Is NCDOT bribing Charlotte to flip its vote on I-77 toll road project? | 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 thepetecleanershow dot com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button, get every episode for free, rite to your smartphone or tablet, and again, thank you so much for your support. All Right, We talked earlier in the week, as we always do on Tuesdays, with Andrew Dunn from long Leaf Politics, and we talked with him about the offer from the North Carolina Transportation Secretary to the various Charlotte region officials. The offer was. Of about three hundred million dollars if they would reverse themselves and move forward with the I seventy seven toll road project. I'm trying to think, is there a word that I could use to describe that offer? We I mean, yeah, we use sweetener. I think that's one of the preferred terms that people are throwing around the Charlotte area. Charlotte two, the city. We're being offered sweeteners. A sweetener three hundred million dollars if we drop opposition to the toll road project that the NCDOT has planned, right and has been working on these plans for like a decade or two. It's been a long time. Sixty million dollars, I want to say a little bit more has already been devoted to to the work that they have been conducting in order to draft up the designs. And they unveiled the design and then people, you know, lost their minds about the design all the impact here and you know don't like toll roads there, and like there were there was opposition from several quarters, right, you had the activist wing that basically said the plan is racist because I seventy seven through this stretch goes from the South Carolina border up to basically exit Exit twelve right into center City. And one of the neighborhoods that is that well was. Split up by the I seventy seven project initially was a neighborhood is a neighborhood called McCrory Heights, no relation to the former mayor. And so this air, yeah, the mcquarie Heights Staber and so this neighborhood says, well, you're going to now expand I seventy seven, not width wise, but vertically they're going, right, they want to do like a like a second deck. I think was the that was the idea because they don't have enough room, because I seventy seven really never should have been built where it was built and without room to expand. So, I mean, that's just my non engineering opinion on this. I don't think any interstates should be running through cities. I don't. I think it is counter to the purpose. Right, the original purpose of the interstate highway program was to what was to allow for the movement of tanks. I mean basically, right. It was so you get tanks and military vehicles that could you know, quickly move down the road, get to various locations, and yes, in the meantime, when they're not being used by tanks, then we can use them. Sure, and it would connect all the cities and all of that. But they ran these interstates through cities, and you know, they gobbled up land and they knocked down buildings, and they split cities apart. And so as the cities grew. More people move in, more traffic, more cars, and you get lots and lots of congestion. Then you have the problem with all of the exits, right, so you're not creating a bypass. So now you've defeated the purpose of what it was originally intended to do, which was to move people more quickly on these interstates. Right, Well, they're not going to move. I seventy seven and I don't even know what that would cost. So they're like, Okay, well, what do we do. We have to expand it. It is the most congested stretch of road in the entire state. I think it's the most heavily traveled stretch of road as well, So something needs to be done. It's maxed out basically right now at three lanes. I remember when they made it three lanes from two. I was commuting. I was living in rock Hill, South Carolina, and I was commuting all the way up to University City every day during that construction, Like that was brutal. Okay, so they're wanting to expand the lanes, but the cost of doing so is very high. And so what they do with the toll roads is they bring in a private company. The company builds it with some money from the state, but mostly it's the private company. They then set up the toll lanes and the tolls then pay the company back over the course of you know, decades whatever it is. And by the way, NCDOT is relying more on the toll lanes because studies, and I double checked this this morning, the studies indicate that toll roads do in fact help ease congestion. And I know some people don't believe this, but that's what the studies coming from all these different you know institutes, you know, traffic institutes and stuff, and these universities that do the studies and such, and this is what they find is that it does, in fact help to ease congestion. You're never going to get rid of it because again, I seventy seven should never have been built here in the first place. It should have been sort of more of a bypass with you know, one or two exits versus twelve exits, you know, or eleven exits over you know, eleven miles. So you got the mcquarie Heights neighborhood. They're mad, They're like, no, we don't want this because it's going to require the demolition of I think it's like a dozen houses or something. Eleven eleven homes would be you know, bought from the homeowners, and that's the whole eminent domain kind of argument, and will they get fair value for it and whatnot? There it's going to eat up I think it's Wilmore Park is going to be affected by it or maybe eliminated. One of the parks along I seventy seven is also going to be impacted. So yes, there are going to be impacts, but they can't go wider because then you're you're you're gonna be building way more or you're gonna be buying up way more properties. And you know, eminent domain would apply for a lot more businesses and other stuff along I seventy seven. So the plan was a double decker. I've one of the things we've talked about here before is maybe do a tunnel, maybe go underneath. I don't know what that would cost, probably a whole lot more. So there is the project itself, and then there is the concept of toll roads. So the project itself has. Engendered opposition, and that opposition because it is a predominantly black neighborhood, McCrary Heights, and the majority on city Council is Democrat, and so that activist argument holds a lot of purchase for the citting City council members not more. I think three or four of them are looking to be mayor, so like they're not wishing to anger the constituents and this this voting block in their base. And then you have the anti toll road argument. That's another angle of opposition coming in. So they killed it. Charlotte City Council, Mecklinberg County commissioners, several of the quote unquote small towns in Mecklinberg County that all serve on this this regional body that helps to make you know, they make recommendations on projects and all of that called the CRTPO or the CURTIPO as I call it, they rescinded their support for the project. And so now the NCDOT turns around and says, well, we already spent sixty million dollars drafting designs and doing all of the research and doing all of the stuff to get to this point, and you guys approved us all along the way, and now you're withholding support. Now you say you don't want it. And so that prompted backlash from the state General Assembly, for example, which says, well, you cost the state sixty million dollars. So we're going to recoup that cost. And so some of the local municipalities. I think Cornelius just did this. I have the story here in Yeah, Cornelius is changing its tune and its vote on the I seventy seven South Toll Lane project. The mayor says the decision comes down to the financial penalties they would have to repay three to three and a half million dollars. So they're like, okay, we'll flip our vote, and now we get this idea of a sweetener. I kind of feel like there's another word for this, though. It'll come to me, all right. 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So there's the there's a carrot and a stick. The stick is you got to repay NCDOT sixty million dollars for all of the design work they've already put into the I seventy seven project. And here's the carrot. If you do, not only will we not recoup that sixty million from all of the the bodies that voted against the project, but we will also give you three hundred million dollars to do some things that actually have nothing to do with transportation are not really clear. They came up with this list of various things. One of them is a grocery stores. So we're going the Zoron Mamdani route here. So Charlotte Observer has the story from DJ Simmons with a quote from Secretary Daniel Johnson. This project presents a rare opportunity to improve mobility while reconnecting communities that have lived with the impacts of the interstate for generations. This is according to a letter to community stakeholders, but some residents have pointed out the letter did not represent an ironclad commitment, nor did it address their main concern, which is the project's design. Talks of revisiting the estimated four point three billion dollar project picked up after the state budget signed into law early in July, included a provision that would force Charlotte and any other local government that voted against approval they would have to pay back the sixty million dollars that NCDOT used to design the project. The Charlotte Regional Transportation Planning Organization, or KURTIPO, is now expected to make a decision in September. Okay, so they're going to revisit this idea. So, the state Department of Transportation plan to add to lanes to an eleven mile stretch from Uptown to the South Carolina border in order to address congestion. The Charlotte Regional Transportation Board approved a public private funding agreement in twenty twenty four. It would see the state own the lanes while partnering with a contractor to design, build, finance, operate. And maintain them. Okay, so this would be funded only through those who paid to use the road. The corridor has the state's highest congestion levels, seeing over one hundred and sixty thousand cars a day. The agency estimates that with or without toll lanes, I seventy seven is expected to see a twenty five five percent increase in traffic by the year twenty fifty, So like twenty five years from now, meaning the roadway we'll have somewhere around two hundred thousand cars per day, assuming and this is a big assumption, that we don't have the flying cars by then, okay, because if we get flying cars, I think a lot of this is moot, you know. Charlotte City Council and Curtipo rescinded support for the project back in May, citing concerns of the design and the impact on communities near the interstate. To revive the project and not lose the six hundred million committed by NCDOT, the Kurdipo board would have to undo its previous vote, and they've only got until October fifth to do that, okay, So unless they do like an emergency meeting, they've got a meeting in September. The deadline comes through a provision in the state budget that requires any municipality whose representative voted to end the project to repay sixty million that was spent on preliminary design and engineering, the municipalities would be expected to pay the state on a proportional basis. Okay, So, the Regional Transportation Board KURTIPO has twenty seven members with seventy four votes. Votes are weighted based on population. I believe Charlotte gets thirty one of the seventy four votes. It means the city has a very large say in the decision, but that also means it would face the heaviest penalty right because they cast thirty one votes against the project. Mecklimber County, Matthews, and Charlotte so far have remained a no on the project. Monroe and Cornelius they have anounced plans to reverse their decision because of the penalty. In his letter to stakeholders, Secretary Johnson said if the project is not approved, it will be pulled from the state's list of approved projects. And he said, if this project is not going to move forward, I hope to have the allocated funding reprogrammed as soon as possible to meet the growing demand for infrastructure investment throughout North Carolina. And this is what I warned ahead of the of the May vote is that if you say no, if they're going to reverse course and they're going to say we don't like this design, we don't like it, we're out. Like NCDOT is going to reallocate those funds away, it's going to go to other parts of the state, and then I seventy seven is going to have to get back in the queue, back in the line. I don't know where it would go. It's the most congested strip in the state. So I would like to think it would stay pretty high up in the funding, but. Don't know. It could be delayed by decades. So this is where we are. I don't like, by the way, this three hundred million dollars sweetener offer, this bribe, I do not like it. Over on the text line seven oh four number says sixty million dollars on planning. How many miles of I seventy seven like eleven miles? Government is so great, so like sixty mins. That's like what like five and a half or so five and a quarter million per mile over the course of a decade, decade and a half that they've been working on the plans. And I have no idea. During the newscast you heard a county commissioner they talked about this last night, Lee Altman, and she said, like, she's not even she doesn't even believe the number of sixty million. I've seen no accounting for that either, So it does seem to be a nice round number. So I do wonder, like. How did you actually calculate these costs? You know, John says, instead of bribing Charlotte with three hundred million dollars, why doesn't the NCDOT just pay the thirty homeowners half a million each, which is most likely way over the value of the property, and that's fifteen million instead of three hundred million. I like it, John, as long as we are we we have already determined what the state is. So now we're just taggling over price. Right, So if you have no ethical problem about throwing three hundred million dollars at local officials to change their votes, which I think qualifies as bribery, I think that's what the Treasury or the Transportation Secretary is essentially saying, is I will bribe you with three hundred million dollars so you approve this project. If you already are are are going to adopt that ethic, then why would you not just pay off the homeowners. It'd be way cheaper, and then they would stop complaining, they would get their cash. They actually might turn into big proponents of the project. They could say, Hey, I'm gonna get half a million dollars. It's fantastic. So that's a good idea, John, I like it. Allen says people have to understand that it takes a lot of organizational bandwidth to set up a viable payola system. These are very difficult systems to create. Yes, Mike, here's an idea. Change all the signage on I seventy seven that is inside the forty five loop, change it to I seventy seven business, and then add signs to four eighty five that say I seventy seven bypass. But Okay, I like the idea, But I don't know if I mean, does Google Maps or like the map apps to these things. They search for the quickest route, right, so it's not or maybe not. Maybe it always sends you on the bypass versus the business, and maybe that would get at some of this. The problem is, and as trust me, because I am on four eighty five quite a bit. Just because we have relatives that live, like clear on the other side of the county, actually outside of the county. So I have to go on to four eighty five, and there really isn't a good way, Like you're either going to go all the way around on the north side, you're gonna go all the way around on the south side of the loop, or you can try to take eighty five. But you know, good luck with that if you know it's if it's a weekday, So there isn't really a great like that's a that's way out of the way. And four eighty five also has a toll lane, and it also gets really congested in the southeast quadrant down there, right, So I'm not sure that's a real bypass, sure, but I like the idea of I like the concept of a bypass. I just don't know where it would go because you're going to run into any of these all of the problems that people have with this project. You're going to have with any project, any bypass project, especially if you make it a toll road. Carl says Monroe had instructed their representative to vote in favor of the toll lanes, But what did Sir Luta Anthony Doo voted to terminate the project the next Really, I didn't know that. The Monroe City Council told her to vote one way and she voted the opposite. The next week Monroe City Council had a special meeting to change that. They also removed her as the representative, and she is running for mayor. I did not hear that. I had not heard that, Carl. That is very interesting, and by interesting I mean corrupt. I mean but on her part, like that's you've been Your vote is being directed by the council, even if your personal opinion is the opposite. You don't get to cast the vote the way you want to. You're casting your vote. For the body. Uh seven oh four numbers says this is a great toll aane discussion. My personal experience is that the I seventy seven current tollanes have not impacted congestion at all. Drive it every day. The original toll advocates admitted that the lanes were not to reduce congestion, but instead give people a choice. People choose not to take it because of the cost. If it doesn't reduce congestion, what is the point I would favor the lanes if they had a fixed lower cost like the Monroe bypassed tollings. Okay, so first off, it does obviously reduce congestion. I say obviously because any vehicle that rides in the toll lanes is now not in the general purpose lane, and if it's in the general purpose lane, that is an increase in the congestion of those lanes. So any vehicle that you get out of the general purpose lanes into the toll lanes is going to reduce the congestion. Now you may say it's not a lot, you could say it's minimal. That's fine. I haven't seen any studies on that strip. But they do in fact move cars out of the general purpose lanes, and so therefore that is a reduction in the congestion, because that's what congestion is. It's just a reduction in the vehicles in those lanes. Chuck texts in Pete. I understand the sentimentality of neighborhoods, but they are living besides seventy seven, and it's like a machine that never shuts down. If they have a chance to get a fair price for a home that may never otherwise sell because of the location, then it would be a great opportunity for relocation. I mean, flee to the country if nothing else, find a quieter life. David says, as a. Libertarian pete, I can't believe you would agree to pay for something twice. That's a shocker. I'm not paying for it twice. I don't understand this argument that we're paying for it twice. You're not paying for it twice. The private company is building the road like that's the state kicks in like six hundred million, but then the private company funds it with like four billion in debt that they take on. Right, they'll they'll borrow, they'll take loans, right, they'll borrow, they build the road, and. Then they charge. See as as a libertarian, user fees are generally more acceptable. So if you don't want to use those lanes, then you don't drive on them. So I mean there is that the state is putting in some money towards that, but it's not like because otherwise it doesn't get built because the state doesn't have that kind of money to do this one project. They're looking at the entire. State, especially since each step of the way they have promised and under delivered. Some people would say, lied, I don't know, okay about what I don't know. So the proof is we have our tollings, we have our outer belt, and we still have traffic and predictable areas every single day, not every other day, not once in a blue moon, not only on holidays, every stinking day. Yeah, well that is life in a top twenty top twenty five city. Every city has congestion. You will not find a city that does not experience traffic jams, rush hour congestion. We are the traffic. I understand. That's not the way it used to be. I do get that. However, this is what happens in a city. It's like people complaining about it being noisy in uptown, Like, yeah, you're in a city. They are noisy, they're loud, oftentimes a little smelly. You get a lot of traffic because you have a lot of people. Like that's the deal. And the outer belt we still have traffic, right, You're never when you add lanes they fill up, Like that's the the I mean, I understand, Like the idea is, yeah, well we can build more lanes and then it makes everything less congested. But like what the study show is that when you build more lanes they fill up. So because it opens up more areas for development, right, people are now able to travel farther away in different directions, and stuff and stuff gets developed. The interstate highway system was designed to move military assets, but our enemies wouldn't even have to bomb it to totally disable it. Just park a car on the shoulder every ten miles or so and you can cripple the whole thing. Yeah. This is the other thing too, Like when I say we are the traffic, we are, and like just because we're on the road with each other at the same time, but a lot of people act like they've never seen a disabled vehicle on the side of the road, and so everybody slows down, break checks. People drive like morons, right, and all of that causes the congestion as well. That text was from Russ. This is from. D Animal who says, go ahead and use the tax dollars for North Carolina to do the seventy seven toll lanes. It's not there's a private company, okay, but since the taxpayers are paying for it, maybe they should be given a ten year pass. If you have a North Carolina tag, just maybe forty five miles to bypass forty five mile bypass to save twelve miles. Yeah, that's why I don't think using the outer loop would work as a bypass. Hey, you know what, we could use those flock cameras to scan the license plates and let you're not allowed on this road. You're not gonna get charged. I've said it before, I'll say it again, says Rodney. Close all the ramps except the ones to forty five and I two, seventy seven and eighty five. Close the rest of them. Make it a thoroughfare, and that is another way to go right. Close every ramp, and now seventy seven is not going to be used for a lot of that local traffic. You'll have to find some other way to go. North Man Providence Road is going to get murdered. If that is. Right, try on it will be unusable. State DOT does not know what a bypass is. Must have been educated in CMS, says seven oh four number. You may have covered this somewhere along the way. But could eminent domain come into play with this at all or does it not fall under jurisdiction? I think they could. They usually try to do it amicably. At first. They offer you know, they offer fair market value or what they think is what they assess it is. And then people can, you know, appeal, they can complain, but at some point they can take your property. Yeah, Kevin, I see why they mentioned government run grocery store for West Charlotte to sweeten up the deal. Much of it is a food desert. It's been a while since I've had to go on that side of town, but last time I was there, it was hard to find a gas station that didn't have the cash here behind bulletproof glass. Normally grocery stores no better than to have a store in that area. Yeah, I can tell you there's only like the Walmart on Wilkinson Boulevard all the way to the county line. Like that's it. So there's no grocery stores. Now there will be one with the new River District that they're building down near the airport, So that's part of that point. 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 thepetecallanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.