Transportation Reform in North Carolina
Reining in a Runaway Agency
SELC releases new report: Beyond the Bypass
Rural North Carolina is home to more than a third of the State’s population and is vital to North Carolina’s overall economy and quality of life. Unfortunately, decades of transportation spending priorities have failed to meet the needs of rural areas. Rural communities have not been well served by the traditional emphasis on building new road capacity, including four-lane highways and bypasses, often where there is almost no demonstrated transportation need or economic payoff from those investments. Read the report »
Case Summary
SELC is collaborating with environmental partner groups and a wide range of other stakeholders to overhaul transportation policy in North Carolina. Our reform agenda, outlined in our comprehensive report, How Do We Get There? A Roadmap for North Carolina's Transportation Future, (pdf) includes the following goals:
- Ensure that the North Carolina Department of Transportation uses objective criteria rather than "pork barrel" politics to select projects based on demonstrated need and sound policy, including environmental stewardship;
- Emphasize urgent highway and bridge maintenance needs over construction of new highways;
- Increase state and local funding for transit, passenger rail, and freight rail;
- Strengthen the links between transportation and land use planning (for example, identify the most suitable areas for growth and invest in transit and compatible development along those corridors, such as the $2 billion in real estate investment along the first light-rail line in Charlotte);
- Promote better coordination of transportation planning in rapidly growing metro areas, which are hampered by fragmented structures; and
- Encourage transportation and land use policies that provide access to jobs and services in both urban and rural areas.
Getting Results for Transportation Reform
Our efforts are paying off. In 2009, North Carolina passed legislation, which we helped shape and champion, that provides new ways to fund transit and rail. The bill also brought the North Carolina Turnpike Authority, whose sole mission is to build big highways, under the umbrella of the NCDOT. We are also the key not-for-profit group that is helping to craft the process for selecting new projects in the state's long range plan.
In a move we strongly endorsed, North Carolina and Virginia succeeded in securing $620 million in federal economic stimulus funds for developing high-speed rail, with the bulk of the funds going to projects in the corridor between Charlotte and Raleigh.
Stopping the Most Destructive Highway Projects
In parallel with our policy reform initiative, SELC is challenging major new highway projects that would feed North Carolina's over-reliance on auto travel and push miles of asphalt into areas with no clear need of more highways. In coastal Brunswick County, for example, we are opposing a proposed segment of Interstate 74 that would bisect the Green Swamp, a nationally recognized biological "hot spot." Routing the interstate along existing highways would avoid fragmenting this ecological treasure, save $600 million dollars that could be better invested to serve existing and potential transportation needs.
In the mountains of southwestern North Carolina, we are advocating upgrades to existing roads rather than the proposed construction of new interstate-size highways in "Corridor K" through a remote forest wilderness.
We also oppose several major toll road projects moving forward that have been based on flawed environmental consideration of impacts, including increased air and water pollution, carbon dioxide emissions, and sprawl-the Garden Parkway and Monroe Bypass in the Charlotte area, the Mid-Currituck Bridge on the Outer Banks, and the Cape Fear Skyway in Wilmington.
In all our North Carolina transportation work, we are pointing the way toward a future that strengthens communities, reduces air and water pollution, protects our rural and natural landscapes, and decreases global warming emissions.