That’s ridiculous. Their posture is going to sink the City further into a cycle of decline. They made themselves the majority stakeholder in CRTPO and have had every chance to know what the DOT is doing with the solicitation. The reality is, nothing was finalized and won’t be because the project’s model was a PPP D-B so the design would change depending on who had the best proposal.
Finally! Someone else did their homework and gets an A.
$60m wasted, ROW, home values, and construction costs will continue to balloon, and when it finally does happen - the impact to traffic during construction (and the safety of those building the project) will be massively worse.
The Charlotte region first voted for toll lanes for I-77 South in 2007, then first voted to pursue it as a P3 project in 2014. CRTPO responded in 2014 by submitting the project to the STIP under the state's then-new Strategic Mobility Formula, and it has been funded for preliminary engineering in every STIP cycle since. What was "unfunded" were ROW and construction, in part due to the Strategic Transportation Investments law's roughly $600 million corridor cap. This cap did not bode well for a project then estimated at over $1 billion, a figure that has since ballooned to over $3 billion. The P3 funding mechanism was intended to close the project's vast funding gap, and the Board of County Commissioners, City Council and CRTPO embraced it every step of the way. Until this month, or in the case of #MeckBOCC, last fall, when some were suddenly shocked that a 19-year vision for I-77 South was coming to reality and that widening the corridor would result in a (*checks notes*) wider corridor. But you know all of this commissioner, so let's not gaslight the region into thinking NCDOT can simply revert construction back to unfunded. To be sure, that's a question for them, but from a layman's standpoint, it would appear it's no longer possible to keep this project in the STIP since the region no longer supports its scope (toll lanes) or funding mechanism (P3). NCDOT plans and delivers what the state's MPOs and RPOs request. At present, they officially have no idea what that means for I-77 South. But if you already know NCDOT's position on this, then by all means, share that as well. Otherwise, let's hold on wishful statements that do not align with known facts as Charlotte, Mecklenburg and the state writ large continue to come to grips with the potentially devastating consequences of rescission over the long term. #I77 #I5718 #clt
Seems easy to track.
The BOV proposed cuts to living learning communities, and had cut two last year: Africana Studies and LGBTQIA+-. That doesn’t bode well for DEI diehards like the wicked witch governor. Rocovich was a white male, who supported Spanberger’s political rivals so he was an easy target. The Governor was scared he would find a republican leaning President to replace Sands so she acted swiftly and added a full platter of democrats.
I won’t say it’s DEI, just because of their race, because they are all talented and successful people, but obviously there’s 3 white men at VT out (Sands, Babcock, and Roco) and in are: a black woman (Martin), Hispanic male (Ramos), white woman (Rathbone), black man (Baine), and Indian man (Sanghani) to the BOV. I would expect the AD and President to also not be a white male and definitely not anyone that’s ever even remotely said good job to a republican.
Doesn’t need to be a foreign entity, just so happens they are good at it and willing to take the risk. Bank of America or Wells Fargo, based a mile from the job site, could.
I am sure you realize the largest contractor in Charlotte is Blythe Construction and they are a subsidiary of VINCI, based in France, right?
It’s not revenue sucking, either. There would be no revenue until it’s operational, so whoever financed it already spent the money in Charlotte.
That’s a simpleton’s way to think about it, sure. This job alone would be at least 10% annually of the NCDOT annual budget, so yeah, they could finance it and at the same time, that would be at least 200 less projects (say $4m/ea) that the NCDOT Divisions could let annually.
For the last time: YOU DON’T NEED TO GO IN AN I-77 OR I-485 TOLL LANE, so you aren’t paying for anything “twice”.
If NCDOT widened the highway even more than proposed and wiped out more residential land and had no tolls, then CRTPO would cry more. If they financed it completely resulting in less rural and smaller urban projects, those constituents would cry more and likely cause a severe issue. If they financed it and raised taxes everyone would bitch about that, too. It’s insufferable, having a private arm finance it via tolls that you have a choice to use or not, is the most logical.
@MitchVarner1@JoeBrunoWSOC9 Toll revenue goes to company that paid for the construction of the project instead of tax payers.
So with taxes go up or you let people pay by riding in the toll lanes.
@JoeBrunoWSOC9 Apparently nobody knows what the word “rescinds” means.
CRTPO voted in October 2024, 50-15 to move forward with the project, allowing NCDOT to continue the procurement process.
We can’t because of the incompetence of our “leaders”, that’s the point.
There isn’t enough money in the budget. Nobody needs to pay the toll, stay in the main lanes, NCDOT isn’t going to force you into them. The tolls repay the people paying for it. If NCDOT was offering $700m, the other $2.5B would’ve been privately financed. The state could either repay that with interest making it more expensive, or allow there to be tolling so the finance arm can recover the money separately.