FAQs

What is the North-South Corridor?

It is the area within 0.5 mile of the potential location of the North-South Urban Circulator, forming a 1-mile wide corridor through the City connecting Winston-Salem State University, Downtown, Wake Forest University, and the neighborhoods in between. It is in this corridor we are focusing our efforts to plan for more walkable, liveable, sustainable and equitable communities where residents and businesses can thrive.

What are you planning?

Our project consists of developing an action plan with strategies and recommendations to help communities in the corridor thrive. Our project aims to:

• preserve and advance affordable housing

• forecast growth and economic development

• help local businesses start up, stay open, and grow with their neighborhoods

• enhance minority and women-owned business enterprises

• recommend community land use and zoning plans

• reduce displacement associated with development, or gentrification, through strategic policy

• plan bike lanes, sidewalks, greenways, parking, and mobility hubs

• increase usefulness of existing transit services

• assess the feasibility of building a streetcar

• identify financing opportunities

Using this action plan, the City hopes to restore and reconnect communities historically impacted by redlining during the construction of Highway 52, while building a vibrant future for Winston-Salem.

What is Transit Oriented Development?

Transit oriented development is a type of planning that supports the preservation, redevelopment and new development of distinct community centers where people can live, work and play with greater access to reliable public transit. Our planning work includes transportation, affordable housing, planning and zoning, economic development, business retention and improving equity in the corridor.

What is the Urban Circulator?

An urban circulator connects different areas of a city through a frequent transit service, like a streetcar or bus service, to move, or circulate, people through the city. A circulator is sometimes a loop, but it can also be a linear route where vehicles go back and forth with short wait times until the next vehicle arrives. An urban circulator is typically less then 3 miles, and sometimes as short as ½ mile. Urban circulators connect communities, encourage economic development, and create walkable, livable communities.

What is Transit, or Public Transportation?

Transit, or Public Transportation, is the system of vehicles and services of moving groups of people throughout the city. Buses, trains, streetcars, and ferries are all examples of modes of transit. For the North-South Urban Circulator, we are evaluating the feasibility of  implementing a streetcar. See below for more details.

So is Winston-Salem getting a streetcar?

We will take a high-level, strategic look into what it would take to build a streetcar line in the North-South Corridor.  

The City and Winston-Salem State University performed a previous streetcar study in 2014. This previous study examined an East-West streetcar linking the Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, Downtown, and the Innovation Quarter. For information on the City’s previous studies on the urban circulator, visit the Department of Transportation project page.  For information on the City’s previous studies on the urban circulator, visit the Department of Transportation project page.

Our current study is another effort to expand resources and mobility options central Winston-Salem. It would connect communities in the North-South Corridor with jobs, services and educational opportunities. 

In other cities where major transit investment has occurred, cities that have not planned proactively for how to accommodate growth while avoiding displacement of existing residents and businesses have negatively impacted some of the communities that they hoped to serve with improved transit. What is most important about this study is identifying ways to coordinate the many planning efforts already underway within the corridor, for the benefit of the residents and businesses that are already here today. In doing so, we hope to strengthen our community and to build links between initiatives around economic development, business retention, community planning, affordable housing, transportation, and equity - to help neighborhoods all along the corridor thrive, regardless of whether or not the City elects to pursue a streetcar project in the years ahead.

North-South Urban Circulator Study

Head over to the Winston-Salem Department of Transportation Urban Circulator website for all of the resources compiled as part of its previous Urban Circulator Study, including fact sheets, public meeting materials, and technical reports.

Current Neighborhood Plans

In past years, several land use plans have been developed for different areas in the North-South Corridor. We are building our recommendations to be compatible with and complimentary to these plans.

• East End Master Plan

• Cleveland Avenue Transformation Plan

• WSSU Campus Plan