Project History

​​​Several transportation plans contain recommendations to improve a 35-mile portion of N.C. 73 and recognize the corridor as a major thoroughfare. Those plans include:

• N.C. 73 Transportation/Land Use Corridor Plan (2004)
  
• Charlotte Regional Transportation Planning Organization (CRTPO) Thoroughfare Plan (2012)
  
• Cabarrus-Rowan Metropolitan Planning Organization (CRMPO) Comprehensive Transportation Plan (2017)
  
• Amendments to the CRMPO Comprehensive Transportation Plan (2019/2020) 
  
• The CRTPO Comprehensive Transportation Plan (2017)
  
• Amendments to the CRTPO Comprehensive Transportation Plan (2020)
  

Other plans call for upgrading N.C. 73 to a four-lane divided roadway with intersection improvements as well as bicycle and pedestrian accommodations, including:

• Davidson-Concord Road/N.C. 73 Area Plan (2008)
  
• N.C. 73: Davidson-Concord Road to Poplar Tent Road Small Area Land Use and Economic Development Plan (2005)
  
• City of Concord’s Land Use Plan (2007)
  
• N.C. 73/Poplar Tent Church Road Small Area Plan (2012)

Agency, Local Government and Stakeholder Coordination

Federal, local, and state agencies met with NCDOT in 2017 and 2018 to seek agreement on study concepts and the purpose and need of each project. Additional meetings were held in spring 2019 to discuss project alternatives and to select the preferred alternative (NCDOT’s chosen design of the highway project) and again later that year to review project impacts and ways to minimalize them.

​The planning document is being processed as a Categorical Exclusion (a classification given to federal aid projects or actions, which do not individually or cumulatively have a significant impact on the environment.), in accordance with the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969.