Public Conversations

Welcome to “A Trifling Place,” a podcast dedicated to exploring the ins-and-outs of Charlotte.

Every city has its share of traffic issues. In Charlotte, for example, there are a lot of complaints about rush hour near Ballantyne on I-485. (Relief is coming. That section of the road is scheduled to be expanded to three lanes by December 2014.)

But today we're not talking about the quality of the Charlotte region’s roads. We’ll focus on an issue the Charlotte Department of Transportation has a little more control over: traffic lights.

The Mecklenburg County Courthouse processes up to 1,600 misdemeanor cases a day. And administrators are always looking for ways to bring that number down so that judges have more manageable caseloads. One of the newest initiatives is mediation. Also known as Citizen's Court.

WFAE's Tasnim Shamma spent a day at Citizen's Court to see how well mediation was working … or not.

There are some new backward parking spaces in Charlotte’s Plaza Midwood neighborhood. The city’s put in reverse angle parking along three blocks of Commonwealth Ave – spaces that are angled against the direction of traffic, designed to be backed into. It’s part of a $4 million project to make the area more pedestrian and bike friendly. 

The reverse spaces also serve to narrow the street and slow down traffic. But, the concept of backing into these spaces goes against what we’re used to. And the result is a lot of confusion. 

Dozens of immigrants stood on the corner of Trade and Tryon Street yesterday afternoon in Uptown Charlotte to protest the design of North Carolina's driver's license for young illegal immigrants.

The North Carolina Department of Transportation announced earlier this month that it would be issuing driver's licenses and identification cards to immigrants who are granted deferred action status by the Obama administration.

We’ve all done things we wish we could take back and start over. It’s harder for some than others – especially if that mistake involves a criminal conviction. But some people with a criminal past can wipe the slate clean if enough time has passed. Melange Health Solutions held a seminar on Tuesday to teach locals how to expunge their records in hopes of increasing their chances at employment.