From crime rates to traffic and library books: Daily life in Charlotte by the numbers

Mary Ramsey
·3 min read

Planes taking off and landing at Charlotte Douglas International Airport. Folks checking out books from their neighborhood Charlotte-Mecklenburg Library branch. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police officers responding to crime reports. Fast food flying out of drive-thru windows to customers.

Thousands of events big and small — many of which repeat each day — make up daily life for the more than 870,000 people who call Charlotte home.

The Charlotte Observer is looking at some of the people who make Charlotte run each day in jobs that often are overlooked; the “unseen Charlotte” that keeps the city going.

Here are just some of the numbers that define a day in the life of Charlotte:

  • CMPD will respond to an average of 19.7 violent crimes per day, based on 2022 crime statistics, and 88.6 property crimes. An average of almost 10 vehicles per day will be stolen, per CMPD crime data. There’s an average of 5.5 residential burglaries per day, and 5.7 commercial burglaries.

  • Charlotte Douglas International Airport averages “1,400 arrivals and departures and 118,000 people traveling to, from and through CLT each day,” according to the airport, coming in at “No. 5 worldwide for air traffic and No. 6 for passenger traffic.”

  • North Carolina Department of Transportation average daily traffic statistics show at least 322,000 cars use Interstates 85 and 77 at the busiest stretches in Mecklenburg County. State statistics for 2022 were not yet available, so the figure may be higher, due to traffic volume temporarily decreasing during the COVID-19 pandemic.

  • About 89 real estate transactions will happen each day in the Charlotte market, based on data from the monthly RE/MAX National Housing report.

  • An average of 2.2 properties are foreclosed on each day in the Charlotte real estate market, based on 2022 data from the real estate investment firm FortuneBuilders.

  • Less than one bankruptcy filing happens per day in Mecklenburg County, according to monthly data from the federal court system.

  • On a daily basis, an average of more than 4,000 people visit Charlotte-Mecklenburg library branches, according to the library. Including those — and many, many more online — patrons check out an average of close to 16,438 books and other materials every day.

  • The “master biscuit maker” at a single Bojangles location makes about 1,000 biscuits per eight-hour shift, the Greenville News reported previously. And that adds up, with 34 locations of the North Carolina-based chain across Charlotte.

  • An average of more than 29,000 bottles of spirits will be sold at 29 ABC stores across Mecklenburg County, according to 2022 data from the Mecklenburg County ABC Board, making the county North Carolina’s top ABC retailer “by sales volume.”

  • More than 200 dogs are being cared for at Charlotte-Mecklenburg Animal Care & Control’s shelter or through the group’s foster care program on a given day this April, per the shelter’s most recent dashboard update.

  • TreesCharlotte, a “public/private nonprofit collaboration” that works to improve Charlotte’s tree canopy, aims to plant “at least 5,000 trees a year,” an average of more than 13 trees planted a day.

  • About 38% of Mecklenburg County residents are living “within a 10-minute walk of a park,” per the Trust for Public Land, trailing the national average of 55%.

  • Every day, Charlotte businesses and residents throw out 5.48 million pounds of trash. But some of that trash gets a new life. A 2018 study estimated 11.5% of Charlotte waste is recycled or composted.

Observer staffers Anna Douglas and Catherine Muccigrosso contributed to the reporting of this story.