Kill I-77 toll, businesses urge lawmakers

Warning it would cripple economic development, a group of Lake Norman business leaders Tuesday urged lawmakers to cancel a project to build toll lanes on Interstate 77.

About 30 representatives of the motorsports industry, trucking companies and manufacturers lobbied lawmakers to cancel a state contract with I-77 Mobility Partners and find another way to widen the interstate.

Republican Sen. Jeff Tarte of Cornelius promised to introduce legislation as early as Thursday to block the project.

But toll critics face an uphill battle.

Gov. Pat McCrory has said it’s too late to cancel. And some lawmakers say there’s little chance of stopping the toll lanes.

“I think we’re down the road on that,” said Sen. Tom Apodaca, a Hendersonville Republican who is chairman of the Rules Committee.

Rep. Charles Jeter, a Huntersville Republican, agreed, saying there’s little chance to win support for ending the contract. “To say it’s slim to none implies that slim exists,” he said.

Instead, Jeter outlined a plan to have four towns – Huntersville, Cornelius, Davidson and Mooresville – use property taxes to pay a cancellation penalty as high as $100 million and widen the interstate themselves.

N.C. Department of Transportation officials have said there’s no state money available to widen I-77, and tolling 26 miles from Charlotte to Mooresville is the surest way to ease congestion.

In addition, they say, it would mean $145 million in a “bonus allocation” for other projects in Mecklenburg and Iredell counties.

But the toll lanes and their design have inflamed passions among citizens, activists and elected officials in the I-77 corridor. The toll contract requires the state to compensate the company if the state builds any new free lanes on the interstate in the next 50 years.

‘Save our economy’

Mecklenburg County and several towns have passed resolutions urging the state to reject the deal.

“My concern is not the notion of tolls – it is the design of this particular toll project,” Mecklenburg commissioner Jim Puckett told a news conference. He called the cost of the toll “insignificant” compared with billions of dollars lost in economic development.

Puckett and others argued that the toll lanes, in which drivers could maintain a minimum speed, would increase congestion on the free lanes. They said that would particularly hurt truck traffic, crucial to businesses along the corridor. And critics said planned interchanges for the toll lanes would limit access to current exits.

“We’re here on a mission, a mission to save our economy as well as to protect the state from making a multibillion-dollar, multiyear mistake,” said John “Mac” McAlpine, an engineer with Michael Waltrip Racing of Cornelius. Were the project canceled, he said, the process for building new free lanes could start as soon as this year.

Tarte said DOT “is listening, but they’re not hearing the collective concerns of the region.”

“It’s disappointing to hear Sen. Tarte continue to share misinformation about the project, specifically that if the contract was canceled the state can continue to build general purpose lanes,” DOT spokesman Mike Charbonneau said. That process, he said, couldn’t start until 2017 at the earliest.

The ‘best bad idea’

Rep. Bill Brawley, a Matthews Republican and former chairman of the House Transportation Committee, said it would be a tough sell to get lawmakers to pay a $100 million penalty in favor of a road that might take money from projects elsewhere in the state.

“The premise is to get legislators outside the Lake Norman area to delay projects in their own districts and give the money to Lake Norman for purely political reasons,” he said. “I don’t see a lot of legislators supporting that.”

In a conference room adjacent to his office, Jeter described his plan to the visiting Lake Norman business leaders and later to a reporter.

Under his plan, the four towns would pay the $100 million cancellation penalty and build two new lanes from Huntersville to Mooresville at a cost he estimated at $150 million. The towns would borrow the money and use property taxes to retire a pro-rated share of the borrowing costs. That would require a property tax increase ranging from 6 cents in Davidson to 18 cents in Huntersville.

He admits the plan’s not perfect.

“The towns have raised a ruckus,” he said, “and I’m trying to come up with the best bad idea possible.”

This story was originally published June 30, 2015 at 7:18 AM with the headline "Kill I-77 toll, businesses urge lawmakers."