Assembly Has Roads On Agenda (Charlotte Business Journal)

Click here for link to PDF:
http://ncmetromayors.com/files/2010/06/MobilityFundEditorial6-11-10.pdf

Editorial: Fix the current highway fund (Greensboro News and Record)

Gov. Bev Perdue’s administration keeps working on new ideas to meet state transportation needs.

Some are better than others.

The latest proposal calls for creating a Mobility Fund, a pool of money to pay for big maintenance projects — such as replacing the Yadkin River bridges on I-85 — and even city road work. It would tap some of the revenue currently diverted from the state’s Highway Trust Fund to the General Fund and raise some taxes, including the motor vehicle registration fee.

This is a poor economic environment for raising taxes, although even fiscal conservatives must acknowledge the long-term problem with relying so heavily on the motor-fuels tax for transportation needs. People keep driving more fuel-efficient vehicles and paying less tax, while highway construction and maintenance costs are not decreasing.

The bigger question, though, is why create a Mobility Fund when the state already has a Highway Trust Fund? The easy answer is that the Highway Trust Fund isn’t adequately meeting the state’s transportation needs, but that should be addressed by correcting its problems, not coming up with a new entity that supposedly would exist within the Highway Trust Fund but operate separately.

The state can’t deal with its top maintenance priority, the Yadkin River bridges, because of the politically motivated Equity Formula that governs the spending of Highway Trust Fund dollars. Money has to be doled out evenly across the state, no matter where it’s needed most. That doesn’t allow for an allocation of $300 million in one location, even on a major artery like I-85. Perdue has had to think creatively to get started on the Yadkin River project, borrowing against future federal appropriations for the first phase.

It would be better to use the Highway Trust Fund as the state’s major transportation funding mechanism but give the Board of Transportation authority to target funds to the most urgent projects, regardless of location. The legislature should put politics aside to make that happen — an idea travelers could support.

Thursday, May 27, 2010 (Updated 3:00 am)

Prospect for new Yadkin River bridge looks promising (Davidson County Dispatch)

North Carolina’s transportation heavyweights gathered Thursday at Davidson County Community College to talk about highways, infrastructure and more.

Members of the state’s Logistics Task Force heard from a representative of FedEx who outlined the company’s new state-of-the-art facility at Piedmont Triad International Airport and listened as plans for urban bypasses around Greensboro and Winston-Salem were detailed.

But the most enthusiastically discussed portion of the meeting pertained to the long-anticipated replacement of the Interstate 85 bridge spanning the Yadkin River. Pat Ivey, an engineer with the N.C. Department of Transportation’s District 9, which includes Davidson and Rowan counties, said work on the bridge should start before the year is out.

“Probably later this fall you’ll see construction beginning for that project,” he told the crowd gathered in DCCC’s Conference Center.

Ivey said that while the state received only $10 million of a requested $300 million from federal stimulus funds for the project, it was decided the project was important enough to ascertain funding elsewhere. “We had a Plan B,” he said.

That fallback plan, Ivey said, was to fund the bridge replacement through federal GARVEE bonds, which are essentially low-interest federal loans. Ivey said $150 million of the approximately $350 million project is being provided by GARVEE bonds. Another $20 million has been allocated for the work through Division 9 funding.

Ivey said the work is so close to getting kicked into gear that state transportation officials were set to open bids for the work later Thursday. He said securing environmental permits and clearing assorted other governmental hurdles will take a few months, but said he was confident the work is finally about to commence.

Ivey noted the $180 million appropriated for the project will pay for an eight-lane bridge over the Yadkin, as well as a new bridge for U.S. Highway 29/70, which crosses the river at the same site. The work will complete the project from the Long Ferry Road exchange in Rowan County north to the interstate’s intersection with N.C. Highway 150 in Davidson County.

But the funding doesn’t include another six miles of the work, from N.C. Highway 150 north to the Exit 88 exchange near the Davidson County Airport.

“We’re continuing to look for funding,” Ivey said. “Hopefully, it’ll become available soon.”

It may become available sooner than most people realize, said Gene Conti, the state’s secretary of transportation, who addressed the crowd after Ivey spoke.

Conti admitted that securing funding for the second half of the project was “a little more challenging,” but said the cash may be secured through Gov. Bev Perdue’s proposed budget, which was released Wednesday. Conti said the budget includes a “mobility fund” whereby legislators can vote to transfer cash from other funds, including the state’s general fund, to pay for the Yadkin River project.

“We need the General Assembly’s support, obviously, to support this,” Conti said of the transfer of funds.

But he said he fully supports such transfers, and said he believes legislators will agree.

“The first cash flow, in our minds, should go toward funding the Yadkin project,” Conti said. “We want to emphasize projects that will give the maximum return for the people.”

Conti’s words were so enthusiastically received that those attending Thursday’s meeting applauded him.

He said it wasn’t just highway work that will be a part of the project. Conti said about $4 million of the project will go for work to the railroad tracks near the Yadkin. He said the railroad bridge won’t be replaced, but the tracks leading to it will be straightened, in the process increasing the speed limit for trains from 40 mph to 60 mph in the area.

By almost anyone’s assessment the Interstate 85 bridge is a hazardous one that should have been replaced years ago. The 880-foot bridge was built in 1955. It has no shoulders to pull over, narrow lanes and was designed to carry a much smaller capacity than it does now. An estimated 60,000 to 70,000 vehicles cross the bridge daily on what Conti called a “critical artery between Richmond and Atlanta.”

Replacement of the bridge was planned for 2004 before efforts of historical preservationists — the bridge is near the site where a Civil War battle was fought — delayed the project. Transportation officials said the cost has doubled since then. They said that had the work been allowed to proceed as was initially planned, the new bridges would by now be completed.

The aim of the Logistics Task Force (headed by Lt. Gov. Walter Dalton, who also attended Thursday’s meeting) is to ensure the state has the necessary transportation foundation to remain competitive in the global economy. Task force members heard Thursday from transportation experts in the 12-county Piedmont Triad region. After leaving DCCC, they drove to Piedmont Triad International Airport for a tour of the FedEx hub that opened there last year.

Don Kirkman, president of the 12-county Piedmont Triad Partnership, was one of the first to speak at Thursday’s meeting. He told attendees the region is just beginning to recover from the recession, but said the Piedmont is geared for big things.

“We’d like to think we could accommodate virtually any economic development except that which requires deep water,” Kirkman said, his comment greeted by a round of chuckles.

David Congdon, president of Old Dominion Freight Line in Thomasville, reminded task force members that different regions of the state shouldn’t consider themselves in competition with one another.

“What is good for the Piedmont Triad region is good for all of North Carolina,” he said. “What is good for the Charlotte region is good for all of North Carolina. We will all benefit.”

Steve Huffman can be reached at 249-3981, ext. 217, or steve.huffman@the-dispatch.com.
BY STEVE HUFFMAN
The Dispatch

Published: Thursday, April 22, 2010 at 4:53 p.m.

New plan surfaces for I-85 bridge (Salisbury Post)

In her proposed budget for the next fiscal year, Gov. Bev Perdue provides a new way to fund the widening of Interstate 85 around the Yadkin River Bridge.

Perdue’s proposed $19.1 billion budget allocates $94.6 million for the creation of a new transportation fund.

The recurring N.C. Mobility Fund would be used “for multi-modal transportation projects of statewide significance that are linked to statewide economic goals.”

The 2008 General Assembly decided to reduce the annual distribution of money from the Highway Trust Fund to the General Fund. Perdue wants to use $22 million from next year’s reduction to help establish the N.C. Mobility Fund.

About $17 million for the fund would come from a 25 percent increase in the fee for getting copies of drivers license records.

Automobile and light truck registration fees also would increase by 25 percent, producing an additional $48.9 million in revenue.

Hikes in fees for trucks used in interstate commerce and miscellaneous registration fees would raise $3.1 million and $3.6 million respectively.

According to Greer Beaty, DOT communications director, the first project paid for with the fund would be the widening of a 6.8-mile section of I-85 on both sides of the Yadkin River Bridge.

Replacement of the bridge itself will be paid for with $10 million from a federal TIGER grant, $20 million in DOT Division 9 Transportation Improvement Program funding, and about $150 million in GARVEE bonds.

Beaty said that the Yadkin River Bridge project brought the issue of transportation funding to the forefront. Currently, the state distributes road project money to each DOT district through an equity formula. If the formula had been used to pay for the entire I-85 corridor improvement project, it would have taken up the whole district’s funding for about a decade.

“When you have large projects of state, regional or national significance that are very expensive, the current equity formula really doesn’t have a tool to fund those projects without taking a lot of resources away from other communities that need them,” Beaty said.

Interstate 85 is crucial statewide and locally for business and economic development, Beaty said. Road projects of similar significance across the state also would be paid for through the new fund.

“It will give us a tool to really look at projects that address critical congestion or bottleneck areas,” Beaty said. “The N.C. Mobility Fund is really a way to look at projects like this and have a solution moving forward.”

At least one local legislator, however, doesn’t like the idea.

N.C. Sen. Andrew Brock, a Republican who represents Rowan and Davie counties, said he was thankful for any money put toward the I-85 corridor improvement project.

“Our transportation district is severely limited because of the equity formula — or, as I call it, the inequity formula,” Brock said. “We’re blessed to have the interstate system, but it hinders us because we don’t receive funding the way we should because of it.”

Brock said he didn’t like the idea of simply creating another funding source for these kinds of projects, though.

“We would be better served not by creating another slush fund for the governor to hand out money,” he said, “but by creating a more equitable system to send out state money.”
By Karissa Minn
Friday, April 23, 2010
kminn@salisburypost.com