Will Raleigh City Council Ever Face Up to Traffic Congestion in North Hills?

Feb 23, 2026 | Blog

Randy Jones has lived in Raleigh for more than 25 years. He and his wife Barbara live in the Midtown area with their dog Jack. Randy is retired after a long career in engineering, law, executive management and small business ownership. He is a passionate advocate for community, humanitarian values and constructive dialogue. He’s currently working with other like-minded people to organize, fund and energize Midtown Neighbors United, a grass-roots group advocating for responsible development in Raleigh, with a focus on North Hills. Randy submitted the following for publication:

Breaking News!

Will Raleigh City Council Ever Face Up to Traffic Congestion in North Hills?

Or Will They Just Rehash the Six Fords Road Corridor Fiasco One More Time?

 

Find out together with us this Thursday!
Raleigh City Council Transportation & Transit Committee Meeting
Thursday, February 26, 3PM
City Council Chamber Room 201
222 West Hargett St.

This is another chance to make our voices heard!

Left alone, Council and its Committees will continue to ignore the Midtown Community. So, let’s not leave them alone, and let’s keep up the pressure!

Their latest hi-jinks, exposed:

At a public hearing on January 6, Council considered Z-34-25, Kane Development’s infamous request for rezoning the Main and Lassiter Districts in North Hills. Before, during and since that January 6 hearing, members of the Midtown Community raised many concerns about the City’s handling and approval of the applicant’s request including, as examples: allowing significant and unjustified inconsistencies with the City’s Comprehensive Plan, Midtown Area Plan, and the Urban Form Map, failing to fairly, fully and equitably consider the many public comments received, granting valuable entitlements to the applicant  in exchange for zoning conditions of  little or unknown value, and agreeing to the applicant’s insufficient commitment to funding of affordable housing needs.

At the hearing, Council also discussed traffic congestion in North Hills – another matter of extreme sensitivity and urgency for our community. Perhaps, having gained some appreciation for the gravity of the North Hills  traffic problem, Council referred the matter to the Transportation and Transit Committee for further study and public input.

Late last week, the Committee finally released the “information” it will “receive” from City Staff in response to the Council’s January 6 referral.

Read it here: Six Forks Road Corridor – Transportation Issues

Summary of the “information”

Hint: Get ready to feel disappointed, again. Get ready to learn they haven’t listened, again. Get ready to know they are ignoring us, again.

Given its context, most Midtowners and I understood the Council’s referral was for study of North Hills traffic congestion. The published “information” – consisting of a 3 ½ page memo – is entitled “Six Forks Road Corridor Conditions and Future Plans.”

Say What? Whither North Hills Traffic Congestion?

The first page and a half of the memo are a rehash of the sad history of the ongoing disaster that is Six Forks Road.

Council! We already know all that and so do you.

The last page and a half of the memo summarize information about various dreams for the future that are irrelevant to the Community’s traffic issues.

That leaves a few paragraphs hiding in the middle of the memo where the City’s true contempt for the Midtown Community is exposed.

Here, again, we are reminded what everyone already knows – that Level of Service (LOS) analyses show that many intersections along Six Forks in North Hills are in failure, reflecting heavy congestion.

Council! Will you ever stop deflecting and start engaging with us collaboratively to work towards easing this congestion?

Apparently not. In the memo, the City introduces a new congestion metric: “travel time” – the time it takes to get from one point to another. And they take us yokels to school: “On a corridor like Six Forks Road, travel time is a more practical metric than LOS to measure traffic performance.”

What? Excuse me, really?

After 15 years of analyzing and reporting that so many intersections in North Hills are in failure based on the well-accepted LOS measure (while doing very little about it), our City now seeks to address these problematic traffic conditions not with real solutions but rather by seeking to displace the LOS metric and without evidence replace it with a different, obscure and somehow “more practical” traffic measure?

My fellow Midtowners: we have become the targets of ongoing civic abuse at the hands of our elected City Council and the City Staff. They do not want serious engagement with our Community. That would require doing the hard work of building consensus and compromise.

It would also require that they place at least as much weight on the Midtown Community and our interests as they do on those of their most powerful constituents.

The people running our City are not serious people, but we are. Please join us in the fight to force the City of Raleigh to treat our Midtown Community with the respect we deserve.

 

Believe me, you can make a difference!

 

Join Midtown Neighbors United here: Join Now to make your voice heard

Read more at our website here: Midtown Neighbors United

Please Give What You Can

If you wish to help with funding, the GoFundMe page is here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/join-us-to-fight-for-responsible-development-in-north-hills  

You can see a detailed list of questions and concerns I am raising below.

Feel free to copy and paste, add your own and send it to the Council before Thursday.

Council email addresses: citycouncilmembers@raleighnc.gov

North Hills Traffic Questions and Concerns

 

  • No Traffic Impact Analysis has ever been conducted for the Main or Lassiter Districts. A TIA must be conducted NOW using current data.
  • At least 3 TIAs conducted over the past 5-15 years show all major intersections in the area operating in LOS failure. How are the findings, commitments and conditions contained in these many studies catalogued, tracked, and verified? What are the implications when commitments and conditions in TIAs are not honored? Is there any mechanism for enforcement or penalties?
  • The developer’s attorney claims that because the Six Forks Improvement Project extended only as far as Rowan Street on the south, the cancellation of the Project will not have any impact on North Hills Traffic. That claim is not self-evident and needs to be verified. At a minimum, note that Six Forks Road Northbound narrows from 3 through lanes to 2 lanes at Rowan Street, creating a northbound bottleneck south into North Hills. That bottleneck would have been eliminated by the Improvement Project.
  • Who pays for commitments in the TIAs? Is it always (or ever) the developer? Does the city or state ever pay?
  • Why does the City allow new development to proceed when surrounding intersections are in failure?
  • City planning staff and the developer make at least three claims about past commitments that demand scrutiny:
        • The commitment to add a third through travel lane on Six Forks Road Northbound North of Rowan St. has not been honored.
        • The commitment to add a right turn lane from Lassiter Mill Road EB onto Six Forks Road is claimed to be conditioned on redevelopment of the Exxon site. Where is this condition documented? It is not contained in any of the TIAs. More to the point: what is the purpose of a commitment that is still not implemented 11 years after it was first made and at least 5 years after construction is completed?
        • The commitment to add a third lane to the exit from I-440 WB to Six Forks Road NB is noted as under construction. Again, this is a commitment made more than 10 years ago. It has now been “under construction” for at  least a year, but construction has been stopped for months with several utility poles needing to be moved. What kind of planning and project management questions does that raise? Again, what are the implications of commitments made with no specified time for completion and no apparent incentives or requirements that they actually be implemented?
  • Lassiter Mill Road is designated as an Enhanced Traffic Corridor, extending south of the Beltline to St. Mary’s Street. All the neighborhoods on either side of Lassiter Mill are in close proximity to North Hills and are part of the Midtown Community. Ramblewood Drive is becoming a known bypass around North Hills between Lassiter Mill Road and Six Forks Road just south of the Beltline. This is all part of the Midtown/North Hills Community whether the City admits it or not. By all indications traffic congestion is rapidly building on these roads. Going forward both streets must be included in the traffic analysis and planning for North Hills development.
  • For the current rezoning Z-34-25 the developer claims “traffic entitlements” arising out of the original 2003-4 rezoning of North Hills. How were these entitlements calculated then, what were they worth then and what are they worth today? Do traffic entitlements have no expiration date? The City and the developer often say the new development “will not create any new traffic,” leaving out the essential qualifier “beyond current entitlement.” We all know in fact traffic will increase significantly beyond current levels. Why is the City misleading the public about the need to plan and pay for additional traffic capacity, regardless of the  developer’s claimed entitlement?
  • Will the City and its staff stop, once and for all, making the absurd claim that “Traffic has not increased at North Hills since 2005.” This is insulting and inflammatory to everyone in the Midtown Community. We know better.
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