Challenge

For the past 20 years, the City of Charlotte has been taking a thoughtful and proactive approach to transit planning, which has already led to two successful rail lines and a bus network. An outcome of the Charlotte MOVES Task Force, the City of Charlotte’s Strategic Mobility Plan, has built on this momentum and set a vision for the next 20 years of transit-oriented development in Charlotte. The plan outlines a citywide 10-minute neighborhood-where everyone’s basic needs can be met by a 10-minute walk, bike ride, or high-frequency transit ride-and identifies multimodal projects that can make this a reality, which included a network of approximately 20 bus corridors capable of providing the level of reliable, high-frequency service needed to support citywide mobility.

Solution

Through the Envision My Ride Bus Priority Study, Kittelson is developing a set of recommendations as to how bus priority corridors can be developed and implemented to serve as the backbone of Charlotte’s mobility needs. Using origin-destination data, surveys of local residents, and operations data provided by the Charlotte Area Transit System (CATS), Kittelson is identifying a set of six corridors to be evaluated for improvements including: mobility hubs, enhanced passenger facilities, bus stop consolidation, queue jumps, transit signal priority, and dedicated bus lanes. Special attention is being paid to intermodal connections (including bus, rail, first-mile/last-mile connectivity, and crosstown connections) to maximize the benefits of the priority corridors across the entire transit network. The Kittelson team is also developing recommendations to bring new and existing bus passenger facilities into compliance with the requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).