Residents urge state to move on beltway (Winston Salem Journal)

People who live or own property along the path of the proposed Winston-Salem beltway poured out a decade of frustration yesterday in response to news that the state has no plans to start work on the road over the next 10 years.

More than 100 people sat under a shelter next to a Sedge Garden swimming pool to discuss the beltway with state and local officials.

A draft priority list of urban loops obtained by the Winston-Salem Journal on Wednesday lists the eastern leg of the Winston-Salem beltway in last place among 21 projects statewide. The western leg — which is actually a lower priority to local officials — ranked a little higher, but no portion of the beltway is in the state’s draft plans for construction or right-of-way purchase through 2020.

The meeting was organized by a citizens group called Northern Beltway NOW, which is pushing the state to move forward with the project and buy out landowners in the path of the road.

“We have been going through this since the early 1990s,” said Keith Anderson, who with his wife, Melody, complained to officials about the delay.

“At first I was against it, and then I was for it because it seemed like it was going to be built anyway. Give me a check from when you locked up my land.”

Jim Trogdon, the chief operating officer and second in command at the N.C. Department of Transportation, came to the meeting and did most of the talking for the state.

“We have to have a process that is fair and transparent,” Trogdon said.

He stressed that although the state has a draft list of projects, it won’t be finalized until next summer and after the state gets a lot of public input.

He promised an aggressive response to situations where people need to sell property because of personal hardship.

Trogdon had an uphill climb with some in the audience.

“What the state and DOT are doing to these people is criminal,” Pfafftown resident Pam Reynolds said.

“You have jerked these people around. We are at the end of our rope.”

Opponents of the beltway slapped state and federal officials with a lawsuit in 1999, just as work was ready to start on the western leg.

Highway officials stopped buying land and agreed to do a new environmental review incorporating the eastern part of the loop.

When that work was done in 2008, opponents filed a second suit and stopped the project again.

A judge dismissed both lawsuits in May, but state officials now say there isn’t enough money to pay for all the urban loops the state needs.

Winston-Salem Mayor Allen Joines told the crowd that the priority formula is flawed because it divides benefits by the total cost of the project to come up with a ranking.

He said that calculation puts Winston-Salem at the bottom because no portion of the beltway has been built.

But Trogdon said in an interview yesterday afternoon that the formula treats all unbuilt loops across the state in the same way.

Local officials and people in the audience were saying yesterday that the long delay caused by the lawsuit creates an obligation for the state to revise its approach.

“There is a moral issue here,” said Larry Williams, the mayor of Rural Hall and the chairman of the transportation advisory committee for the Winston-Salem metropolitan area.

“The state of North Carolina owes these people.”

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East End Connector gets green light (News and Observer)

The state Department of Transportation expects to start construction in 2013-14 on Durham’s East End Connector, one of North Carolina’s longest-delayed road projects.

First proposed in the 1970s, the $162 million project would create a north-south, stoplight-free drive between Interstate 85 and Research Triangle Park. It would upgrade part of U.S. 70 into a freeway and build a link between it and the Durham Freeway.

The 2014 start date shows up in a new draft schedule for DOT urban loop projects across the state. Groundbreaking had been set for fiscal year 2013 in a schedule published two years ago, although DOT officials later said delays were likely because of limited funds.

Following up on Gov. Bev Perdue’s pledge to remove politics from the state’s decision process for road construction, DOT is publishing a new set of criteria it will use to set priorities for urban loops.

The state Board of Transportation will receive a draft of the criteria next week, with the final list to be adopted in 2011 after more than a year of review and public comment across the state.

Projects are being rated on such factors as how much traffic they will serve and how much travel time they will save, compared against project costs.

The East End Connector ranked sixth among 21 loop projects evaluated across the state in the new rating system. But it was one of only seven projects with construction tentatively scheduled to start in the next 10 years. That’s all the state can afford.

“If we were going to build all the loops today, it would cost us $8 billion,” said Greer Beaty, DOT spokeswoman. “But this year we have only $150 million in loop money to spend, so we don’t even come close to having enough.”

Fiscal years run from July 1 to June 30. Other start dates are fiscal 2011 for I-295 in Fayetteville, 2013 for an I-40 and US 17 project in Wilmington, 2014 for an I-485 widening in Charlotte, 2014 and 2017 for the next sections of Greensboro’s loop, and 2020 for Greenville’s Southwest Bypass.

“This is a realistic schedule,” Beaty said.

501 bypass needs work

Another Durham project ranks higher than the East End Connector under the new loop criteria – a bypass for U.S. 501 on the city’s north side – but much more environmental and design work will be needed before it can be put on the construction schedule, Beaty said.

Two projects to complete Raleigh’s 540 Outer Loop are included on DOT’s evaluation list, but they are not listed on the construction schedule because their fates will be determined separately as toll projects. The Southern Wake Freeway is ranked seventh, and the Eastern Wake Freeway is ranked 13th.

The Triangle Expressway, which includes the western part of the 540 Loop, is under construction and will open as the state’s first modern toll road in 2011 and 2012.

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Published Fri, Jul 30, 2010 05:36 AM
Modified Fri, Jul 30, 2010 05:37 AM

Beltway betrayal (Editorial in Winston Salem Journal)

Gov. Bev Perdue and the N.C. Department of Transportation slapped Winston-Salem and Forsyth County hard last week when it put the long-delayed eastern leg of the Northern Beltway at the bottom of a list of 21 urban loop projects statewide, according to a draft list obtained by the Journal. That ranking means the local loop, which would have been completed by now if it weren’t for two lawsuits, was not recommended for land-buying or construction during the next 10 years. Placing Forsyth last is unacceptable because it means that Business 40 and U.S. 52 will be dangerously overcrowded for years to come, making traveling those highways unsafe and stunting economic development.

Our local leaders have played nice long enough, only to have our area treated like a red-haired stepchild. That despite the fact that our county is a foundation for the state’s biotech industry, and for the state’s economy in general, as was evidenced once more last week when Winston-Salem and Forsyth County landed the Caterpillar plant.

Perdue might argue that her new system of prioritizing loop projects, meant to remove politics from the process, prevents her from interceding in this case. But this is not a matter of politics. If it was, surely Perdue would pay more attention to her friends in Winston-Salem who want this loop, Mayor Allen Joines, Sen. Linda Garrou and Ralph Womble, the area’s representative on the state Board of Transportation. This is about basic fairness. Perdue could consider the history of this project, make an exception in this case, and give a full accounting to the public of all the good reasons for doing so.

As Joines says, the process is flawed because it divides benefits by the total cost of the project to come up with a ranking. That calculation puts Forsyth County at the bottom because no portion of the beltway has been built, he said. The rankings give preference to those projects that are under way. Other regions have segments of their loops already constructed. Also, the DOT did not give proper weight to the fact that two lawsuits had stalled the project for more than 10 years. If Forsyth had gone ahead with its project when it was first approved, in 1989, it would be done, at a cost far less than the approximately $840 million it will cost now.

Gayle Anderson of the Greater Winston-Salem Chamber of Commerce said in an e-mail that the DOT dropped the ball, and so did Perdue “because she is not honoring the promises that all previous administrations made, beginning with Gov. Hunt’s administration, that once the lawsuits were settled the state would restore our beltway funding … She was in Winston-Salem a few months ago and promised our business and political leaders in a private meeting that the state would honor its commitment and fund at least part of the project. She also said that the local community would have to find some funding, and we are working on how to do that.”

Chrissy Pearson, a spokeswoman for the governor, did not comment on that alleged promise in response to a question, saying instead in an e-mail that Perdue “has made it very clear to

Loop’s ranking is questioned (The Winston Salem Journal)

State highway officials say it makes a lot of sense to rank urban loop projects by comparing the benefits of a project to the cost.

But officials in Winston-Salem are still wondering how a formula that was supposed to be fair put the city’s beltway wishes at the bottom of the pile — at the same time recommending more beltway construction for some cities that already have portions in place.

“I think the process has some flaws,” said Stan Polanis, the transportation director in Winston-Salem. “We have long-range transportation plans that sort of count on that road being in place. I’m not sure what happens if it is not there.”

Everyone agrees that state money is limited. There are $8 billion in unmet needs for urban loop , and that part of the highway budget gets only $150 million per year.

“We have a small amount of dollars that has to be used to fund numerous projects across the state,” said David Wasserman, an engineer at the N.C. Department of Transportation in Raleigh. “A benefit-cost formula is used to prioritize many projects. We need to get the wisest use of the dollars we have.”

Wasserman works in the DOT’s Strategic Planning Office, which used a formula to develop a ranking of 21 urban-loop projects. The DOT’s idea is to take the politics out of road building and base construction decisions on hard data.

The draft urban loop priority formula put the eastern part of the Winston-Salem beltway dead last among the urban loop projects in the state. Neither the eastern nor western beltway is scheduled for construction — or even right-of-way purchase — over the next 10 years. The eastern and western beltway sections are considered separate projects by the DOT.

The state’s formula tallies up the need for a project and its benefits by assigning a percentage weight to various factors that include everything from how the road reduces congestion to how it may boost economic development. That number is then divided by the total cost of the project to assign a final ranking.

“There are not real good, clear relationships between the cost of a project and the need for a project,” Polanis said. “They are two different things. To give cost as much weight as it gets is not quite right.”

If the DOT had used only the number that represents the needs and benefits calculation, the eastern leg of the Winston-Salem beltway would have come in at third place and the western leg at eighth place. But, as city officials complain, when the needs and benefits calculations are divided by the project costs, both beltway sections plummet.

Polanis said that some projects that rank higher than the Winston-Salem beltway are smaller portions of projects that have already gotten a start. The top of the list includes projects like a 1.7-mile extension of Wilmington’s Independence Boulevard costing $56 million, and the widening of a six-mile segment of I-485 in Charlotte at a cost of $63 million.

Winston-Salem’s eastern beltway leg, at an estimated cost of $839 million, and the western leg, at $455 million, share the cellar with other nonfunded projects like the I-26 connector in Asheville ($555 million).

Nonetheless, state officials disagree with some local officials’ position that the funding formula favors places with beltway projects that are already under way. When Winston-Salem officials were invited to comment on the formula during the planning stage, they complained that it was a “major flaw” for projects to be evaluated entirely rather than broken into segments for separate evaluation.

Wasserman said that if a section of a city’s beltway has already been built, the benefits derived from that section were excluded from the calculations. State officials say the calculations gave no credit to cities for parts of beltways that have already been built.

By Wesley Young | Journal Reporter