Road improvements needed to bring up to current safety standards the 182-mile stretch of Interstate 95 that runs through North Carolina could take up to four times longer to make without tolls, according to an official with the state Department of Public Transportation.

“Right now, we don’t have options to do the improvements in a timely fashion,” Roberto Canales, the DOT’s coordinator of strategic initiatives, said Thursday on the possibility of a proposed tolling project being scrapped.

In Tuesday’s gubernatorial debate, both Republican candidate Pat McCrory and his Democratic challenger, Lt. Gov. Walter Dalton, said they don’t fully support I-95 tolls and think that the state should look elsewhere for funding.

The interstate has gone more than 50 years without major improvements, and a state-commissioned study in January recommended tolling the roadway to help pay for nearly $4.5 billion in improvements.

Those include raising bridges, rebuilding others, improving interchanges and widening the highway.
“We’re talking about totally reconstructing this interstate,” Canales said. “This interstate has gone well beyond its life expectancy.”

Paying for the project is four times more than the DOT’s annual construction budget, he said.

With tolling, he added, it would take about 20 years to complete.

“Under the current funding, if you project out, I think we ended up looking at 70-80 years to actually do the improvements (without tolling),” Canales said.

The DOT is working on an economic impact study, a draft of which is expected in the spring.

Reiterating what the candidates for governor said in Tuesday’s debate, Dalton, responding to the question about how to pay for the I-95 project said Thursday: “We send more money to Washington than we get back from Washington. We need to work with our congressional delegation to make sure we get as much back as we possibly can.”

McCrory spokesman Ricky Diaz said the former Charlotte mayor “will work with the business community as well as local and state officials to create an action plan, which will focus on maintaining existing infrastructure while prioritizing new projects.”

Reporter: Bruce Mildwurf
(WRAL.com)
Posted: 6:34 p.m. yesterday
Updated: 6:06 a.m. today

The legislature’s Program Evaluation Division is recommending that the North Carolina Railroad begin sending 25 percent of its annual income from track leases to the General Fund and make a one-time payment of $15.5 million from reserves. The recommendations, included in a 48-page report examining the railroad, also call for it to sell off 14 properties not necessary for the line’s corridors and operations. The recommendations were presented to the Joint Legislative Program Evaluation Oversight Committee. They come a year after House Speaker Thom Tillis mentioned the NC Railroad as a potential asset that could be sold to help the state through tough budget times. The railroad is owned by the state, but is operated as a separate corporation. Its primary revenue, $14 million in 2011, comes through a lease agreement with Norfolk Southern Railroad. Since 2006, that money has gone toward a corridor improvement plan. The review noted several downsides to selling off or reorganizing the railroad, among them that the corporation currently pays property taxes to local governments. Besides the payments to the General Fund, Program Evaluation Division officials also recommended that the railroad strengthen its financial reporting requirements and create a strategic plan.

Railroad president Scott Saylor said the proposed dividend payments to the General Fund take into account the railroad’s ongoing corridor improvement plan and shouldn’t affect that plan. But he said the plan is contingent on investments by private partners, and that if those investment plans change, corridor improvements might be delayed. The railroad currently has $62 million in reserves, money that Saylor said is committed. “We recognize that the General Assembly has difficult budget decisions and that the budget difficulties are likely to continue,” Saylor said. He said one of the 14 properties identified for potential sale, a depot in Hillsborough, is currently being used by Norfolk Southern. Several of the other properties are in Morehead City, including along the waterfront where charter boat businesses and the city are tenants.
(THE INSIDER)
10/18/12

Officials in Charlotte have signed a deal with the Federal Transit Administration that commits the federal government to pay for half of the construction costs for a $1.16 billion light-rail extension. The contract, known as a Full Funding Grant Agreement, means the FTA will spend $580 million on the line. The city of Charlotte and the Charlotte Area Transit System will spend $250 million and the N.C. Department of Transportation will spend $299 million. FTA administrator Peter Rogoff said Charlotte’s existing line is “blowing the roof off of ridership.” The new, 9.2-mile extension could open in 2017. It will connect downtown to UNC-Charlotte, adding 11 new stations. Four stations will have park-and-ride lots. Construction is scheduled to begin in November 2013.

(THE CHARLOTTE OBSERVER)
(10/16/12)

Traffic on Amtrak’s Piedmont service between Charlotte and Raleigh grew faster in the recently ended fiscal year than any other service in the Amtrak system, the train operator says.

The Piedmont line makes two round trips between the Queen City and Raleigh each day, making stops in Cary, Durham, Burlington and Greensboro. The service carried nearly 163,000 riders in the 12 months through Sept. 30, up 16 percent from fiscal 2011.

Ridership on the parallel Carolinian service, which connects Charlotte and Raleigh with New York, shrank 0.3 percent, to 306,000 passengers in fiscal 2012.

Amtrak served a total of 31.2 million passengers, 3.5 percent more than in fiscal 2011. Its revenue grew 6.8 percent to $2.02 billion.

(Charlotte Business Journal)
Chris Bagley, Staff Writer
Date: Wednesday, October 10, 2012, 2:44pm EDT

WASHINGTON — Amtrak trains carried 31.2 million passengers in the fiscal year ending in September, the highest annual ridership since the railroad was formed in 1971, the nation’s intercity passenger railroad said Wednesday.

Ridership grew 3.5 percent over the past 12 months compared with the previous budget year, and ticket revenue jumped 6.8 percent to a best-ever $2.02 billion, Amtrak said. Ridership has increased every year but one over the past decade, and is up almost 50 percent from 2000.

“People are riding Amtrak trains in record numbers across the country because there is an undeniable demand to travel by rail,” Amtrak President and CEO Joe Boardman said in a statement. “Ridership will continue to grow because of key investments made by Amtrak and our federal and state partners to improve on-time performance, reliability, capacity and train speeds.”

At the same time ridership has been increasing, Republicans have stepped up their campaign to end federal subsidies to Amtrak. Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, has accused Amtrak of “Soviet-style” inefficiency and held several hearings devoted to criticism of the railroad.

The GOP platform adopted at the Republican National Convention in August calls for “the federal government to get out of way and allow private ventures to provide passenger service” in the lucrative northeast corridor between Washington and Boston — the heart of Amtrak’s operations.

Critics have complained that the railroad’s trains are slow compared to high-speed passenger trains in Europe and Asia. Last month, Amtrak began testing trains in the Northeast capable of reach speeds as high as 165 mph.

By Associated Press
(Washington Post)
Published: October 9 | Updated: Wednesday, October 10, 12:22 AMAP

Motorists driving up and down northern stretches of Interstate 95 these days will notice billboards urging them to “Say No to Tolls.” The billboard campaign, organized by business and economic development groups in the northeastern part of the state, is part of an effort to convince state transportation officials to drop plans to toll the interstate to help pay for widening and improvements. The groups say that tolling the interstate will hurt businesses along its path and industrial recruiting. “It puts us at a competitive disadvantage economically,” said Allen Purser, president of the Roanoke Valley Chamber of Commerce. He said the proposal is especially difficult to justify when other interstates in other areas of the state are not being tolled. The signs direct the motorists to a website, notollsi95.com, which lays out other arguments against establishing tolls along the highway. Earlier this month, the Department of Transportation announced that it would spend six months and $1.6 million to assess the economic effects of tolling the interstate to pay for $4.4 billion in improvements.
(THE INSIDER)
10/09/12

RALEIGH — It is a rather remarkable campaign season in North Carolina.
Some politicians argue that government is broken. Against that backdrop, state legislators huddle to draft a major overhaul of tax policy.

Meanwhile, few talk about what is very near the breaking point in North Carolina: the state’s system of financing road construction and maintenance.
The signs that the breaking point is near are everywhere, and they go back quite a bit in time.
They can be seen in legislators’ comments that the state can’t afford a new major coastal bridge, even when tolls would pick up 30 percent of the cost. They can be seen in the state’s ambivalent and piecemeal approach to tolls, where it isn’t exactly clear what the priority is for tolling.

They can even be seen in a decade-old change to road financing that allowed road construction dollars to be used more effectively, a change that the then- secretary of transportation deemed the most significant change to state road-building policy since the creation of the state’s Highway Trust Fund.
That a change in cash-flow management could be characterized that way is a bigger reflection on the looming problems than the actual policy.

The policy problems for road building and maintenance are pretty straightforward.
The state’s road building and maintenance money largely flows from the gasoline taxes paid by motorists. As more cars and trucks move to alternative sources of fuel, and more cars become more fuel efficient, that source of money will dwindle.

Already the cost of road construction and maintenance is rising. One reason is that a primary component of asphalt is petroleum.

So far, the state’s road-building finances haven’t suffered drastically because of a rising population and an increase in miles driven by motorists has meant that dollars collected in the state’s two road-building accounts have risen too.

The taxes paid are also tied to the price of gasoline, furthering the increased collections.
The state’s Highway Fund and Highway Trust Fund take in about $3.1 billion a year right now. With federal highway dollars, the state spends about $4 billion on transportation.

That money, though, supports the second-largest state-maintained road system in the country, with over 78,000 miles of roadway the responsibility of state government.

The other day, I spoke to a group in Elizabeth City and one of the first questions was about the fate of a proposal to build a second bridge across Currituck Sound, a project that would cost $650 million but alleviate congestion created by tourists traveling to the Outer Banks.

A legislator, speaking about the project a couple of days later, said that the numbers don’t add up.
Maybe he is right. Perhaps, in this case, the costs don’t justify the need.

If, on the other hand, the state’s response to every major bridge or road proposal becomes some combination of can’t, won’t or toss your quarters here, maybe state leaders ought to start examining something that isn’t just broken when a catchy campaign slogan is needed.

By Scott Mooneyham
(The Mountaineer)
October 8, 2012

Op-Ed by Todd Long, Deputy Commissioner of the Georgia Department of Transportation, explains improvements to transportation grant funding.

There are some 20,000 miles of federal and state highways in Georgia – the interstate system and major roads that link our cities one to the other; carry our commuters to and from employment centers and give structure to our thriving logistics industry and interstate commerce.

There are another 100,000 or so miles of city streets and county roads – streets or rural routes we live on that carry us to the neighborhood grocery store, to church, dentists and doctors; that take our children to and from school and become veritable appendages of daily life.

The former are the responsibility of the Georgia Department of Transportation; the latter of their respective county or city governments. Both are hugely expensive to grow and maintain.

And while there’s never enough money to go around, the Department historically has assisted local governments in funding their work.

Faced now with new legislative mandates and a stubborn economy that is stretching resources like never before, Georgia DOT has developed a streamlined, user-friendly program to get grant monies to cities and counties faster and simpler than ever before. The Local Maintenance and Improvement Grant (LMIG) program began two years ago as a consolidation of previous Department local assistance programs. New matching fund requirements resulting from the July Transportation Referendum vote prompted us to retool LMIG – to recast it so it best helps cities and counties help themselves.

We are in the process of providing the state’s roughly 700 cities and counties information on the “new” LMIG program and Fiscal 2013 application packets. With approximately $110 million at stake, we expect most cities and counties to apply. The grants will range from around a thousand dollars to four million, based on the population and number of miles of roadway in the city or county.

Georgia’s General Assembly, in adopting The Transportation Investment Act (TIA) and its statewide sales tax referendum held this past July 31, stipulated that local governments in those districts of the state where the referendum was approved would have to provide a 10 percent local match to receive their LMIG grants; those in districts where it failed, a 30 percent match. Some wonder if that is fair to local governments, especially those where TIA failed.

It is; in reality, cities and counties always contributed to DOT assistance programs. For resurfacings, they always had to patch and prepare roadways before the state could put down new pavement. On new construction projects, local governments always were responsible for any preliminary engineering and needed right-of-way purchases and they always provided most of the project’s funding. So there is no new burden.

Actually, local governments stand to benefit more than ever from a revitalized LMIG program: the $110 million dedicated to LMIG this fiscal year is tens of millions more than in previous years and we’ll now give local governments their total grants in up-front single payments, instead of as work is completed.

This will give them the flexibility to decide which projects to build and to begin work sooner. As it should be, cities and counties will control their funds, their schedules and their projects.

(Monroe Patch)
Oct 5, 2012

With Hispanics and young whites leading the influx, US cities of 5 million or more residents saw the population of their inner cores increase 13 percent in the last decade, the Census reported.

US cities saw their core populations boom by 10 percent in the last decade, as both Hispanics and young white Americans found it increasingly beneficial and appealing to live close – often very close – to the inner city, according to a unique Census report released Thursday.

Many American cities – Boston and Los Angeles being two good examples – have of course seen similar gentrification movements since the 1990s, and even before. And, certainly, Rust Belt cities in Ohio and Michigan continue to be whittled down by suburbanization and the flight of capital.

But the Census data showing that the influx to city cores has expanded more broadly, and that it’s primarily Hispanics and white “pioneers” who are targeting ailing downtown areas for revival, suggest that growing numbers of Americans are no longer seeing inner cities as founts of despair, but as harbingers of possibility.

Five unusual Census 2010 facts

“What’s new here is that it shows there’s a pulse in the urban core, in big metro areas that have diverse economies,” says William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, in Washington.

“It’s interesting that Chicago and New York were the top ones, which suggests these are places that will attract young and well-off people who want to feel like they live in an important area,” he says. “You can’t generalize entirely, of course, because while some urban cores are doing very well, others are still part of a broader suburban trend” where downtown areas are emptying out.

The Census report, which analyzed demographic changes down to a granular level in order to zoom in on localized population movements, notably reported that, across the US, urban neighborhoods located within a two-mile radius of city hall saw an across-the-board 2 percent increase in population.

Cities with 5 or more million residents saw their populations in areas within a two mile radius of their largest city hall increase by 13 percent, a trend mirrored at a slightly slower pace in cities with between 2.5 and 5 million residents.

Chicago alone saw 48,000 people, many of them young and white, move into its central core area – the highest number in the US. New York, Salt Lake City, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C., didn’t lag far behind, as those areas benefited from mostly strong local governance and improved services.

The Washington metro area is a notable example of this pattern,” said Steven Wilson, a co-author of the report, according to a Census release. “We see increases in the non-Hispanic white population, in both numeric terms and share of the total population, in many of the District’s census tracts in or close to the city’s downtown area.”

At the same time, whites’ share of the population in some of Washington’s suburbs dropped by 10 percentage points, the Census reported.

In Atlanta, hard hit by the housing crisis, the trend was also evident. Only three metro zipcodes saw major gains in home prices in the last year, and they were all gentrifying neighborhoods within a few stones’ throws of City Hall.

The Census Bureau also noted that Atlanta epitomized another dynamic: the exodus of some African-Americans from the city’s close-in neighborhoods in favor of outlying suburbs – an echo, of sorts, of the white flight of decades ago – that saw Atlanta’s suburban black population increase by 10 percent across the decade.

Meanwhile, some US cities, mainly in the Rust Belt, continued to see an overall exodus from core urban areas. Baltimore, Toledo, Dayton, and Saginaw all saw significant declines in downtown populations, largely because investment capital continued to move elsewhere, often into the South. One Southern city, New Orleans, saw its core urban population decrease, largely because of the impact of hurricane Katrina.

“American cities are benefiting from broad demographic, economic, and cultural forces that augur a possible return to urbanity,” and where “declining household size and increasing racial and ethnic diversity have the potential to benefit cities,” Alan Berube and Bruce Katz, both of the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program, wrote in a 2006 report called “The State of American Cities.”

But amid the economic and real estate problems buffeting American cities today, the stakes remain high for many metro areas.

While large US cities showed the most dramatic success in drawing new people to their inner cores, “the competition … among smaller second- and third-tier cities is brutal,” wrote the demographer Richard Florida back in March for the Atlantic Magazine. “These cities rise and fall frequently.”

By Patrik Jonsson, Staff Writer
(CSMonitor.com)
September 27, 2012