Charlotte, stand up to I-77 toll and support recission vote

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Interstate 77 separates Charlotte's Center City from Historic West End, which altered Black neighborhoods during its construction in the 1960s.

Charlotte’s debate over the I 77 toll lane project keeps circling around one claim: that the process had “clear public involvement.” 

Anyone who watched this unfold knows that isn’t true. Public involvement requires public information, and the public didn’t get the actual design until October 2025. Everything before that was a carefully staged performance meant to look like engagement without actually being engagement. 

People were invited to meeting after meeting where the most important piece of the puzzle — the design itself — was nowhere to be found. Calling that transparency is like taking two years to pass a state budget and then bragging about finishing it just in time for it to be outdated.

For years, residents were asked to weigh in on a project that existed only in vague descriptions and conceptual sketches. Then, last fall, the NCDOT finally pulled off the tarp to reveal a blueprint that looked nothing like what people had been led to expect. 

Transparency isn’t about counting meetings; it’s about giving people the information they need to participate. If you spend five years showing citizens a blank poster board and then drop a fully baked, deeply unpopular design on them at the last minute, you haven’t engaged the public — you’ve ambushed them.

Robert Dawkins, political director at Action NC.

The financial argument against buying out the toll contract collapses just as quickly. The $60 million buyout is tiny compared to what residents will pay in tolls over the next 50 years. Even modest toll usage, multiplied across hundreds of thousands of drivers, easily surpasses $60 million — and that’s before toll hikes, dynamic pricing spikes, or population growth. 

A buyout is a one-time cost. Tolling is a 50-year subscription, and Charlotte drivers pay it every single day. The return on that investment is nonexistent. Managed lanes don’t fix traffic; they create a premium lane for people who can afford it while everyone else sits in the same bottleneck. 

Congestion won’t disappear, yet the region is still being asked to accept a system that charges residents indefinitely for a problem it won’t solve. 

The state’s threat to withhold billions in future funding if Charlotte rejects the toll lanes also deserves scrutiny. There is no guarantee that those funds won’t be withheld later anyway. 

Once a government uses withholding as leverage, it becomes a threat to compel adherence. The NC legislature has been trying to take Charlotte’s Powell Bill money for years. They’ve floated bills to strip it, redirect it, shrink it, or “reform” it — all of which somehow end with Charlotte losing money. 

When they say they’ll punish Charlotte financially, it sounds less like a warning and more like what Charlotte already endures: neglected infrastructure, dark roads, and potholes on state roads that never seem to get fixed.
If the governor is going to instruct his NCDOT on anything, the directive should be to stand with CRTPO and rescind the department’s support for  the I 77 plan. That is the action that would actually reflect the will of the region and the people who will live with the consequences.

The state’s fiscal posture only deepens the contradiction. They are cutting the corporate tax rate to zero and slashing the personal income tax rate while warning Charlotte that billions might be withheld. 
At some point, the math stops being political theater and becomes simple arithmetic: if you cut your own taxes to the bone, you’re going to run out of money. When that happens, guess who they’ll come to for help? The same city they keep threatening. The same city they keep trying to strip of Powell Bill funds. The same city that provides 30% of the state’s GDP.

The irony is unavoidable. They will likely need to borrow money from Charlotte just to pay their own bills. Threatening the city that keeps your books balanced is not fiscal discipline. 
Charlotte deserves better than this. It deserves real transparency, honest planning, and infrastructure decisions that respect the people who pay for them.

Robert Dawkins of Charlotte is political director at Action NC and coalition organizer at SAFE Coalition NC.

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