Panel slot ‘can’t hurt’ (Womble Committee Appointment on NCBOT) (Winston Salem Journal)
It’s not a magic bullet, but it can’t hurt.
That’s what some transportation insiders are saying in light of Ralph Womble’s recent appointment as chairman of a state highway subcommittee dealing with traffic improvements.
Womble is the area’s representative on the N.C. Board of Transportation. He has also been active among local officials who are trying to sway the N.C. Department of Transportation to give higher priority to the Winston-Salem beltway.
Womble is now chairman of the Transportation Improvement Program Subcommittee, which is composed of six of the 19 members of the transportation board. The Transportation Improvement Program is a massive document that says which highways will be designed, which will be built, and which ones will be left without funding.
The subcommittee is under the board’s financing and programming committee.
Nancy Dunn, who preceded Womble on the DOT board, said she was never a member of the subcommittee that Womble now chairs, but she learned that she needed to be at its meetings “to look after our interests.”
“No committee makes the decisions,” Dunn said. “They bring things to the board. We all have to keep pressure on our legislators and the governor and make them understand what the situation was here.”
The hot-button issue for local transportation is the state’s recent ranking of urban-loop projects. Among 21 projects considered in the ranking, the eastern leg of the proposed Winston-Salem Northern Beltway came in dead last. Neither the eastern nor western segments ranked high enough to be considered for funding.
The ranking and funding decisions are only in draft form, but local officials will have to work to get the priorities changed before next summer, when the state is expected to officially adopt the priority list.
Womble said that the appointment was not one that he sought, and that all the board members were appointed to various committees. Womble was also named vice chairman of the audit and contract committee, which meets quarterly, and is a member of various other panels, including one on toll roads.
Womble said that the appointment “can’t hurt” as he tries to make the area’s road needs known.
Pat Ivey, the division engineer for Forsyth and other counties nearby, said that though it is routine for members of the transportation board to fill various committee slots, “it is always good to have a board member be a representative” on the Transportation Improvement Program Subcommittee.
“The committee’s job is to look at specific issues,” Ivey said. “The chairman of the board will assign this issue or that issue for them to investigate.”
By Wesley Young | Journal Reporter
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