Charlotte City Council votes against I-77 South toll 

AMAZING AERIAL AGENCY

An aerial view of Charlotte’s urban core with I-77 bisecting Historic West End and uptown. City Council on May 11 voted to pull its support for a proposed public-private initiative to build elevated lanes along I-77 South from Center City to the South Carolina border.

Charlotte City Council has voted to apply the brakes to I-77 South toll lanes.

The panel voted 6-5 Monday to withdraw support for the project, a setback for the $3.2 billion public-private initiative that extends from Center City to the South Carolina border. As a result, the council member Ed Driggs, the city’s representative on the Charlotte Regional Transportation Planning Organization, is required to reverse position on the project.

The vote “represents a major shift in the conversation around the proposed I-77 South toll lanes project and reflects the growing concern many residents and community leaders have expressed over the past several months,” said Shannon Binns, founder of Sustain Charlotte. 

“While this vote does not end the discussion around the project, it is an important acknowledgment that the community deserves a more thoughtful process before decisions of this magnitude move forward.”

Council members Malcolm Graham, Renee Johnson, J.D. Mazuera Arias, LaWana Mayfield, Joi Mayo and Victoria Watlington voted for reversal. Driggs, Dimple Ajmera, James Mitchell, Kimberly Owens and Dante Anderson opposed the motion.

Monday’s vote is a severe blow to the project as Charlotte’s proportional representation – 41% – on the regional planning board carries more weight. Mecklenburg County, whose voting member is Commissioner Leigh Altman, and the town of Matthews, represented by Mayor John Higdon, have previously voted against. 

The project has been subject to criticism over concerns of a lack of transparency by the state Department of Transportation, environmental impacts of elevated lanes and displacement in historically Black neighborhoods. The Brooklyn community’s razing in the 1960s to make way for the I-277 loop gave opponents a historical focal point for their argument.

A Dec. 5 letter signed by a coalition of 24 mobility, environmental and community advocates urged state Transportation Secretary Daniel Johnson to scrap the plan, citing economic inequality and Charlotte’s legacy of transportation projects cutting through historic Black neighborhoods that displaced thousands of families, businesses and schools as part of a federal urban renewal campaign.

“The highway cut a swath through nearly every one of Charlotte’s historically Black communities along its length — starting in the Historic West End with Biddleville, Oaklawn Park, McCrorey Heights, Dalebrook, and parts of Wesley Heights and Seversville, then continuing south to Wilmore and into the West Boulevard and South Tryon corridors that served Black Charlotteans pushed out of other parts of the city,” the signatories wrote.

In addition to the toll lanes, NCDOT proposes 13 interchanges and several retaining walls as part of the 11-mile project, which would slice into Frazier Park in Third Ward and stop a planned extension of Irwin Creek Greenway through McCrorey Heights that would bar neighborhood access to the Irwin Creek corridor – originally prohibited by I-77.

“We believe this moment creates an opportunity to pursue a more independent and comprehensive evaluation of alternatives and to continue a broader public conversation about what kind of transportation future Charlotte wants to build,” Binns said.

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