News

This past Friday, January 17, at the RTA 18th Annual Meeting, the Regional Transportation Alliance RDU Airport Infrastructure Development (AID) task force released its preliminary findings and recommendations. The task force met five different times over the course of the fall and winter and quickly became versed in the funding challenges and opportunities facing RDU Airport — and by extension our region — over the next two decades.

Their primary finding is that we are growing, which is not surprising, and that the funding gap looking out 10 years or so is between $1 billion and $2 billion, which is concerning.

The task force made a number of funding recommendations, but their primary goal was to get the conversation started on potential solutions, not to establish the final answer to the regional business community’s top transportation priority, “Identifying sustainable funding for successful growth at RDU.”

I urge you to download and read the report here. Additional information and extensive media coverage of the task force’s efforts, including a front-page story in the N&O, can be found at letsgetmoving.org/RDUAID.

We shall see how conversations progress in this market about the importance of RDU, the need for sustained funding, and the relative likelihood or viability of various preliminary options.

Let’s get moving,

Joe Milazzo II, PE
Executive Director
Regional Transportation Alliance