Charlotte

[architect77]

Actually I thought I-40 near RDU and I-77 through Charlotte had the highest traffic counts. I-85 is very nice, but I've never seen the section between I-485 towards Gastonia regularly grind to a halt like US1 does all day, everyday.

This I-85 project will begin with an easy short section and the rest through Gastonia will take longer as 2 railroad overpasses have to be rebuilt and the railroads are super slow to work with.

Also I-85 is still only 4 lanes between Hillsborough and Efland for 8 miles which is a real bottleneck for the deluxe I-85. No one cares about the 4-lane section to the VA border which is 40 miles or so.

[wriddle082]

I think making the transitions from I-485 either direction (especially the inner loop) to I-85 south are the biggest bottleneck, as lots of commuters from Gaston County commute to/from warehouse and other light industrial jobs in the Steele Creek and Ayrsley areas (not to mention all of the trucks heading to/from those same warehouses).  I'm not sure if they've tried temporarily dropping the rightmost lane of I-85 south just before the I-485 traffic merges in so it can seamlessly flow on, but sometimes trucks have a difficult time going up the hill through the ramp merges.  Then a couple of miles later that fourth lane drops at the NC 273 Belmont exit, going up a hill, so slow trucks end up changing lanes and slowing up traffic more.

If they had gone ahead with the "Garden Parkway" project or something else that provides another Catawba River crossing between Wilkinson Blvd. and NC 49, it likely would have relieved the commuter traffic a good bit.  I don't believe that proposal is completely off the table, but for now it's on hold.