News

Here is a brief weekly update from the RTA business coalition – the voice of the regional business community on transportation.

A new vision for transportation gives us an opportunity to reimagine mobility going forward.

There are important, needed conversations happening on the future of mobility in our region, in light of climate change and related concerns. Several of our elected leaders at the MPO (metropolitan planning organization) level are discussing significant potential changes to future transportation plans, with implications for some of our longstanding key priorities, including freeway upgrades. We might summarize this framework as an increasing focus on connectivity and accessibility, and a lesser emphasis on capacity and delay reduction, with a broader objective to reduce future vehicle miles traveled (“VMT”).

This week’s blog post, on “Transportation, climate change, accessibility, and regional roadway improvements” . is a bit longer than usual, and with good reason. It provides some background on the issue, and speaks to both the rationale for our current position and how our view might evolve, in response to a proposed new vision for regional mobility. If you have a few minutes this week, please review the post, and feel free to email me with any thoughts and questions. We will speak to this and related topics, including advancing a metropolitan rapid transit system, at the RTA annual meeting next month…

Remember to sign up for the RTA 20th annual meeting and winter 2022 Regional Leadership Tour.

What else will we have in store for our 20th annual meeting on November 4th? Well, RTA won’t quite bring the outside in, but we will begin outside under a ventilated tent for an informal reception, and then have an excellent, forward-looking discussion inside the Embassy Suites in Cary with several of our past, present, and future chairs. On behalf of RTA chair Michael Schoenfeld with Duke University and RTA chair-elect Harold Hicks with RTI International, we look forward to seeing you there along with a host of leaders from across our region.

Thank you to the entire RTA Regional Leadership Team for making the event possible, along with presenting sponsor The Research Triangle Foundation of North Carolina, and our event sponsors Credit Suisse, First Citizens Bank, and Highwoods Properties. If you have not yet signed up to attend, you can do so here. For questions about registration, call 919.664.7011 or email Iman Fullard.

Looking ahead to January, I can’t think of a better place to spend time together than south Florida, and not (just) because of the weather. We will learn about a suite of multimodal improvements, as well as robust responses to climate change, from an array of speakers and field visits during our winter 2022 Regional Leadership Tour to South Florida. You can sign up or sponsor here; I hope you can join dozens of elected, transportation, and business leaders from across our market.

RTA thanks our presenting sponsors GoTriangle and the North Carolina Railroad Company for their leadership support of the event. We also thank WSP, HDR, and the Research Triangle Foundation of North Carolina for serving as our first tour event sponsors.

Let’s get moving,

Joe Milazzo II, PE
RTA Executive Director

Click here for prior RTA Member Briefings and RTA Blogs.