A First Comprehensive Transit Plan for the Charlotte Region

Ely Portillo reports on the launch of CONNECT Beyond, an 18-month process to create the first comprehensive transit plan for the Charlotte region.

The Centralina Council of Governments is undertaking the CONNECT Beyond process, which will cover 12 counties, in two states, with 17 different transit systems. "Previous transit planning efforts have been focused mostly on one county at a time," according to Portillo. "The goal here is to come up with a plan to coordinate and prioritize projects, as well as funding requests, across the whole region."

Portillo provides a dispatch from the first gathering of regional officials to launch the plan, and answers a few of the big questions about the plan, like who will lead the implementation of the plan, who will pay for planned improvements, and more.

In a separate article, Bruce Henderson provides additional coverage of the plan, including context for the motivation behind the regional approach to transit planning:

A common thread: The fast pace of development is making it harder to get around, and fixing that will help the region compete nationally. Prospective employers want to know how their hires would get to work. New arrivals demand a quality of life that’s not stuck in traffic.