The N.C. 54/I-40 Corridor Study that lays out a recommended future for the crowded highway running from I-40 to the U.S. 15-501 cloverleaf at Glen Lennox affects me and a lot of other people in southwest Durham.

The study is impressive in its detail, covering the three miles along N.C. 54 virtually foot by foot. And it paints the big picture, all the way to 2035.

I don’t expect to be around to see what the N.C. 54 corridor looks like then. I’m more concerned with what it will look like in 2017.

If history is any guide, it will look much as it does today – only worse. The proposed twin office towers at the site of Friendship Baptist Church near the Farrington Road/N.C. 54 intersection are harbingers of the immediate future.

The corridor study is keenly aware of what’s happening along the developable segments of N.C. 54. In that respect, most of the study’s recommendations for mitigating congestion with superstreets and grade separations make sense. So does a dedicated bicycle path along the route.

But all the goodies come at a high price, well north of $100 million. Improvements for the spaghetti-like intersection with I-40 would gobble half that amount, and that’s assuming residents and business interests would accept noisy and unsightly flyovers.

Or, for that matter, converting an alley behind the Falconbridge strip mall into a through street from Falconbridge Drive to Farrington Road. – good luck with that one.

I can’t see most of these ideas materializing. They would amount to shoehorning unpopular solutions into an already developed area south of N.C./54-Farrington Road and the rapidly expanding sites north of what is arguably one of the most hair-raising intersections in the state.

So what to do about the immovable object (development) and the irresistible force (traffic)?

Absent ripping up everything and starting over, not much.

Those who look to light rail for the answer will be sorely disappointed in the corridor study’s objective assessment of this pricey and most romantic of people-movers.

Light rail will have no observable effect on traffic congestion. Now there’s honesty in black and white.

No, the true purpose of light rail lies in channeling residential, retail, office and parking along nodes – stations – of the route. In this case, from Alston Avenue in Durham to UNC Hospitals in Chapel Hill.

At any rate, the study doesn’t expect light rail until 2025. I think that’s optimistic, because the cost of light rail rises with every new estimate (the tab for Charlotte’s initial nine-mile route doubled). Moreover, light rail will be a separately funded project from N.C.54/I-40.

The dark eminence hanging over the N.C. 54 corridor is, as usual, a paucity of dollars. State and federal austerity likely will keep the study’s major recommendations on ice.

Fortunately, more cost-conscious ideas, such as the bikeway and a slip ramp from Farrington Road to I-40 eastbound (the existing eastbound ramp off N.C. 54 would be removed) should be feasible.

Otherwise, call N.C. 54 the Triangle’s Street of Dreams. Mostly bad ones.