The transportation project that would have begun just north of Uptown is, as of this week, effectively dead. On Wednesday, May 20, the Charlotte Regional Transportation Planning Organization (CRTPO) voted to withdraw its support for the I-77 South toll lanes, ending a $3.2 billion expansion that would have run from just north of Uptown to the South Carolina line.
For Fourth Ward, which sits at the Uptown end of that corridor, the decision is close to home, even if the construction would never have reached the neighborhood itself.
What the vote did:
It took the project off the state's funded list. The vote removes I-77 from the N.C. Department of Transportation's ten-year construction program, the list a road has to be on to get built.
It sent the money elsewhere. Transportation Secretary Daniel Johnson had warned Mayor Vi Lyles, in a May 15 letter, that rejecting the toll plan would cost the region roughly $700 million in state funding. After the vote, NCDOT confirmed the loss and said the money would be redistributed across the state.
It left no replacement. Opponents are floating non-tolled alternatives, including bus-on-shoulder service, micro-transit, and reversible HOV lanes, but none is funded or on the state plan.
The timing is its own complication. Mayor Lyles has said she will resign June 30, so the next mayor inherits the question of what follows the toll lanes.
For the full account of the vote, and how CRTPO's weighted system let Charlotte drive it, see The Charlotte Mercury's coverage.