Charlotte toll lanes closer to reality after city council deal

AERIAL AGENCY

Charlotte City Council voted 7-4 Monday to reverse course on opposition to joining in construction of toll lanes along I-77 South.

Toll lanes are back on the road to certainty along I-77 South.

Charlotte City Council voted 7-4 Monday to rejoin the project during a heated public debate. Council members Joi Mayo and Malcolm Graham – whose districts will be directly impacted by construction – sided with Dimple Ajmera, Dante Anderson, Ed Driggs, Mayor Pro Tem James Mitchell and Kimberly Owens. The city will enter into a memorandum of agreement with the North Carolina Department of Transportation to craft a binding community benefits plan that commits at least $300 million generated to impacted neighborhoods through a public-private partnership.

Fifty speakers signed up for public comment, with the majority opposing the initiative. Council proponents cited the creation of legally binding contracts with the North Carolina Department of Transportation to funnel $300 million in community benefits and the threat of nearly $70 million in fines and loss of state and federal funding under a state budget provision passed after council voted in May to rescind its support – as incentives to return.

With 41% of the vote on the Charlotte Regional Transportation Planning Organization, upholding recission exposed Charlotte to millions of dollars in penalties to NCDOT.

“I’d rather tell you the truth,” said Graham, whose district includes Historic West End. “Every small town is going to change their votes, so this project will happen with or without the consent of the city of Charlotte. The principled stand is that we have a legal document that’s legally binding, written in the contract, and the $300 million or more will be paid at closing for the content. That $300 million is bigger than many of the cities of North Carolina’s budgets. It will be earmarked specifically for west Charlotte.” 

The toll project split Charlotte into debating the merits of targeting Black neighborhoods that were cut off or razed in the 1960s by interstate construction for another road initiative. Environmental activists raised concerns about the effect of more vehicles on the road. The business community is pushing for improved access and development.

“The question before Charlotte is not simply how do we move more cars,” said Sean Langley, president of the McCrorey Heights Neighborhood Association. “The question is, how do we move forward without moving backwards on justice? There will always be someone saying take the money, take the investment, take the community benefits, but the community benefits should never be used to make an inequitable infrastructure decision acceptable. 

“A community should not have to surrender its future in exchange for resources it should have received through equitable government in the first place, because money can build sidewalks, parks, and buildings, but money cannot restore a community's history once it's been fractured.”

Rickey Hall, chair of the West Boulevard Neighborhood Coalition and a reversal supporter, cited community benefits as an opportunity to deliver long-sought investment in the corridor. 

“For most of my life, major infrastructure improvement projects have been done for our communities and around our communities,” he said. “Roads came through. Neighborhoods were divided, decisions were made, and then we were left to live with the consequences. This time can be different.

“This project can be done with the community, and if we do it right, the people who live along this corridor can receive real and lasting benefits from the infrastructure investments of this magnitude. We are people. We are families. We are communities that have waited a long time for this level of investment.”

Council member Victoria Watlington, who voted against reversal along with J.D. Mazuera Arias, Renee Perkins Johnson and LaWana Mayfield, pointed to the tenuous nature of community benefits pledges, arguing that such agreements can be undone by project overruns. Ultimately, she contended, developers will benefit while communities are left to navigate environmental, economic and traffic impacts.

“It’s not lost on me that the vast majority of supporters that are here tonight are members of one particular industry, and none of them is arguing that this is the transportation solution,” she said. “Instead, hanging our hats on community benefits that we’ve already discussed are neither binding nor commensurate to the impact that to me is telling.

“Trust is built on what a partner delivers, and many, understandably, want a longer track record before we go down that path again. We talk about Brooklyn. The lesson of Brooklyn wasn’t that the benefits were too small; it was that no package makes up for us cutting through a neighborhood when the road itself doesn’t do the job it was sold to do.”

In the end, the council’s vote to support to the public-private partnership – and the $300 million pledge to mitigate damage to residents and reinvest in neighborhoods – will go forward. Graham, who took the brunt of the gallery’s jeers, was philosophical.

“We can fight, but sometimes a good run is better than a bad stand,” he said.

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