Clock is ticking on Charlotte toll road approval | Hour 3

What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to three on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to dpekclendershow dot com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button. Get every episode for free right to your smartphone or tablet, And again, thank you so much for your support. Alrighty, let's go to another benign topic, the I seventy seven toll roads. Look, these are just the stories that happen to be, you know, developing, and so I bring them to you for discussion. All right. So, the Charlotte Regional Transportation Planning Organization, or the CRTPO, or as I call it, the CURTIPO, they voted back in May to rescind support for the estimated four point three billion dollar project right to create toll lanes from the South Carolina border to basically Exit twelve Center City in Charlotte. Right on I seventy seven. Representatives of Charlotte, Mecklemberg County, Davidson, Monroe, Cornelius Matthews, Mint Hill and Huntersville all supported the recision at the time. The recision means the flip flop, which they said, no, we don't want to do it. We are we are flipping on our support and we are going to now say no. Okay, after a decade of saying yes, they now say no. Shortly after, the Republican controlled General Assembly included a provision in the state budget that they just passed a couple of weeks back. That provision in the budget would force Charlotte and other local governments to pay the state back for millions of dollars that the state spent developing the plan, right, because now they don't support it, whereas for a decade they did support it. So the state kept on with the planning. And then when they produced the plans and everybody was like, no, we don't want that, and so they blocked it. And so now the state's like, okay, we'll pay us back for all of the engineering and design work that we have done over a decade. The budget marks October fifth as the deadline for a decision to be made here, okay. So the state has told the local governing bodies that if you voted against this as a member of Kurtipo, right, that you have to now pay the state back. And it's based on. Essentially it's a per capita kind of a thing based on the Curtipo membership. And so you've got in the Curtipo membership that they have weighted votes. So I think it's like Charlotte's. Got thirty one votes basically on the Curdipo, which has I think the total governing vote totals are like seventy and so it's broken up based on population. And this has always been sort of a challenge whenever you're doing a regional body like this or any other regional body, is that the small towns quote unquote the small towns and they're not so small anymore, but they are smaller than Charlotte, and so they don't want to get bigfooted by Charlotte. Right, So if Charlotte wants something, and all of the six small cities around Charlotte in Mecklimberg County and they don't want something, they don't want Charlotte to have enough votes to outvote all of the six small cities. Right, Charlotte doesn't want the six small cities to have enough votes to block something that they want to do. So this is always a challenge when you're creating a regional body as to how you line up the votes. And so Curtipo has this weighted voting thing, and it's not just Mecklimber County. Obviously, You've got Monroe in there as well. I think who else is in there? I think Salisbury may be in there, well maybe or Statesville, I forget. So there are non Mecklumberg County jurisdictions and you have like the state is in there, and what Mecklinberg County is in there? So the state comes along and says, okay, you're blocking this vote now, or you're blocking the project now. So you got to pay us back for all of the work that we have done and all the millions of dollars we have spent at the state level doing this project that now you don't want anymore. Charlotte City Council Member Ed Driggs, who represents the city of Charlotte on the CURTIPO, said Charlotte's position remains unchanged at this time. City officials are considering financing an independent study that looks at alternatives for I seventy seven South improvements. Okay, So the city is like, we'll take a look. We need time to do our own investigation and run our own alternative study to see if there's some other better way to do this right this. I know the state has spent a decade doing this, but now the city is like, we're going to do we want to do something else, we want to do another study. He said. The real question about this is whether or not we can do the things my colleagues would like to do in the time available. Okay, So they had this Curtipo meeting last night. This is where Ed Drags made the comment, and he is correct, right, Like, if you're on a deadline of October fifth, then you're going to have to decide one way or the other. Now, maybe the state will give them an extension. I don't know. I don't think. Well, they are still in sessions, so I guess they could run an amendment or something. I don't know, but like, I feel like this could have been something that the city had communicated or Curtipo could have said to them, like we want to run our an independent study, we want to look at this ourselves. Can you give us an additional year let's say, right, because in the grand scheme of things, pushing it out one year is probably not going to be that massive of an impact, right, But they didn't do that. Doesn't sound like anybody had this idea to do the independent study before the Curtipo meeting. I guess I don't know, But now they're talking about doing that. I don't know who's going to pay for it, but I mean I do it's always us. So yeah, we're gonna now we're going to pay for another study that the state just did one and now we're going to pay for another study that's going to tell us what because like I seventy seven, it like you're either going to widen it out on the sides and add more lanes on the sides, or are you're going to do a double decker. You're going to go up, which is what the state recommended, and that's why, and because of that cost of the project, going up is actually a cheaper alternative, according to the state than going out, because you've got to buy up all the land all along the sides of I seventy seven, So you're gonna have to take all that property anyway, So what are you going to do. You either go out, you go up, or you go what underground? So maybe they're gonna look at a tunnel. You want to do a tunnel, you go underneath as a bypass. So if you're not looking to do any stops, you know, in the first twelve miles or so, we're going to bore underneath I seventy seven and do a tunnel under the city and then pop you out so you're on the other side of the city for through traffic. Basically, Okay, now, how do you find it? No idea, because the state is saying that, like, we are not able to do this project, and the proposal that they had was like four billion dollars. And in order to do the project, they're bringing in the private company that's going to charge the tolls to recoup the cost of the price of the project because the state does not have the money that it wants to pull from all of the other projects around the state that it has to do. So that's that's part of it. Like you can come up with a different proposal from a design standpoint, you still have to solve the economics of it. You've got to solve who pays for it? How is it paid for. And if people are opposed to toll anes, or people are opposed to widening the roads, or opposed to just you know, increasing capacity at all. Right, you got you've got different reasons for people to be opposed to this. But now the city and the surrounding cities that voted no, now they're on a deadline. All right. For over a year now you've heard me talking about Create a video. 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Yeah, I doubt a space station on Mars is going to come in at under four billion. But I don't understand sound a kind of black pilly why bother right? I do actually have somebody else who said something along those lines. Here we go, seven oh four number. Does anybody believe the toll lane will fix anything? After ten years or more of construction and ten years of growth, it will be out of date before it's complete, yield a net of zero improvement. Okay, Yeah, so we should just not do anything. You've convinced me seven oh four number, we should? Yeah, I mean, it's already the most congested strip of highway in the state, and it's projected to carry somewhere around a quarter of a million cars per day within the next decade. So and we're right now I think where it's somewhere. I think it's like one hundred and seventy thousand. So yeah, we should just like let it get worse. I'm not sure what's the point. I just let it clog up and clog up and clog up and clog up, and then nobody will be able to get anywhere from the border into center City. Not sure. So it sounds like a solution to me. Oh, that's on the data centers from the last hour seven oh four number, says Pete, I can do the study for the city for free. I'll just ask Ai. That's bringing it together, bringing it all together. There you go, Jefferson asks, whatever happened to em and domain? It still exists. And what they will do is they will first no matter what the project is, right, whether they whether they were to widen it to the sides or they are to go up, they still have to acquire land. Either way, there's going to be way more land acquisition if they widen than if they go up, which makes sense right. So if they widen, they will go to those property owners. And there's a lot of businesses along I seventy seven in this twelve mile strip that we're talking about, and so they will go to them and they'll say, we're making you an offer on your property to buy it, but make no mistake, if you refuse our offer, we will seize it. So that that's the eminent domain part. So they will pay you, but the businesses will be like and homeowners because this is the neighborhood in centers or yeah, yeah, in center city, I guess, or right outside center city. The neighborhood. They're like, you know, you're impacting our neighborhood. You're going to buy up. I think they would have to lose. They would lose like a dozen homes, and they you know, they're gonna get paid for the homes. But I'm sure those people will say that you're not going to pay me what it's actually worth. If I wanted to sell it, I could get more money for it or whatever. So that's always sort of the fight with the eminent domain stuff. But yes, they can, they can't do that. If people refuse, then they can use eminent domain. But I believe they still caught a check. But people usually say that the check is not what the value really is. It's always lower. Scott says, Pete. Guess what, There's a lot of support south of the border from York and Chester and Lancaster counties, but nobody seems to consider that correct. Yeah, York County. I remember when I was working down in rock Hill at the radio station down there, and I would cover the York County Council meetings and they did the penny for Progress. I remember when they widened I seventy seven, they built out four lanes south of the border right because of all of the growth that York County and rock Hill and Fort Mill had been experiencing people living there and commuting into Charlotte. And so then it, you know, it goes down to three lanes into and then I remember, like before that, I was making the commute from rock Hill all the way into North Charlotte University City area, and I was making that commute when I seventy seven was being wide into three lanes. So I am very much aware of the impact of the traffic and the congestion as well as the construction and the widening. And you know, the alternative here is that you don't do anything like the year earlier. Exter just said, so why bother? So don't build it. Okay, So we don't build it, and then you get no more economic development down there, and you get you actually have a loss. People then leave the area because you can't you can't drive around in it. Everything is clogged, So then people flee and then you you lose tax base. I don't know if that's a solution. I'm open to ideas that are solutions, but as far as I can tell, we've got three You widen it at a greater expense than four billion. You build up in a double A in a double decker kind of plan that the DOT put together, or you go underneath. No idea what that would cost, I feel like, but I don't know, but I feel like that might be way more expensive. And I'm only basing that on the big dig Remember that thing up in Boston a couple decades ago whenever that was, And that thing was super expensive. But I mean they had other challenges. I think they were going underwater and stuff like that, So it might be more economical and feasible to go underneath. And once you go underneath, then I kind of feel like if you built it wide enough, like you'd be able to expand more lanes underneath. But like, I don't know how you pop it out, Like where does it come out? Where does it rejoin? Like that seems to me to be like a pretty big project, but I don't know. Maybe that'll be part of the study that the locals will pay for. Meanwhile, the state has offered a bribe, sorry an incentive, an incentive to the local communities if they were to flip their votes back to their original support, if they were to drop their opposition and come back over and support the project. The state will bribe these I'm sorry, incentivize the local by giving them three hundred million dollars in community benefits. And some of those benefits include a grocery stores. So we're going to go zoron Mamdani style here. I guess, just what are we even doing here? People from the text line seven oh four number says okay, so eliminate the toll just to add the lanes, okay, with what money? That's the problem is the state doesn't have the funds to do a four point three whatever it is, billion dollar project, and so without all of the money, you don't get the project, which is why they're doing the partnership with the private company to do the toll lanes, and that then allows the project to move forward. Otherwise you got to wait and compete with every other project across the state. So I'm just dealing with reality. Danny said, Oh my goodness, so on professional, I thought I muted you. What's going on? I thought I muted you phone? Anyway, Sorry, I think, Danny says, I think we ought to do away with the toll roads and put in more trains and Charlotte is having so much success with those that which Remember, people oppose that too, right. I remember having all of the fights with the beginning of the light rail system and would cover city council meetings and I would discuss this stuff with Pat McCrory, the mayor at the time, and he was a big proponent of the light rail line and you know the and people were like, oh, it's gonna you know, it's not going to solve congestion and all this stuff, and he always argued like, this gives options, right, so you focus more dense development along the light rail line, and it hopefully gets people, you know, to take the train into center city rather than driving it, and so you've got more options. But people oppose that too. So yeah, I like, I I don't know what to tell people. They're just you know, people are just you know, angry at congestion. I get it. But as I always say, we are traffic. Whenever you get on the road, your traffic coach Cloaks says five dollars a mile to use the lane expansion. No thanks, okay, Well, and that's the beauty of it is that you don't have to use it. As I've said before. You don't have to use it, but if you want to use it, you can. If you want to use it occasionally, That's how I treat toll roads. I don't use them frequently, but if you know traffic is all jammed up and I got to be someplace, or I don't want to sit in the traffic, then I will. I'll pay ten bucks and I'll get through the traffic faster. The thing here now is the KURTIPO, the Regional, the Charlotte Regional Transportation Planning Organization. They got decisions to make. These local bodies have decisions to make. Ed Driggs on City Council said, the concern I have is that we aren't very clear about what's possible after September, and that's that's fair. Now. Matthews is a no on the project. The mayor there, John Higden, said the current deadline makes it hard for true alternative analysis to be completed. He also questioned the amount that the state is demanding in repayment. The Dot State DOT has said that it's spent about sixty million dollars on the project already, but Higden said he and other officials have not been provided an itemized list to verify that number. And look, I think that's fair. That's fair. You know, if the state is saying we spend sixty million dollars on this, okay, well show me the bill. Like I'm you know, you go to a restaurant and they just bring out a bill and just has a number on it. It's like, well, I want to see everything that I paid for. Right. The town of Cornelius is reversing its opposition to the project, mainly because they don't want to pay the penalty. Davidson's mayor said. His town has not made any decision on changing the vote, but he pointed out Rusty Knox pointed out that he has voted against the project since day one. Huntersville will support the toll project when the vote comes in September because the financial penalty. They don't want to pay the penalty. Mecklenburg County remains a no. It's not clear. According to the Charlotte Observer story by DJ Simmons, it's not clear what mint Hill is going to do, the City of Monroe already voted to reverse course and support the project, citing the penalty, and the vote will likely be determined by Charlotte's position. Unless more municipalities flip. Charlotte holds thirty one votes out of Kurtipo's seventy four, a simple majority is needed to maintain the decision. The Charlotte City Council will meet next on Monday, and then the CURTIPO has a meeting set for September twenty third, So that is basically the last time that they're going to get a chance to vote yay or nay, to flip or hold before the October fifth deadline. And let me see here, this is. Oh yeah, polling Charlotte Observer reporting on a poll from Colt Public Relations. This was a couple weeks ago. A portion of Charlotte voters see traffic congestion as a major problem in their daily lives, with most supports an expansion of I seventy seven South. This is according to a new poll by local pr firm CLT Public Relations. Although I think these guys may be affiliated or something with the Chamber, with the local business community. The NCDOT Secretary Daniel Johnson said in a letter that up to three hundred million dollars in community investments could be unlocked if the controversial project is restored. This is what I am referring to as the bribe, sorry incentives, but yeah, like three hundred million dollars. So you're gonna find three hundred million for. The project or for for us to do some parks, probably some bike lanes or something. It would be up to us, you know, maybe some grocery stores in the food desert area. Right. A majority of the poll's respondents were white, with around one third identifying as black. Eight in ten ten voters responded were homeowners, Almost half were listed as Democrats, with the rest made up of Republicans and unaffiliated voters. Okay, so that's the makeup of the of the respondents. It's got a margin of error plus or minus six percent. All right, So, according to the polling, seven in ten voters were aware of the decision to rescind support for the I seventy seven project. Eight out of ten respondents also agree traffic congestion is a major problem. The survey showed almost six in ten disapproved of the job the city council is currently doing overall. So there city council underwater, that's what that says. There, Yeah, not a lot of support for council NCDOT said in a recently released letter that if the project is approved, it could bring community benefits for the bribe, I mean the investments and bike paths, greenways, and recreation spaces. So it says here less than twenty percent of respondents supported any form of tax increase to support the project. Okay, so. You don't want to pay any more taxes to pay for the project, and we don't want to pay tools for the for the project. So it sounds like we don't want the project, although people say we do need we do need some relief from the congestion, So we we want the solution, but we don't. Want to pay for it. That's okay, that's makes sense. Let me go back to the text line here. Five four zero number says not enough people you the current seventy seven toll lanes to make a difference. What will be different with the new ones the Raleigh bribery I mean donation. Yeah, So there is this there is this perception that nobody uses the tolll aanes in North mech on that project. And I get messages like this all the time where people are like, I never see anybody driving on the tollin Okay, the toll aane company, they know how many people are using those lanes, and they're making money because they have to, right, And the purpose of the tolllane is not to fill it all the way up. The purpose of the tolllane is to pay so you don't have to sit in congestion on the tollane, right. So then the company monitors the traffic flow to make sure that it's not congested. So, I mean, I've been in the tolllane. I've used that tolline a couple times since it got built. And then I'm not in the general purpose lanes adding to that congestion. Let me see here five. Oh, I already did that one five to four and oh, here we go. See here's the problem with using using the Wi Fi in here. See I unplugged because I'm trying to get out of the studio and I unplugged the Wi Fi or unplugged my hotspot. If there's so much support for this south of the border, then why don't we look into having them help us pay for it? Well, they paid for theirs. They didn't ask us. They didn't ask Charlotte to pay for their widening to four lanes, right, should we have paid for their widening of I seventy seven. They paid for theirs, so they support They support the widening here, Bain says, with them in a domain, the price is negotiable. Typically the offer is pretty accurate on the existing house, but low when you think of replacement value. That's the tricky part is finding another house best favorite. Russ says, all this discussion keeps bringing me back to one obvious solution, which is the carda pult. Yes, the carda poult. Maybe this could be part of their study. Like a big trebuche at the border, you drive over it and it flings the vehicles up and over the city. Right then they would land, which we haven't really worked out the landing, but when you get them off the road and fling them over the city. Tony says the state should use AI and data centers to learn how bugs Bunny dug all of his tunnels so efficiently. I seventy seven congestion problem solved, Spencer the astro nerds says Lancaster, York and rock Hill are for it. When will they pony up again? They already ponied up, They already paid for their construction. They were twenty years ahead of us. They widened all of their lanes, and they didn't ask us to pay for it. Tripp says, can you clear something up for me. If Charlotte requested a proposal for I seventy seven from the state, why are we obligated to pay for the work put into the proposal if the proposal was not accepted. It is not as simple as Charlotte requesting a proposal. Like, the way the mechanism works is you've got the state, and we have more state owned roads in North Carolina than every other state in the country except for Texas. And so they have all of these divisions like DOT divisions, and then you have the regional planning boards and stuff. And so when the state is like, okay, everybody give us your asks, right, so everybody generates the asks. And as was reported this is from Dalfred Owns at WBTV, DOT has been doing this work since twenty fourteen, right, So when they asked the state to do all of this work, it's not like, hey, submit a proposal and then we'll take a look at it. This has been a decade in the a decade long process and they've taken like eight or nine votes along the way to keep proceeding forward, right, So they keep moving forward, keep moving forward, keep moving forward. And then here's the here's the drawing, and it's like, okay, we're out. So that's how that that's how that went down. If they had reservations about a toll lane or whatever, like, I don't like. I'm not sure what changed except the activists opposing the impact on McQuary Heights neighborhood. That seems to be the only thing that changed. Where do all the gas, gas tax and other tax dollars that we pay the state go? They go to other projects. They're going to go to this project too, but there's not enough generated to pay for all the projects. So you either wait in line for all of the money to be generated, right, and other projects put on back burners for this one around the state. And then you get into the politics of it, right, because if you're like, Okay, well we need to save up four billion dollars for a twelve mile stretch and or six billion or ten billion if you want a tunnel underneath or something like that, we got to save up all this money. So now nobody else gets any projects. Do you think other residents throughout the state. Do you think other politicians throughout the state you think they're going to be okay with that? I don't right, I think they're going to fight against that. I think they'll oppose it. So that's why you come up with the quote public private partnership and the toll lanes. That's why that's the system we have. Maybe we should look to, I don't know, move some of the state ownership of roads back to the counties. You're gonna pay more taxes. But I know nobody wants to do that either. So here we are. All right. That'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast, so if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to thepetecallnershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.