Transportation

The pilot shortage and changing economics are to blame for legacy airlines departing regional airports

Several states now require lap-and-shoulder belts on all new school buses purchased. But most states have no such requirement.

It might be possible one day to hail a driverless taxi in Charlotte; an automated cab company tested its vehicles in the city last week. Advocates of the new technology point to improved safety and quicker trips. But a new study from NC State University finds automated vehicles can actually slow down traffic. Ali Hajbabaie, the author of this study, joined us on Morning Edition.

The North Carolina Department of Transportation said Wednesday night that it won’t move forward with a proposal from the Spanish company Cintra to build and manage toll lanes on Interstate 77 in south Charlotte.

The driverless taxi company Cruise is road-testing its vehicles on Charlotte streets through Saturday. During testing, its taxis will not actually be driverless — they’ll be driven by a person to gather data and get to know Charlotte’s roads and driving behaviors.

Climate change is making it harder to breathe. For Black communities in the United States, air quality has always been an issue.

CASSI, a self-driving shuttle, started making the rounds this week on a 2.2-mile route at UNC Charlotte. She’s the centerpiece of a six-month experiment on autonomous vehicles by the N.C. Department of Transportation — the first such project in Charlotte.

Some municipalities want to change the voting structure on the Charlotte Regional Transportation Planning Organization, or CRTPO, to give towns like Huntersville and Cornelius more power.

Charlotte and its surrounding municipalities are fighting about how the votes are counted on CRTPO, the federally required group that helps decide how and when roads are built in three counties — Iredell, Mecklenburg and Union.

State officials have been scrambling to reopen the span of the interstate that collapsed last weekend. On a typical day, that span would have seen about 160,000 vehicles pass through.