North Carolina currently has six types of public transportation systems:  human service transportation, community transportation, urban transit, regional transit, vanpool and carpool programs, and intercity buses.  A seventh “public” mode of conveyance includes taxis and other “for hire” personal vehicles, such as limousines.  Taxi companies are regulated by business licenses granted by the communities in which they operate.  Taxi service is available in most North Carolina towns and cities with more than 25,000 population.  The six modes of public transportation are described below.

Human Service Transportation

Human service agencies in every county provide some type of service to their clients to transport them to medical, educational, employment, or recreational facilities. Users of such services must be referred by human service agencies.  There are currently 55 human service transportation systems operating in North Carolina and they are organized in one of three ways:  (1) consolidated systems providing a single transportation program that uses its own vehicles and drivers; (2) consolidated systems contracting for transportation services; and (3) coordinated systems where two or more social service agencies serve their clients through one agency to optimize transportation resources and efficiency.  In addition to these multipurpose transportation services, North Carolina as a state owns more than 13,000 public school buses, making it one of the largest single bus fleets in the nation.  The North Carolina Department of Public Instruction purchases new equipment for all 115 school districts in the state, with counties being responsible for purchasing replacement buses. 

Community Transit Associations

Community Transit Associations provide transportation for human service agency clients and the general public by subscription rides, prearranged by an individual, group or human service agency.  There are 20 community transit systems in North Carolina that operate as either single-county or multi-county systems.

Urban Transit

Urban Transit systems provide fixed-route and, in some cases, dial-a-ride or “demand responsive” services.  In 2005, there are 19 urban transit systems in North Carolina: Asheville, Boone, Chapel Hill, Charlotte, Concord/Kannapolis, Durham, Fayetteville, Gastonia, Goldsboro, Greensboro, Greenville, Hickory, High Point, Jacksonville, Raleigh, Rocky Mount, Salisbury, Wilmington, and Winston-Salem.  Statistics for those urban systems that accommodate more than two million bus riders annually are shown in Table 5.  

Metropolitan Regional Transit

In 2005, two regional transit systems operate in North Carolina: the Research Triangle Regional Transit Authority, which operates as Triangle Transit Authority (TTA), and the Piedmont Triad’s system, called Piedmont Authority for Regional Transportation (PART).  TTA operates fixed route bus service within the Research Triangle metropolitan area to connect Raleigh, Durham, Cary, Chapel Hill, and nearby suburbs with the Research Triangle Park and the Raleigh -Durham International Airport.  PART provides at present an extensive vanpool service in a seven-county region surrounding the core cities of Greensboro, Winston-Salem and High Point.  Both of these regional systems are involved in Federal Transportation Administration (FTA) and NCDOT sponsored studies and design work to investigate the feasibility and to develop specific plans for further regional transportation systems, including regional rail in the Research Triangle region.  The Charlotte Area Transit System (CATS), although not at present a regional transit system, provides express bus service to and from counties adjacent to Mecklenburg county.  

Carpool/Vanpool Services

In addition to Carpool/Vanpool services provided by the regional and urban transit systems, the NCDOT Central Office and various private vanpools and carpools across the state provide commuter services to employees.  There are estimated to be over 100 such informal systems in existence as of 2005.

Intercity Bus Services

Intercity bus services are privately owned and operated transportation systems.  These systems serve many cities and towns throughout the state, with most routes concentrated in the densely populated corridor from Charlotte to Greensboro and Raleigh. Intercity bus companies currently registered and regulated by the North Carolina Public Utilities Commission are Greyhound Lines, Carolina Coach Company, and American Charters.  These companies provide fixed route intercity and interstate bus service.  In addition, major components of North Carolina’s bus/coach transportation services are provided by charter coach or tour companies, which are unregulated at the state level.  With the aging of the population, and increasing demands for tourist travel by charter coach or tour companies, there is a growing demand for this type of service. Approximately 50 such private tour/coach companies which are members of a national charter coach association currently operate in NC, although this only represents a portion of the companies providing these services.  This is another transportation “growth industry” among the transportation services in North Carolina, fueled by the growing number of retired persons and others who prefer such services for tourism trips.  

Commuting to Work

Since congestion in urban areas typically is most severe during morning and afternoon “peak hours,” the most widely used measurement of congestion in American cities is the average time taken on the trip to work.  These data are collected in the U.S. Census Bureau’s Census of Transportation and in the Decennial Population Census.  In 2000, the Average Commute Time to work in North Carolina’s counties (in minutes) is shown in Figure 6.  By analyzing commute times and patterns, its possible to begin to examine the extent to which congestion has become more common in the larger urban areas.  Commuting times are a function of the relative traffic density on the highway.  Relative traffic density is the ratio of volume to road capacity. 

Figure 6 portrays average commute times to work (in minutes) for North Carolina counties in the year 2000.  A little more than half the State’s counties had an average commute time to work of between 20 and 30 minutes.  Longer commute times (more than 30 minutes) were scattered around the state, including in some counties that are contiguous to major employment areas in adjacent counties. The northeastern part of the state also had high average commute times, the result of many residents commuting to Tidewater Virginia for employment.  Lower commute times were experienced by residents in less urbanized counties in the mountains, the central Coastal Plain, and the Sandhills, as well as in the more highly urbanized counties in the northern Piedmont. 

Increased automobile ownership and continuation of the suburbanization of metropolitan areas have been partially responsible for the changes in commuting patterns over the decade 1990 to 2000.  As a result, there are more and more individuals driving alone to work as compared to previous years;  (compare Figures 7 with Figure 8).  In both 1990 and 2000, a larger percentage of individuals drove alone in the Piedmont and larger metro areas, which generally tend to be areas of higher income and auto ownership. 

In comparison with the tendency of traveling alone to work occurring primarily in urban areas, carpooling is higher in rural, relatively isolated counties where incomes are usually lower (Figures 9 and 10).  The lowest percentages of carpooling in both 1990 and 2000 were located in all of the state’s metro areas.  Commuters who live farther from larger employment areas use carpools or vanpools to work, more than those who live closer to their employment. 

As one would expect, the largest share of individuals using public transit as primary means to work, for both 1990 and 2000, were located within the state’s metro areas (Figures 11 and 12).  In 1990, only two counties had more than 2.5 percent of their population using mass transit as their primary means to work:  Mecklenburg and Orange.  Two additional counties, Durham and Pasquotank, were added to this list in 2000, although the “high” category in that year was coded as > 1.64 percent of their population using mass transit. More counties in 2000 compared to 1990 had more than 0.30 percent of their residents using transit as a means to work (62 counties in 2000 compared to 53 in 1990.

Truck/Freight Mobility

North Carolina is a major manufacturing and distribution center for the eastern  U.S.  It is geographically positioned to link the Nation’s northeast and southeast, the historic center of population and manufacturing, and the emerging center for future growth and economic development.  Latin American trade growth and shifts in routing of Asian trade are already affecting North Carolina’s freight transport system.  North Carolina’s robust intermodal freight system may be stressed by global security challenges under the current administration’s pre-emption policy and aggressive U.S. Department of Defense deployment plans. 

Other factors that are making an impact on freight movement, particularly truck freight, in North Carolina include: 

• Increasing domestic and global trade, including from the North American  Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) -
• Outsourcing to offshore areas for comparative economic advantage in production
• Emergence of global trade blocs and city-state trade areas
• Far-flung intermodal supply chains
• Increasing freight traffic and congestion along trade corridors and at ports, airports, and interstate borders (weigh stations)

Figure 13 shows freight flows on North Carolinas highways for 1998, the most recent date for which such system-wide data are available.  It is no surprise that the heaviest volumes of heavy truck traffic (approximately 20,000 Annual Average Daily Truck Movements (AADTM)) took place on the Interstate corridors through the Piedmont Crescent (Raleigh to Greensboro-Winston-Salem, on to Charlotte and southwest to the South Carolina border). As regulated carriers, there are approximately 200 trucking companies in North Carolina that report to the State Utilities Commission.

Figure 13.  Freight Flows on North Carolinas Highways, 1998

Source:  US Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration

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