Skip to main content

On cue...Charlotte and Mecklenburg County Officials Voice Displeasure over I-485 Delays

Right on cue, various Charlotte and Mecklenburg County officials have voiced their displeasure over the proposed funding delays to Interstate 485 and other highway projects.

The responses vary from blaming poor politics to calls to reform NCDOT, but the common theme was disappointment in construction delays for badly needed highway projects in a growing city.

Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory said that the delays "...smells of bad politics." McCrory who sent a highly critical letter to Governor Mike Easily pointing out that instead of completing freeway loops that have been underway for years, more loops get added to the list.

McCrory was especially displeased that two loops, Wilmington and Fayetteville, have been added and seen construction since the Charlotte loop began in the 1990s. He was also unhappy that the Fayetteville loop did not see the amount of delays that Charlotte or other North Carolina cities received.

McCrory told the Charlotte Observer, "Fayetteville and Wilmington just happened to not be exempted which was a clear perception of politics being such an influential part of how road and transportation money is spent in North Carolina at the expense of areas that have congestion."

Note to Mayor McCrory: The Fayetteville Loop, like the Charlotte Loop, has been discussed for decades. It just didn't appear out of nowhere and gobbled up all the money.

McCrory's challenger for Charlotte Mayor, Beverly Earle, was "outraged" at the delay and called for the restructuring of NCDOT.

A few years ago, Charlotte and Mecklenburg officials were able to push forward plans to widen I-485 in Southern Mecklenburg County from post-years (which is beyond the six year funding window) to 2013. The move pushed back the start of construction of the final piece of I-485 from 2010 to 2013. Now both projects have been pushed back to begin, at the earliest, in 2015.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Chowchilla Mountain Road to Yosemite National Park

Chowchilla Mountain Road of Mariposa County is one of the oldest roadways servicing Yosemite National Park.  As presently configured this fourteen-mile highway begins at California State Route 49 near Elliot Corner and terminates at the Wawona Road in Yosemite National Park.  Chowchilla Mountain Road was constructed as a franchise toll road over Battalion Pass circa 1869-1870.  The highway was built at behest of Galen Clark to connect the town of Mariposa to his property near the South Fork Merced River at what is now Wawona.   In late 1874 the highway along with Clark’s Station would be purchased by the Washburn Brothers.  The Washburn Brothers would continue to toll Chowchilla Mountain Road as part of their Yosemite Stage Route lines.  The highway would ultimately become a Mariposa County public highway in 1917.  Mariposa would later be more directly linked with Yosemite Valley in 1926 following the completion of the Yosemite All-Year Highwa...

Interstate 40's Tumultuous Ride Through the Pigeon River Gorge

In the nearly 60 years Interstate 40 has been open to traffic through the Pigeon River Gorge in the mountains of Western North Carolina, it has been troubled by frequent rockslides and damaging flooding, which has seen the over 30-mile stretch through North Carolina and Tennessee closed for months at a time. Most recently, excessive rainfall from Hurricane Helene in September 2024 saw sections of Interstate 40 wash away into a raging Pigeon River. While the physical troubles of Interstate 40 are well known, how I-40 came to be through the area is a tale of its own. Interstate 40 West through Haywood County near mile marker 10. I-40's route through the Pigeon River Gorge dates to local political squabbles in the 1940s and a state highway law written in 1921. A small note appeared in the July 28, 1945, Asheville Times. It read that the North Carolina State Highway Commission had authorized a feasibility study of a "...water-level road down [the] Pigeon River to the Tennessee l...

Angus L. Macdonald Bridge

At 1.3 kilometers (or about 0.84 miles) in length, the Angus L. Macdonald Bridge is one of two bridges crossing over the Halifax Harbour between Halifax, Nova Scotia and Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, with the other bridge being the A. Murray Mackay Bridge . Opened in 1955 and named after former Nova Scotia Premier and Canadian Minister of Defense for Naval Services Angus L. Macdonald, the Macdonald Bridge was the first bridge that crossed Halifax Harbour that was opened to traffic. The Macdonald Bridge was also the subject of the Big Lift, which was only the second time in history that the span of a suspension bridge were replaced while the bridge was open to traffic. Planning began in 2010 for the Big Lift, while construction took place between 2015 and 2017. Similar work occurred on the Lion's Gate Bridge in Vancouver, British Columbia before the project took place on the Macdonald Bridge. At this time, much of the bridge infrastructure is new, leaving only the towers, main cables and...