The Lake Norman Regional Transportation Commission will hold its regular monthly meeting on Wednesday, May 8, 2013 at 6:30pm at the Cornelius Town Hall, with a focus on transportation planning in the NC 73 corridor through the region. Read the full story

By CHUCK McSHANE
CorneliusNews.net

HUNTERSVILLE – Two meetings here Wednesday took on the topic of I-77 and the future of transportation in the Lake Norman area.

The Mecklenburg-Union Metropolitan Planning Organization (MUMPO) held a public workshop on the proposed I-77 High-Occupancy Toll lane project, which would add privately-managed high occupancy toll lanes on either side of the interstate from Brookshire Freeway in Charlotte to Exit 36 in Mooresville. Read the full story

Click to see a presentation outlining the trail plans.

The towns of Mooresville, Davidson, Cornelius, Huntersville, the City of Charlotte, and Iredell and Mecklenburg counties will host a series of community meetings beginning Tuesday night offering details about the proposed $30 million Red Line Trail, which would run from Mooresville to Charlotte.

The 30-mile trail will provide a regional corridor for bicycle and pedestrian transportation roughly paralleling the proposed Red Line Regional Rail Project. Read the full story

By DAVID BORAKS
CorneliusNews.net

Whether Norfolk Southern Corp. decides to let commuter trains run on is tracks north of Charlotte some day will depend on how much it thinks passenger service will hinder expansion of freight service on the line. Local officials met with the rail company three weeks ago, and hope to agree soon on the outline of a rail traffic study to answer that question. Read the full story

Officials from the N.C. Department of Transportation, Charlotte Area Transit System (CATS) and the Red Line Task Force are seeking a meeting, possibly in mid-June, with Norfolk Southern Corp. to discuss the rail company’s misgivings about the proposed Red Line Regional Rail Project north of Charlotte. Read the full story

Bill Thunberg

Recent discussion of the Red Line Regional Rail Project has been intense – and so has the dissemination of misinformation about the project. This discussion is the result of the Red Line Task Force’s referral of a draft business and finance plan for review by the communities along the line.

Public discussion of the project has included a considerable amount of very thoughtful input and intense questioning, as was intended. Unfortunately, this regional conversation has been seen by those opposed to transit and the transit tax as a surrogate target for the failed effort to repeal the transit tax. Transit is a part of the transportation plan for the Charlotte-Mecklenburg region, and rail is a part of the transit and transportation systems designed to serve this region. Read the full story

A Norfolk Southern train on the tracks near Zion Street in Cornelius. (Chip Dawson photo)

By CHRISTINA RITCHIE ROGERS
CorneliusNews.net

CHARLOTTE – A formal review period for the Red Line Regional Rail Project business and finance plan is coming to a close, but the next phase – asking local governments to adopt the plan – is delayed indefinitely, project officials said at a Red Line Task Force meeting Wednesday. Instead, project leaders will be meeting with Norfolk Southern Railroad Corp. in hopes of ironing out the track owner’s concerns about the plan.

Under the project’s original schedule, a 90-day formal review period was to be followed by revision and then adoption of the plan. Instead, project officials are putting the adoption phase on hold, amid Norfolk Southern’s concerns about combining commuter and freight service on the 25-mile line from Mooresville to Charlotte. Read the full story

The Metropolitan Transit Commission’s Red Line Task Force is scheduled to meet Wednesday afternoon in Charlotte, where members will get updates on the proposed rail project and on revisions to the draft business and finance plan, and discuss plans for new station in Charlotte and a relocated station in the Mount Mourne area, south of Mooresville. Read the full story