Editorial – State’s major metro areas should not be allowed to hog road funding (Wilmington Star News)
Published: Tuesday, April 6, 2010 at 3:30 a.m.
Well, of course North Carolina’s largest cities want the funding formula for roads changed. By distributing construction dollars on population alone, they would get a bigger share of transportation dollars than other parts of the state. And that would be unfair.
The legislative committee looking at revamping how road projects are selected should resist attempts by Raleigh, Charlotte and the other large metro areas to make such a drastic change. While the current formula can be improved, population should never be the only factor in determining the priority for new roads. Any formula also should take into effect such factors as growth rate and potential for economic development.
If Raleigh and Charlotte get their way, the Wilmington area likely would lose out.
Over the past three decades the Cape Fear region’s population has soared. Prior to the housing bust, Brunswick was one of the fastest-growing counties, not only in North Carolina, but in the nation. Pender’s growth rate also was impressive. And New Hanover County has seen healthy growth as well.
Allen Pope, who heads the DOT’s Division 3 office in Wilmington, is exactly right when he says the issue is that there simply isn’t enough money to go around. Any way you slice it, someone loses out. The current system attempts to divide those limited resources fairly, but it may have bent too far in favor of slow-growth rural areas.
Raleigh and Charlotte certainly have had their growing pains, and anyone who’s driven their beltlines at rush hour knows what real gridlock is. But North Carolina is more than the sum of its metropolitan areas.
Roads in smaller but growing areas also have overtaxed roadways. In Brunswick County, for example, mostly two-lane roads serve a growing population. U.S. 17, which was conceived as an uninterrupted thoroughfare, now has stop lights and “Michigan left turns” to accommodate large new subdivisions and shopping centers around Leland and Belville. And more may be coming.
The Cape Fear Memorial Bridge and the Brunswick County causeway leading to it can resemble a parking lot at times, with traffic slowing to a crawl.
Transportation officials can, and should, improve the formula. Political patronage has given us bypasses around tiny communities and kept money from areas with less influence in Raleigh. That is changing, but better planning is in order, too.
Rather than dividing money regionally, the largest projects should be coordinated according to a statewide priority list, while funding for less-expensive local projects could continue to be divided among the regions. That’s just one suggestion.
But the committee shouldn’t let the large cities drive transportation policy for the entire state.
