There was some hopeful talk for travelers around Charlotte and those headed across the Yadkin River at this morning's final meeting of the 21st Century Transportation Committee. No, it's not that the General Assembly would adopt recommendations quickly and produce a lot of immediate revenue for highway, mass transit and other transportation projects. That's going to take a while.
This time the talk was some optimism about getting money from President-elect Barack Obama's proposed national infrastructure program, for N.C. transportation projects such as completion of the I-485 loop around Charlotte and replacing the aging I-85 bridges east of Spencer over the Yadkin river -- the principal east-west crossing for a great many cross-state motorists.
While there's no information on a specific sum that might be available if and when the president-elect gets congressional approval for his program in 2009, committee chairman Brad Wilson speculated that North Carolina's share might come to as much as $2 billion or $3 billion -- "big money," he accurately noted, making it critical for the state to have projects in the pipeline and ready to go when money becmes available.
State Sen. David Hoyle, D-Gaston, is concerned that enough projects won't be fully ready to go. "If DOT has ever been in a hurry on anything, I've never seen it," Hoyle said.
The transportation committee reportm isn't online just yet but will be available at the committee's main Web site at http://www.ncleg.net/documentsites/committees/21stCenturyTransportation/Homepage/index.html
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
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3 comments:
THEY BETTER GET MOVING! THIS WOULD BE A HUGE WASTED OPPORTUNITY!
Pshaw! Raleigh would just funnel it off to pet projects the same way they've been raping the highway fund all along. Or did you not notice that the same clowns are still in office?
Hopefully Lyndo and some of the Transportation Board will have been removed by the time any money is awarded to NC. This "spread the wealth around" BS is getting old. There are plenty of projects that are ready to go in the Charlotte region if DOT would not try to re-engineer how the Feds award the money.
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