Morrisville begins update of Comprehensive Transportation Plan, consultants cite demographic and travel shifts

Brett Martin, the town's transportation project manager, opened the presentation to the Morrisville Planning and Zoning Board and introduced the consultant team leading a refresh of the town's 2019 Comprehensive Transportation Plan (CTP).

Allison, a consultant on the project, told the board the update will identify needs, develop multimodal recommendations and produce an action plan to help secure funding, guide development and inform policy; the team is targeting adoption in the latter half of 2026.

Consultant Christina Whitfield summarized outreach conducted so far: staff technical meetings, stakeholder interviews (including a scheduled CDOT Division 5 interview), on-site pop-ups at BooBash and a Diwali festival, two rounds of online surveys and a public workshop. "We've had the first town staff technical meeting and initiated stakeholder interviews," she said, noting more public input opportunities are planned during the three engagement phases.

On existing conditions the consultants reported notable changes since 2019. Whitfield said the town's demographic and economic profile has shifted: median household income rose from about $84,000 in 2019 to roughly $125,000 in current data, the share with a bachelor's degree or higher increased from about 65% to 74%, and the share of residents working from home was reported to have risen from about 8% to 34% since 2019. "That jump has more than tripled," Whitfield said, linking remote-work growth to changes in traffic patterns on some corridors.

The team emphasized safety and congestion as top priorities. Their corridor analysis (which measures congestion on roadway segments rather than at intersections) flagged limits approaching lane capacity in certain areas and identified crash hotspots along NC-54, Morrisville Parkway and Airport Boulevard, including multiple bicycle and pedestrian crash locations.

On active transportation, consultants said Morrisville has more than doubled the length of greenways and multiuse paths since 2019, a likely explanation for generally positive public ratings of trail and sidewalk infrastructure. Whitfield also described the smart shuttle pilot as successful and under review: "We're revisiting what the next iteration looks like," she said, noting coordination with regional partners GoTriangle and GoCary.

Board members pressed for definitions and near-term actions. When asked what "increasing intersection density" meant, consultants clarified it refers to adding more connections within an area (more intersections) to distribute traffic and provide redundancy, not simply increasing capacity at a single intersection. The team said a micro-simulation follow-up will test low-cost intersection improvements, such as reallocating a through lane to a right-turn lane, to identify "quick wins" residents can notice without major expenditures.

Consultants also said the action plan will include a task to evaluate alternative funding mechanisms — from public-private partnerships to opportunistic grant alignment — rather than relying solely on state or large federal programs. "We will be taking a look at alternative funding and trying to better tailor this plan for those other means, as part of our action plan," Whitfield said.

Next steps include a December second staff technical team meeting to refine cross sections, continued work through the spring and additional public engagement beginning in March and continuing into late 2026 when the final CTP will be reviewed for adoption by the town council. The board will have further opportunities to comment as recommendations and cost estimates are developed.

The meeting record shows the presentation closed with time for board questions and public input; no formal actions on the CTP were taken at this meeting.