Freeways don't have enough lanes. And our sprawling city is pushing traffic congestion farther and farther out into the suburbs. Pineville, Huntersville, Cornelius, Lake Norman, University City, Concord and western Union County have been especially hard hit. All this has meant air-quality problems. Unless we get a handle on things, the feds have threatened to freeze new road construction.
Rapid transit is somewhere down the track.
Light-rail should be running from uptown to Pineville by 2005, and a train to Davidson or Mooresville is possible by 2003. That latter is still a maybe. Dr. Traffic will believe it when she climbs aboard. And its north half is called the Brookshire and the south half is called the Belk. That brings us to the outerbelt, aka I-485.