Traffic on I-77 North in the afternoons (Charlotte, Concord: home, purchase)

[DaysofThundr46]

Any reason for the constant traffic on I-77 north after exit 4 in the afternoon? Ill go through there at 3pm and have bumper to bumper traffic. I can understand traffic at rush hour, but, at 3pm? Has this always been like this?

[GCharlotte]

I-77 sold its soul to the devil several years back.

[ZeusAV]

I-77 needs to be widened pretty badly. 85 is eight lanes all the way through Mecklenburg County and is only really congested at Concord Mills in the afternoon.

I went to SC and noticed that 77 is eight lanes from the border all the way through Rock Hill but contracts to six through Uptown Charlotte (its busiest part). NC needs to get on the ball.

[chicagocubs]

psst...77 doesn't GO to Concord Mills....(that would be 85 north)

[PeytonC]

Originally Posted by chicagocubs

psst...77 doesn't GO to Concord Mills....(that would be 85 north)

psst....who said that 77 goes to Concord Mills?

[DaysofThundr46]

Originally Posted by chicagocubs

psst...77 doesn't GO to Concord Mills....(that would be 85 north)

The poster was saying 77 needed to take 85's example and widen the highway, and the only flaw is the bottleneck at the Concord Mills exit.

[Nativechief]

This is normal. It is caused by all of the day workers who live outside of charlotte trying to get a head start home on the traffic that gets worse later.

[ncopus99]

Plus being Friday everyone seems to leave work early.

[ZeusAV]

Originally Posted by chicagocubs

psst...77 doesn't GO to Concord Mills....(that would be 85 north)

I was saying that since 85 is eight lanes, its only major bottleneck is Concord Mills in the afternoon.

[yantosh22]

Originally Posted by DaysofThundr46

Any reason for the constant traffic on I-77 north after exit 4 in the afternoon? Ill go through there at 3pm and have bumper to bumper traffic. I can understand traffic at rush hour, but, at 3pm? Has this always been like this?

Yes, for a long time. The simple answer is the road is carrying more traffic than it was designed for. The part of I-77 from Nations Ford to uptown Charlotte was originally built as a 4 lane divided highway with a grass medium between the sets of lanes. As Charlotte boomed in the 70s and 80s the road became very congested and the NCDOT solution to the problem was to add an additional lane in each direction by paving over the grassy medium. This is the road we have today.

The problem with adding additional lanes now is that it will require the purchase of what has become very expensive property on both sides of the road, and almost every bridge over the highway will have to be torn down and rebuilt to handle the extra lane. The NCDOT simply doesn't have the money to do this so it's not likely to be fixed in the forseeable future. The situation is further complicated politically because part of the justification of the NCDOT paying for 25% of Lynx, was that it would take traffic off I-77.