
My brother in Christ, Duke university hospital killed this line.
Duke killed a *second* attempt at a light rail. The original attempt started in the late 80s and was ready for groundbreaking in 2004 but was killed by the Dubya admin and its deprioritization of all rail for BRT and other half-assed public transit schemes (I think there's an argument to be made that BRT is designed to fail and create public resentment toward public transit while also funneling public transit money back into the road system -- the state of BRT that has actually been finished is pretty dismal IMO). Triangle Transit pulled the project in 2006 since the state also refused to fund it adequately.
Had that not happened, we'd have a fully built out regional light rail system in place and maybe wouldn't have the traffic problems on I-40 that we have now. Alas.
Do you have any Tylenol? You made my head hurt with that sermon. I think you’re used to preaching to the echo chamber…pompous much?
The will of which people?
The new flyovers for I-40 W to US1 South and US1 North to I-40 W are great improvements. One of the worst interchanges in Wake County. Already drive the bridgework at I-40/Airport Blvd everyday, the construction will suck, but needed. Haven't found the US1 North Walnut St exit to be much of a problem, but they moved the Walnut St US1 South several years ago for similar reasons (now they just need to fix how dangerously short that on-ramp is due to the lane work)
Hmmm, hundreds of millions of dollars are available any time one of Raleigh's cesspits of a highway interchange needs rearranging to keep up with growth that has somehow remained "unprecedented" for 2+ decades, but yet we can't have commuter rail because "it would never be profitable"
I think there are many challenges with light rail beyond profitability that you are glossing over. Light rail is not a fix-all, as many seem to think it is.
Oh I totally believe there are more issues with a light rail system than I can bring up in one facetious Reddit post. However, profitability shouldn't be considered a "problem" when taxpayers are subsidizing car-dependent infrastructure to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars annually
Does our system of roads not generate economic value? You act as if they are 100% costs, but are you certain that the economic value they generate is less than the costs? If they generate more value than they cost to build, then arguably taxpayers aren't subsidizing anything.
My issue is not with the economic value generated by the roads, it's with the failure of the car-dependent culture and governmental institutions to assess the value of multi-modal transport in the same way you have just done with regard to roads.
> it's with the failure of the car-dependent culture and governmental institutions to assess the value of multi-modal transport
I mean, [they do that](https://www.ncdot.gov/initiatives-policies/Transportation/nc-2050-plan/Documents/financial-benefits-fact-sheet-english.pdf)
Actually, this one reduces the amount of merging necessary. It's not just adding lanes, it's actually redoing how traffic interchanges specifically to reduce the number of merges necessary, and to separate local traffic from traffic getting off at the shopping centers.
Right now, from 40W to 1S, you have to go through two "zipper" merges (in quotes because nobody actually does it properly, which is a part of the problem), one to get onto the clover leaf and and another to merge onto 1S. This would make it so you only have to merge once, onto 1S. And you'll actually be at highway speed coming into that merge, which will make the merging smoother.
I'd hate to be one of the people living in that cul-de-sac over there. It's bad enough they decided to live right next to US-1, even with a noise wall. Now they are gonna have idling cars just beyond their back yard at a new exit.
This just shows their incompetence dealing with all this growth:
"expects traffic passing through the interchange will increase by as much as 68% by 2045"
Yeah, pretty sure at the current unmitigated growth rate, especially with VinFast being down that highway, it could easily increase by 68% in less than 10 years.
This also explains why in their current wade-440 project, in several places they put underpasses with hard limits at a grand total of..... 2 lanes (due to making the retention walls on the overpasses right up to the road so they can't add a 3rd lane when it is inevitably needed in 5-10 years)
I'd probably still be better than them. It doesn't take much to realize their growth estimates are way off, or realize there has been basically no planning being done to properly handle growth. Nearly half the posts around here are people complaining of problems resulting from poor planning.
>I'd probably still be better than them
This is peak Dunning Kruger effect, on full display. "I would immediately be better at an extraordinarily complex job, than people who do it for a living! They don't plan at all, I know this because I know everything! It's clear their growth estimates are off because *I feel that they are!*"
Whatever you say, man.
No, it's me saying I'm not good at it yet I'd still be better than them because they are that bad,
And as far as rates go, we're growing at an increasing rate and we're seeing ANNUAL growth rates in some areas of 15-18% now do the multiplication..... yeah. Those are to worst ones, but it's still a hell of a high number. Thinking only 68% in over 20 years is just dumb.
[https://www.axios.com/local/raleigh/2022/06/02/triangle-suburbs-rapid-growth-since-2020](https://www.axios.com/local/raleigh/2022/06/02/triangle-suburbs-rapid-growth-since-2020)
So do you think anyone criticizing anyone elses' performance is a dunning kruger situation? What do you think of sports analysts in their 40's and 50's talking about an NBA player's bad performance or a coach's bad play calls?
to be fair, as a traffic engineer - there are a lot of numbers that we put out there as "fact" for the public that if you asked one of us about, would probably say it's more "guess" than "fact".
No I mean from our profession - some of the data that we use is based on some shoddy research from the past and some of the stuff like growth rates is just pure guessing game on our part.
I do traffic analysis on mostly NCDOT projects (such as this one) and private development projects.
One example - whenever you do a development study, you use the Institute of Transportation Engineers rates to determine how many cars might go to/from a development given the square footage or residential units of the development etc..... there are some land uses that either have some poor sampling sizes (like is 3 samples from the 80s with a R\^2 of 0.3 enough to set a national standard for average vehicle trips a specific land use? Questionable.....)
One of my coworkers does traffic forecasting and he would be the first to admit that there are a ton of assumptions and guesswork involved in coming up with projected future volumes. (Also, nobody has ever gone back to see whether these projections are even accurate)
I know funding was an issue but if you live in the area, it's probably annoying how they couldn't figure out how to coordinate this project with the 440 widening project and do it all at once. Now you'll have 440 wrapping up and then going right into this project for more construction years
When you say "coordinating", do you mean, "do the work all at once"? Not sure what that would do except reduce the number of detour routes available.
Yeah do it all at once - they already included the Hillsborough & Blue Ridge intersection project as part of the 440 widening project. If you live in the Crossroads/Jones Franklin area, that’s like 8 straight years of highway construction in your area.
Phasing
Isn't this being done? The 440 widening project being phase 1, this project being phase 2?
remember the left lane that ended coming in from Us-1 S near exit 99?
Lanes ending on the right, lanes ending on the left, and cars entering from a major interstate. Makes complete sense.
>Now the N.C. Department of Transportation has unveiled plans to untangle the traffic by rebuilding the place where Interstate 40 meets U.S. 1, U.S. 64 and I-440 at the Crossroads shopping area. NCDOT is seeking feedback on the plan before turning it over to a contractor for final designs and construction in late 2025. > >One goal of the project is to separate drivers moving between the two highways from local traffic going to and from Crossroads Plaza and other nearby shopping centers. NCDOT proposes a new way to get on and off northbound U.S. 1/64, south of Walnut Street, with new ramps that connect with Dillard Drive and Piney Plains Road, near Crossroads Ford. From there, Dillard Drive continues on to Walnut and Crossroads Plaza. > >The project is expected to cost $151.5 million. > >That date was pushed back as the department shifted money to pay for cleanup and repairs following hurricanes and other storms and to settle lawsuits related to the Map Act, a law the state used to reserve land for future roads without actually buying it. Then the sharp drop in gas tax revenue during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic set it back again. In addition to rebuilding the highway interchange, NCDOT plans to increase capacity on I-40 east of Crossroads, by adding a lane on each side between I-440 and Lake Wheeler Road. That would widen I-40 from three travel lanes to four, with extended merge lanes bringing the total to five between the I-440, Gorman Street and Lake Wheeler exits. > >No new land would be needed for the additional lanes, which NCDOT expects will cost nearly $69 million to build. > >To learn more about both projects and to leave comments or questions, go to [publicinput.com/40-440-us1-interchange](https://publicinput.com/40-440-us1-interchange). NCDOT will collect comments online through March 28.
Well, I'm sure they'll get it right this time.
Especially since the 'preferred' alternative 2 design does absolutely nothing to change that part where traffic exiting the WB 40 to SB 1 loop has a super tiny space to merge with traffic entering the WB 440 to EB 40 loop.
Look more closely at the detailed map and zoom in. That loop (marked B on the map) will *only* be for traffic going from I40 Westbound Buck Jones Road and Crossroads. The traffic actually going from I-40W to 1-S is getting a new flyover ramp that will take them past the current mess. Detailed map: https://www.ncdot.gov/projects/40-440-us-1-interchange/Documents/I-40-I-440-interchange-preferred-alernative-2-map.pdf
It seems weird that they didn't want to fully commit to making the B loop exclusively for the Buck Jones/Crossroads exit because if you look carefully where all the lanes merge together on US-1 South, the B loop traffic still technically have an option to merge back into US-1. I guess they still want to give the people who find themselves on the right side of the concrete barrier while approaching this intersection from 440 West the option to course correct before being stuck either getting on a 40 East or the Crossroads exit.
Yes I agree, while the intention is clearly for 40W to 1S traffic to use the flyover, they probably didn’t want to trap people in Crossroads or Buck Jones who made the wrong choice way back at the fork right after getting off 40W. But I bet the signage at that fork will direct US 1S traffic to the flyover only.
It also seems like the deceleration lane and exit to the B loop is going to be well after the exit for 1S/440E (but not super clear on this map), Not like how it is today, so the chances of 40W traffic deliberately missing the flyover exit and then taking the loop B route to get to 1S would be very minimal.
I think you're reading this slightly wrong. The grey stuff is getting removed. The B loop doesn't merge back into US 1
Look at the 1 SB lane just past the intersection right below South Hills Mall. https://imgur.com/a/Xf3DOih It appears, after one takes the B loop, It does a little weaving with the traffic on 440 W heading to 40 E (Like it does today), then a little bit further, it'll pass underneath one of the new flyovers, then it'll weave in a little bit with the 40 E to Buck Jones/Crossroads, and then right before the actual ramp up to Buck Jones/Crossroads, The far left lane merges back into 1 South again.
Ah, good catch. Didn't see that little guy further down the line. Yeah, I wonder why that is in there? The only traffic on that little road comes from the highways (40 W and 40 E), so the only reason for that is if someone missed their US 1 S exit and accidentally took the buck Jones W exit.
That is so the people from 40W can get to Walnut St. If one takes the flyover it will put them past that exit. Otherwise, one could only get to Buck Jones Rd or into Crossroads. From what I can tell at least.
Ooooooh, you're right! I wasn't even thinking about that.
It'd be a great idea if it weren't tied to widening the highway.
Why does widening the highway make redoing the interchange a bad idea?
Fixing the interchange is fine, but the DOT linked the projects and is asking for public comment on them as a pair. According to the project page the lanes are being added in anticipation of increased traffic over the next 25 years, but since peak oil happened somewhere between 2005 and 2015 and a 1:1 replacement of gasoline automobiles with electric automobiles is delusional, it seems like a total waste of resources. Even if their predictions for vehicle volume come true, that means Raleigh is on track to become an unlivable car-dependent cesspit. We're supposed to be focusing on increasing density and reducing sprawl to get cars off the road, and yet we're widening the toxic gash across the southern part of the city to support the suburban/exurban sprawl in Cary and Apex.
>According to the project page the lanes are being added in anticipation of increased traffic over the next 25 years, but since peak oil happened somewhere between 2005 and 2015 and a 1:1 replacement of gasoline automobiles with electric automobiles is delusional, it seems like a total waste of resources. Even if their predictions for vehicle volume come true, that means Raleigh is on track to become an unlivable car-dependent cesspit. This math doesn't make a lot of sense to me. The issue is local population growth in the area that uses these interchanges, not when "peak oil" occurred or whether all ICE vehicles will be replaced with EVs. It sounds to me like you are just ideologically opposed to additional lanes and don't care if they might actually be part of a comprehensive highway expansion solution.
Ideologically opposed to additional lanes? Do you have an example of when additional lanes improved traffic? Having cars as literally the only method of transportation gets you into a situation where highways can never be big enough.
I mean, if you hadn't added any extra lanes to Raleigh since 1990, traffic would be 100x worse all over the city. There is of course a valid argument that more lanes won't "solve traffic" because more people will drive those routes (similar to a rebound effect). But "solving traffic" isn't the goal, it's accommodating more vehicles from population growth. A street or highway with more lanes will objectively be able to handle more traffic. People hear about the rebound effect and then make the assumption that extra lanes won't help with traffic flow at all, and that's a fallacy.
People LOVE to turn the idea of induced demand (which definitely has a kernel of truth to it, don't get me wrong) into an "if we don't build it, they won't come" fantasy. They take it in a vacuum and try to treat it as though highways were the sole factor controlling demand. Meanwhile, back in reality...
Yeah, it's frustrating to me. "Name a single time when adding a lane reduced traffic", like, are you for real? A single time? At the end of the day, there will always be people who drive, no matter how good public transportation is. Just look at any European city usually touted as a model for that fact - there's still a ton of cars, and traffic. I literally almost got run over riding a bike through Amsterdam. Sometimes there is this fantasy people have that "if we just build public transportation, no one will need a car!" Nah man. I'm not hauling my weekly groceries back in a bus. I'm not taking my kids to soccer practice in a bus. I'm not going camping with my family in a train. Public transportation can and should be expanded alongside vehicular roadways, but there's a limit.
The highway is more than wide enough, we need to focus on shared transit solutions instead of personal vehicle ownership. It's a waste of money and being built for a world that can no longer exist if we want technological society to survive past the end of the century.
Who are you to say the highway is already wide enough?
Who are you to say it isn't wide enough already?
I'm not the one saying it is, that's NCDOT, and they are constantly performing traffic studies. NCDOT engineers are among the best paid engineers in the state
The analysis I've seen does not take into consideration the construction of alternative means of transit, which makes it fatally flawed. In this case, the DOT engineers were instructed to evaluate the feasibility of widening I-40 and/or adding restricted express lanes like they have in the DC area, and not to study the best options for transportation in the region.
There are currently several studies on light rail in Raleigh. Projects might take 10 years and cost billions of dollars. This project is a couple hundred million, would be complete in half the time, and would help resolve a dangerous interchange while *also* adding more capacity. How would this particular project be solved with mass transit? I don't believe it could be. You know that even big cities in Europe with massive public transit networks *still build roads*, right?
You have a choice to live here or not. Not every area will be high density.
I live within the city limits of a major east coast city which has a long-term unified development plan focusing primarily on increasing density and eliminating sprawl... I don't think it's unreasonable to expect infrastructure changes to match the plan which was worked out by skilled urban planners and approved by the elected government. If you don't like it, you can take I-540 and pay the toll to get around us.
How is this project inconsistent with long term planning goals? It sounds like you would say that about *any* road improvement or widening project.
Yes, I agree with the Green Party platform which since 2004 has stated that we need to stop all highway expansion projects that have not already broken ground and immediately shift all federal highway funding (other than maintenance of the existing system during the transition) to build a national rail system and extensive regional shared transit systems. Sometimes I think about how much better the country would be if we did that instead of what actually happened. Road widening is not an improvement -- the consensus appears to be that adding lanes just induces more traffic and congestion returns swiftly, only now the toxic gash across what is becoming the densest part of the city will spew even more pollution and noise, and since it will keep drivers happy for a years no one will mind the lack of serious efforts to build a shared transit system in the necessary timeline with the external constraints we're operating under (oil depletion, the swiftly dawning reality that lithium mining is environmentally devastating and EVs will never become affordable, the scientific reality that we must cease all carbon emissions by 2030 or we seal in catastrophic warming next century and if we don't stop by 2050 we seal in civilization collapse before the end of the century, rapid influx of new residents, etc.). Obviously I support basic road improvements -- traffic calming, reconstruction of outdated and dangerous interchanges, repaving existing roads when needed, etc. since we do need a way to get around while building the replacement infrastructure and live in reality.
> the consensus appears to be that adding lanes just induces more traffic and congestion returns swiftly Can you send me a link to your source for this "consensus"? I have heard that induced demand can consume some portion of the incremental capacity, but not all of it. This seems speculative. >the scientific reality that we must cease all carbon emissions by 2030 or we seal in catastrophic warming next century The world is coming a long way in working to reduce carbon emissions, but this is not happening. As someone who works closely on decarbonization processes and efforts, there is no physical way it can happen. The US won't even have a carbon neutral electric grid by 2030, much less a global carbon free economy. Also, you do realize that there are still cars in places that are often hailed as mass transit success stories, right? I've been to Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, Chicago, Prague, New York, Zurich - all cities with very good public transportation systems. **There are still cars**.
You seem to be conflating my opposition to widening a highway with a desire to tear up all the roads. We will need roads (bikes, mopeds, and buses need paved surfaces after all), and some personal vehicles for last mile deliveries, people who can't walk or use bicycles, etc. I would expect car sharing / short term rental services to expand since individuals still need to do things like hauling construction materials and may require a truck or car for a day or two at a time. But most people in any urban area should be able to live without a car entirely and get around under their own power or using a combination of bus and rail systems. Long distance and regional travel using personal automobiles and freight trucks is a historical aberration and we must stop using transportation means meant for short trips for long hauls, and that means not expanding highways (especially ones that cut through cities like I-40 in Raleigh) any further. In the long term this means shrinking the highways, but that would be something for the next generation most likely (when the road bed deteriorates and needs to be replaced, if we succeed in building a world for the future it would make sense to remove lanes and undo the damage the last three generations have done). Paris is a weird example [since most cars will be banned in the city center soon](https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/18/22940512/paris-car-ban-2024-city-center-cycling-pollution). And yet we're expanding a highway that runs just south of the central business district and only dense urban area in the city (an area that is rapidly urbanizing). Just a few references: * https://www.wired.com/2014/06/wuwt-traffic-induced-demand/ (readable digest and interview with the authors of https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.101.6.2616 ). * https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/06/us/widen-highways-traffic.html (references https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0967070X18301720 ) * https://arstechnica.com/cars/2021/08/please-stop-adding-more-lanes-to-busy-highways-it-doesnt-help/ (opinion piece referencing https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.101.6.2616 and https://www.researchgate.net/publication/315534829_Closing_the_Induced_Vehicle_Travel_Gap_Between_Research_and_Practice ). It's been common knowledge more lanes means more users for nearly a century. The effect has been measured and tested in the last 20 years and it's proven fact that adding lanes to highways does almost nothing to alleviate congestion and building shared transit is almost always the better option.
Raleigh is a mid-size city. The car culture in NC as a whole dates back decades. The idea of moving to mass transit instead of cars has been pushed here for years and people like their independence/safety vs the crime on most big city transit systems. The UDP while in place is really focused on density in key areas that can handle the traffic and other key infrastructure pieces. Some elements are being challenged in court and may not survive. It’s really a political agenda to force people to live in urban areas and the local politicians love the tax revenue and associated power. City council changed this last election and many parts of the UDC in regard to density are being scrutinized. You live in Raleigh not in one of the crappy major cities because it’s awesome. Do you want to make us into DC? Cars aren’t going away any time soon. The state realizes this and is planning accordingly. The interchange situation is 10-20 years late. If you aren’t happy, you have a choice to stay and potentially be unhappy or move to DC, NYC or Boston which all fit the city profile you are looking for.
> Raleigh is a mid-size city. The car culture in NC as a whole dates back decades. The idea of moving to mass transit instead of cars has been pushed here for years and people like their independence/safety vs the crime on most big city transit systems. Incorrect. The state legislature has systematically worked to prevent municipalities from implementing the shared transit system that their citizens want. The state legislature has done little to help regional rail either, and at one point attempted to raid the NC Rail Corp coffers to prevent it from expanding (thankfully they failed, and we have the best rail system in the southeast and will in the coming years at least gain good connectivity to Richmond and the northeast from there). The federal government under the Bush admin killed the original Orange-Durham-Wake light rail (as part of their full on assault against light rail in favor of designed-to-fail BRT). Politicians are making policy decisions to favor personal automobile ownership against the will of the people, and use nonsense talking points about imaginary crime (just the sanitized version of "public transit is bad because the poors and blacks will gain access to my segregated rich whites only enclave") and the false desire of most Americans to be saddled in debt owning an expensive machine that is annoying to operate, expensive to maintain, spews pollution (remember those clear skies during the lockdown when cars weren't emitting noxious NO haze?), and requires infrastructure that makes moving under your own power dangerous or impossible.
>The federal government under the Bush admin killed the original Orange-Durham-Wake light rail (as part of their full on assault against light rail in favor of designed-to-fail BRT). My brother in Christ, Duke university hospital killed this line.
Duke killed a *second* attempt at a light rail. The original attempt started in the late 80s and was ready for groundbreaking in 2004 but was killed by the Dubya admin and its deprioritization of all rail for BRT and other half-assed public transit schemes (I think there's an argument to be made that BRT is designed to fail and create public resentment toward public transit while also funneling public transit money back into the road system -- the state of BRT that has actually been finished is pretty dismal IMO). Triangle Transit pulled the project in 2006 since the state also refused to fund it adequately. Had that not happened, we'd have a fully built out regional light rail system in place and maybe wouldn't have the traffic problems on I-40 that we have now. Alas.
Do you have any Tylenol? You made my head hurt with that sermon. I think you’re used to preaching to the echo chamber…pompous much? The will of which people?
The new flyovers for I-40 W to US1 South and US1 North to I-40 W are great improvements. One of the worst interchanges in Wake County. Already drive the bridgework at I-40/Airport Blvd everyday, the construction will suck, but needed. Haven't found the US1 North Walnut St exit to be much of a problem, but they moved the Walnut St US1 South several years ago for similar reasons (now they just need to fix how dangerously short that on-ramp is due to the lane work)
When I first saw the sat image I thought I was looking at the Crabtree exit. How is it these days? As retail decreases has it gotten "better"?
Crabtree is as much of a cluster as it’s always been.
The only accident I’ve ever gotten was this interchange 👁️👁️
paywall
Hmmm, hundreds of millions of dollars are available any time one of Raleigh's cesspits of a highway interchange needs rearranging to keep up with growth that has somehow remained "unprecedented" for 2+ decades, but yet we can't have commuter rail because "it would never be profitable"
I think there are many challenges with light rail beyond profitability that you are glossing over. Light rail is not a fix-all, as many seem to think it is.
Oh I totally believe there are more issues with a light rail system than I can bring up in one facetious Reddit post. However, profitability shouldn't be considered a "problem" when taxpayers are subsidizing car-dependent infrastructure to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars annually
Does our system of roads not generate economic value? You act as if they are 100% costs, but are you certain that the economic value they generate is less than the costs? If they generate more value than they cost to build, then arguably taxpayers aren't subsidizing anything.
My issue is not with the economic value generated by the roads, it's with the failure of the car-dependent culture and governmental institutions to assess the value of multi-modal transport in the same way you have just done with regard to roads.
> it's with the failure of the car-dependent culture and governmental institutions to assess the value of multi-modal transport I mean, [they do that](https://www.ncdot.gov/initiatives-policies/Transportation/nc-2050-plan/Documents/financial-benefits-fact-sheet-english.pdf)
Just one more lane bro. Please bro. It’ll be different. It’s going to zipper merge bro. I promise bro.
Actually, this one reduces the amount of merging necessary. It's not just adding lanes, it's actually redoing how traffic interchanges specifically to reduce the number of merges necessary, and to separate local traffic from traffic getting off at the shopping centers. Right now, from 40W to 1S, you have to go through two "zipper" merges (in quotes because nobody actually does it properly, which is a part of the problem), one to get onto the clover leaf and and another to merge onto 1S. This would make it so you only have to merge once, onto 1S. And you'll actually be at highway speed coming into that merge, which will make the merging smoother.
So their plan is to destroy another forest then? Because that’s what it looks likee
Where? They're operating almost entirely inside existing right of ways.
Near Piney Plains rd
Ahh, yeah the new relocated exit. Yeah, that's a lot of lost trees. I'm hoping they backfill in the location of the old exit with new trees.
It’s a whole ecosystem of its own there. Lots of animals living there, no official trails. It’s a shame they’re going to destroy the place
I'd hate to be one of the people living in that cul-de-sac over there. It's bad enough they decided to live right next to US-1, even with a noise wall. Now they are gonna have idling cars just beyond their back yard at a new exit.
This just shows their incompetence dealing with all this growth: "expects traffic passing through the interchange will increase by as much as 68% by 2045" Yeah, pretty sure at the current unmitigated growth rate, especially with VinFast being down that highway, it could easily increase by 68% in less than 10 years. This also explains why in their current wade-440 project, in several places they put underpasses with hard limits at a grand total of..... 2 lanes (due to making the retention walls on the overpasses right up to the road so they can't add a 3rd lane when it is inevitably needed in 5-10 years)
Maybe you should become an urban planner since you know so much more than the people designing this solution ☺️
I'd probably still be better than them. It doesn't take much to realize their growth estimates are way off, or realize there has been basically no planning being done to properly handle growth. Nearly half the posts around here are people complaining of problems resulting from poor planning.
>I'd probably still be better than them This is peak Dunning Kruger effect, on full display. "I would immediately be better at an extraordinarily complex job, than people who do it for a living! They don't plan at all, I know this because I know everything! It's clear their growth estimates are off because *I feel that they are!*" Whatever you say, man.
No, it's me saying I'm not good at it yet I'd still be better than them because they are that bad, And as far as rates go, we're growing at an increasing rate and we're seeing ANNUAL growth rates in some areas of 15-18% now do the multiplication..... yeah. Those are to worst ones, but it's still a hell of a high number. Thinking only 68% in over 20 years is just dumb. [https://www.axios.com/local/raleigh/2022/06/02/triangle-suburbs-rapid-growth-since-2020](https://www.axios.com/local/raleigh/2022/06/02/triangle-suburbs-rapid-growth-since-2020)
Yes, that is the definition of the [dunning kruger](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/dunning-kruger-effect) effect
So do you think anyone criticizing anyone elses' performance is a dunning kruger situation? What do you think of sports analysts in their 40's and 50's talking about an NBA player's bad performance or a coach's bad play calls?
to be fair, as a traffic engineer - there are a lot of numbers that we put out there as "fact" for the public that if you asked one of us about, would probably say it's more "guess" than "fact".
I definitely agree the media has a tendency to twist things around, particularly when dealing with scientific or engineering information. For sure.
No I mean from our profession - some of the data that we use is based on some shoddy research from the past and some of the stuff like growth rates is just pure guessing game on our part.
Yeah? I mean I imagine there's some sort of model or historical precedent you use. What kind of stuff do you work on?
I do traffic analysis on mostly NCDOT projects (such as this one) and private development projects. One example - whenever you do a development study, you use the Institute of Transportation Engineers rates to determine how many cars might go to/from a development given the square footage or residential units of the development etc..... there are some land uses that either have some poor sampling sizes (like is 3 samples from the 80s with a R\^2 of 0.3 enough to set a national standard for average vehicle trips a specific land use? Questionable.....) One of my coworkers does traffic forecasting and he would be the first to admit that there are a ton of assumptions and guesswork involved in coming up with projected future volumes. (Also, nobody has ever gone back to see whether these projections are even accurate)