News

The regional business community has been serving the metropolitan Triangle through the RTA organization for more than 22 years.

Here are just a few of the topics we have focused on since the early 2000s.

The importance of completing our regional 540 beltway has been clear from the beginning of the organization. With the southern Wake freeway opening in a few weeks, and the eastern Wake freeway under construction, we are about to see the fruits of our advocacy, education, and communications labor. 18 miles of new multimodal freeway will be opening this year, and another 10 miles will open by 2028.

I-40 is our region’s “main street”, and we have spearheaded several improvements including the widening between Cary and Raleigh more than a decade ago as well as upgrades to RDU area interchanges with Aviation Parkway and Airport Boulevard. A total of 28 centerline miles of I-40 will have been widened and modernized between I-85 and I-95 by 2025, excluding the “Fortify I-40” project which added auxiliary on/off lanes in southwestern Raleigh several years ago.

RTA has been championing regional BRT for more than a decade, and we will continue to do so as projects advance across the Triangle. The New Bern Avenue BRT in Raleigh will be first, with construction starting in early 2025. Other BRT projects and extensions will proceed during the next few years, thanks to our dedicated transit sales taxes and support from our regional, state, and federal partners. Of course, these efforts will be complemented nicely by intercity passenger rail, already under construction between Raleigh and Wake Forest.

Concerns about the future of highway funding have been in place well before the existence of RTA. We continue to elevate the opportunity that a simple, fair, transparent, and resilient access user fee approach will do stabilize and strengthen that funding.

While our multimodal freeways are the backbone of our regional transportation system, the most importance two miles of pavement in region are the primary runway at RDU (5L-23R). We have promoted the importance and urgency of funding and policy solutions to accelerate needed airport infrastructure — runway, taxiways, terminals, and other airside and landside improvements — and we are pleased that construction activities for the new runway have begun, with a new 5L-23R slated for completion by the end of the decade.

RTA has been elevating and championing projects, policies, and priorities that are vital to our regional success for more than two decades, and we are just getting started.

Let’s Get Moving,
Joe Milazzo, PE
RTA executive director

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