Council Quickies: NC DOT Presents I-77 South Toll Lane Plan
New express lanes would stretch from Brookshire to Carowinds
Following a full day of committee meetings, Charlotte City Council came together on Monday evening to discuss topics from those meetings, beginning with a presentation from the NC Department of Transportation (NC DOT) and the NC Turnpike Authority (NCTA) about the proposed addition of express toll lanes on the southern stretch of I-77.
On the Agenda:
- I-77 South Express Lanes Presentation
- Council Discussion
I-77 South Express Lanes
A rep with NC DOT led the presentation on the I-77 South Express Lanes Project, which will add toll lanes to 11 miles of I-77 between Brookshire Boulevard and Carowinds Boulevard at the South Carolina border. The lanes would work similarly to the existing toll lanes north of Uptown.
The estimated project cost for the I-77 South Express Lanes would be about $3.7 billion.
A rep with the NCTA answered a frequently asked question about why the project wouldn’t just add more general-purpose lanes, stating that general-purpose lanes have been shown to only provide short-term relief without providing options for reliable travel times. Also, they don’t generate money, which would come into play for the funding discussion to follow.
A look at the two options the NCTA had studied for financing, construction, operation and maintenance of the project showed a “traditional toll delivery” option in which the state would be responsible for all of those jobs and a “P3 delivery option” in which the state would maintain ownership while a private partner designed, built, funded, operated and maintained the lanes.
The NCTA rep said the traditional toll option is “financially unfeasible” as NCDOT cannot afford to fund it. The P3 option is financially feasible. NCTA estimates that $600 million in State Transportation Improvement Program (STIP) funding would “likely” cover any needed public contribution.
Council Discussion
Ed Driggs emphasized that none of what was discussed Monday night had anything to do with the local transportation plan or the potential sales tax increase that would fund said plan. It is a separate project altogether run by NCDOT, though all done within Charlotte city limits.
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“We have an interest in this but we are not a party to it,” said Driggs. Council will vote on whether to give approval and send the decision as to whether to move forward with pursuing the P3 funding option to the Charlotte Regional Transportation Planning Organization.
The crash rates on the southern stretch of I-77 are currently 2.5 times higher than the average state highway. The NC DOT rep claimed there’s been an improvement in the crash rate on the northern stretch since the toll lanes were opened there, though he could not provide specific statistics.
NC DOT estimates the project could take upwards of five years from the start of construction, carried out in stages. Each interchange bridge along the affected stretch would need to be reconstructed to fit the added lanes.
In response to an inquiry from Dimple Ajmera, the NC DOT rep pointed out that it is currently prohibited by state law to offer toll discounts for drivers of electric vehicles that could incentivize utilizing EVs.
It’s estimated that around 40% of the drivers utilizing the toll lanes would be from out of state, mostly South Carolina.
“I have a problem when a presentation points out high crash rates and some of those rates are because of how the roads were designed [by NC DOT],” said LaWana Mayfield, adding that the I-485/I-77 interchanges were designed relatively recently. “Some of those great designers are still there.”
Mayfield also pointed out that the presentation did not acknowledge the issues that came from the public-private partnership that was implemented to carry out construction of the northern toll lanes or lessons learned from that, only a vague promise that this will go differently.
NC DOT expects it to be about a 9-month process to get approval for this project before they put out requests for proposals from private partners. The agency hopes to make things competitive enough to get more than one bidder, the way that Cintra was the only bidder for the northern tolls.
Driggs said he is aiming for council to vote on whether to give the CRTPO the go-ahead to move forward at next week’s council meeting on Oct. 14. CRTPO hopes to vote at its Oct. 16 meeting.
