Beltway delay (Winston Salem JOURNAL EDITORIAL)
Aprioritization process for urban-loop projects that state officials are proposing could well put Forsyth County’s long-awaited Northern Beltway near, or at, the bottom of the list of projects competing for funds. Area residents should urge the N.C. Department of Transportation to adjust the process so that it allows projects like the Northern Beltway to be given fair consideration.
A dozen local business leaders, mainly from the Greater Winston-Salem Chamber of Commerce and the Winston-Salem Alliance, as well as community activists, met with Gov. Bev. Perdue Friday and voiced their concerns.
“We are trying to show the state that the process is patently flawed,” Mayor Allen Joines of Winston-Salem told the Journal’s Wesley Young. “It creates points for things like congestion, safety and economic impact, which we score very well on. It takes that score and divides it by the total cost of the project. When you divide that number into our raw scores our points go way, way down.”
The process is unfair to Forsyth County because lawsuits held up construction of any beltway segments for 10 years as road-building costs steadily rose. Thus, the total cost of the segments is larger and could make the beltway score low on the priority scale. The prioritization process should take such delays into account, as well as the fact that some areas have partially built loops while areas such as Forsyth have none.
If Forsyth County had proceeded with the western leg of the Northern Beltway in 1999, as it had been approved to do, it would have obtained the money it needed for the project and be almost done with it by now. But a lawsuit filed in 1999, followed by another in 2008, killed that scenario. Last month, a federal judge dismissed the two suits, which contended that state and federal highway officials had failed to demonstrate that the road was needed, and that the officials had failed to properly gauge the highway’s impact on the environment.
Now the plan is to start with the eastern leg of the beltway, a stretch of about 17 miles from U.S. 52 to U.S. 311, that will cost about $869 million. The project is crucial to ease congestion and enhance safety by getting traffic off heavily traveled Interstate-40 Business and U.S. 52. It’s important for economic development. And landowners in the path of the beltway have been left in limbo for too long.
The DOT is working on a draft of a priority list. Once it comes out, DOT officials say, there will be an extended period of public comment. But local officials are right to worry that even a draft list will start looking permanent to state officials.
The Chamber of Commerce is asking its members to e-mail letters of support for the beltway to state officials. Other residents of Winston-Salem and Forsyth County should also let Perdue and other state officials know how important the beltway is to the growth and security of our region. One way to do that is through a form letter at the chamber website, winstonsalem.com.
We’ve waited long enough for the beltway.
Published: June 9, 2010
