I’m not sure where else to post this so perhaps Wake Transit Plan is it. @dtraleigh, if this is more appropriate elsewhere, please feel free to move me around.
I got some very interesting information from a credible source around downtown traffic over the last decade and a half and I think most of you will find it almost hard to believe. The traffic study comes from a legitimate firm that is prominent in Raleigh.
The following traffic data is from 2003 through 2017 with the business stats being from 2017.
- 77 employees per acre: more than any other office submarket in the Triangle
- 800+ business located downtown
- 19% growth in employees in the past 7 years
- Downtown Raleigh already has doubled the number of housing units since 2000 and is poised to triple the number of units by 2020, if the current pipeline of residential projects is built out. Presently downtown has an estimated 5,700+ units and will have approximately 7,600 units within the next five years.
*Downtown Raleigh’s current population is an estimated 8,200 residents. Within one mile of downtown’s center point, the current population is an estimated 16,500. Downtown’s population is projected to be over 11,000 residents by 2022. Also by 2022, 19,640 residents will reside within one mile of downtown’s center with an opportunity for even more growth if the present rate of development continues.
Now for the really interesting data, traffic (based on AADT or Average Annual Daily Traffic):
- Net Change from 2003 to 2017 is 5600
- Percent increase from 2003 to 2017 is 2.00%
- Annual % increase from 2003 to 2017 is 0.14%
If you break that down to the last 2 years of the study:
- Net Change from 2015 to 2017 is -5800
- Percent increase from 2015 to 2017 is -1.99%
- Annual % increase from 2015 to 2017 is -1.00%
Again, the annual Downtown Raleigh percent increase in traffic was 0.14% year over year from 2003 to 2017. 
I got these stats this morning and shared them early in the Q/A tonight at the North Central CAC meeting regarding the Zimmer project at Peace/Capital and there were no traffic questions after that. The only questions that preceded my stats was a lady wanting to know what the ingress/egress was and how cars and buses would interact with the building.