The three core counties of Wake, Durham, and Orange are the homes of the three research universities for which the area is named.

The Triangle J Council of Governments includes Chatham, Durham, Johnston, Lee, Moore, Orange, and Wake Counties.

[13] The northern Triangle counties of Person, Granville, Franklin, Vance, and Warren are part of the Kerr-Tar Regional Council of Governments.

Adding to the rivalries is the large number of graduates the high schools in the region send to each of the local universities.

The four ACC schools in the state, Duke, North Carolina, North Carolina State, and Wake Forest University (the last of which was originally located in the town of Wake Forest before moving to Winston-Salem in 1956), are referred to as Tobacco Road by sportscasters, particularly in basketball.

The region has only one professional team of the four major sports, the Carolina Hurricanes of the National Hockey League, based in Raleigh.

Since moving to the Research Triangle region from Hartford, Connecticut, they have enjoyed great success, including winning a Stanley Cup.

The North Carolina Courage began play in the National Women's Soccer League in 2017 after the owner of North Carolina FC bought the NWSL franchise rights of the Western New York Flash and relocated the NWSL franchise to the Triangle.

In Cary, North Carolina FC plays in the second-tier USL Championship The area also had a team in the fledgling World League of American Football – however, the Raleigh–Durham Skyhawks, coached by Roman Gabriel, did not exactly cover themselves in glory; they lost all 10 games of their inaugural (and only) season in 1991.

The region's growing high-technology community includes such companies as IBM, Lenovo, SAS Institute, Cisco Systems, NetApp, Red Hat, EMC Corporation, and Credit Suisse First Boston.

In addition to high-tech, the region is consistently ranked in the top three in the U.S. with concentration in life science companies.

Some of these companies include GlaxoSmithKline, Biogen Idec, BASF, Merck & Co., Novo Nordisk, Novozymes, and Pfizer.

The area fared relatively well during the late-2000s recession, ranked as the strongest region in North Carolina by the Brookings Institution and among the top 40 in the country.

Routes 1, 15, and 64 primarily serve the region as limited-access freeways or multilane highways with access roads.

US 1 enters the region from the southwest as the Claude E. Pope Memorial Highway and travels through suburban Apex where it merges with US 64 and continues northeast through Cary.

Capital Boulevard, which is designated US 1 for half of its route and US 401 the other is not a limited-access freeway, although it is a major thoroughfare through northeast Raleigh and into the northern downtown area.

North Carolina Highway 147 is a limited-access freeway that connects I-85 with Toll Route NC 540 in northwestern Wake County.

A partnering system of multiple public transportation agencies currently serves the Triangle region under the joint GoTriangle branding.

Triangle Transit also coordinates an extensive vanpool and rideshare program that serves the region's larger employers and commute destinations.

[18] It is located near the geographic center of The Triangle, 4+1⁄2 miles (7.2 km) northeast of the town of Morrisville in Wake County.

Midway, originally incorporated in Chicago, had some success after moving its operations to the midpoint of the eastern United States at RDU and its headquarters to Morrisville, NC.

Passenger growth hit 24% over the previous year, ranking RDU second only to Washington Dulles International Airport.

[20] As of June 2022, the airport will have international flights to Cancun, London, Montreal, Paris, Reykjavik and Toronto.

The COVID-19 pandemic significantly shrunk the operation, but by September 2022, Delta will be serving 21 destinations on aircraft ranging from the CRJ700 to the 767.

[22] The Raleigh–Durham–Fayetteville market is defined by Nielsen as including Chatham, Cumberland, Dunn, Durham, Granville, Halifax, Harnett, Hoke, Johnston, Lee, Moore, Northampton, Orange, Robeson, Vance, Wake, Warren, Wayne, and Wilson Counties, along with parts of Franklin County.