A path to get traffic moving on I-77

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by Steve Harrison
WFAE

The Interstate 77 toll lanes are dead. Now what?

In a stunning decision last week, the Charlotte Regional Transportation Planning Organization voted to rescind support for the $3.2 billion toll lane project after intense pressure from west Charlotte residents and toll lane opponents. The N.C. Department of Transportation then announced that the toll lanes will be removed from the state’s Transportation Improvement Program because there’s no viable financial path to build them without partnering with a private company.

Many residents celebrated. The business community and some leaders fumed. And the highway is still, of course, largely gridlocked. 

The city’s vote doesn’t mean the DOT can’t improve and widen I-77 over the next decade. 

Transit advocates have pushed for more multimodal solutions to get people out of cars and unclog the freeway. But new rail funding is already committed to the Red Line north and east-west Silver Line, projects that will take a decade or more, at least. The easiest – and most affordable – way is to discard the idea of express toll lanes. 

The DOT could advance a more modest project: Build one new free lane in each direction. It doesn’t need to improve the entire 11 miles of the highway as originally planned, but could  focus instead on a critical six-mile stretch between Nations Ford Road and the interchange of I-77 and the 1-277/John Belt Freeway interchange south of uptown.

The issue of Charlotte in Motion will look at how that scaled-back widening would work. It will also examine how two other highway projects overcame the financial limitations that the DOT has said made toll lanes the only option in Charlotte.

A “corridor cap” in North Carolina limits how much money can be devoted to a single highway project over a five-year period. That cap is roughly $600 million. The idea is to make sure no single project soaks up all of the state’s money, promoting fairness in budget allocations.

The DOT has cited the cap as the reason it needed a private company to build the toll lanes in Charlotte, which have been estimated to cost $3.2 billion, or more than $4 billion in future dollars when the highway is finished. The private company would front most of the construction costs and would be paid back with toll revenue over the next 50 years. It’s the same playbook that the state used for I-77 toll lanes north of uptown. 

There are two other massive highway projects underway in North Carolina whose budgets go well beyond the $600 million cap, however. 

Neither is being built with toll lanes.

One is a 10-mile widening of I-85 in Gaston County that will cost $1.5 billion. The other is the I-26 connector in Asheville that will cost $1.8 billion.

In Gaston County, the DOT divided the I-85 project into three segments. Each was considered a separate project, and each is receiving corridor-capped money. Construction will start this year and last until 2033.

In Asheville, the I-26 connector has been an on-again, off-again project for decades. It’s now moving forward, at a cost of $1.8 billion. The state is paying for it all, and there are no toll lanes. A DOT spokesperson for Buncombe County says the project was able to access more money because it's technically two highway corridors — I-26 and I-240. Still, the total project cost is more than the $600 million for each corridor.

In Fayetteville, the DOT is widening 16 miles of I-95 for $709 million. It’s been split into two different projects. One segment is being paid for by a $147 million federal grant.

Closer to home, plans estimated at $1.5 billion to add a state-run toll lane and a general purpose lane to each side of a nine-mile stretch of Independence Boulevard between Idlewild Road and I-485 were divided into nine projects to be able to get it done. The project is moving forward and is several years away.

The DOT could do the same for I-77 as Gaston did for I-85: Break the project into segments, and access state funding for each one, separately.

It would take longer to build than the toll lanes. But the upside would be the state would pay for it all. 

If you are a skeptic of this idea, you may note that it will take a long time to access $600 million over enough different time periods to build a project that costs up to $4 billion.

But the I-77 project only costs that much because toll lanes are incredibly complex and expensive.

First of all, the DOT wanted to build two toll lanes in each direction from uptown to the South Carolina line, a total of 11 miles (That’s 44 miles worth of new lanes). Toll lanes require special access ramps. Adding four lanes total would require the rebuilding of almost all existing bridges over the highway and would require significant widening over difficult terrain. And the toll lanes would require the near-complete overhaul of the John Belk Freeway and Brookshire Freeway interchanges uptown. One plan called for elevating the toll lanes through uptown.

Much of the congestion on I-77 could be fixed by instead focusing on just six miles of highway.

The worst bottleneck is on I-77 South, just past the I-277 interchange. Traffic from the John Belk Freeway, Wilkinson Boulevard and Freedom Drive merges with I-77, and all those access ramps funnel into just three lanes north of Remount Road.  

This pressure point creates congestion almost the entire day, during both morning and afternoon commutes.

The second most significant bottleneck is on I-77 North, just past the I-485 interchange near Pineville. Traffic from the outerbelt pours into I-77, where the highway capacity drops from six lanes to three lanes just south of Nations Ford Road.

The highway only has three lanes in each direction in that critical six-mile section.  

NCDOT data shows that most of the busiest I-77 interchanges south of uptown are in that six-mile stretch: Just 5% of drivers go the distance between the S.C. line and uptown. About 30% take I-485, 17% take I-277/U.S. 74, and 12% each take the exits at Woodlawn, Tryon Street and Tyvola Road.

How much would it cost to add one lane in each direction for just those six miles (a total of 12 new lane-miles) — $1.5 billion? 

Sounds a lot more like the Gaston County project that the state is willing to fund and build.

The DOT hasn’t shared a public estimate, and it may not have one. Its directive from the CRTPO for more than a decade has been to build express toll lanes on I-177 – not two general-purpose lanes.

There is evidence that four general-purpose lanes in each direction can handle Charlotte traffic. I-85, for instance, carries more vehicles (170,000 to 207,000 vehicles a day) than I-77 (150,000 to 160,000 a day). For the most part, rush-hour traffic flows reasonably well. 

Here’s what the highway looked like during the morning commute earlier this month:

Let’s look at the rest of I-77 that wouldn’t be widened for now. We will start at the northern end and move to the south.

That section of the highway passes through neighborhoods like McCrorey Heights that objected most loudly to the proposed toll lanes. I-77 wouldn’t need to be widened at all through that two-mile stretch, creating no new negative impacts to Frazier Park, Pinewood Cemetery, Biddleville, Seversville and Wesley Heights.

I suspect so, but a traffic study would be needed. This section of the highway is between a half-mile and a mile.

But widening it with only one free lane in each direction instead of two toll lanes in each direction would allow the state to keep four bridges: Tyvola, Woodlawn, Norfolk-Southern rail bridge and Clarkston Street.

Seven other bridges would have to be rebuilt, unless the DOT is comfortable having vehicles drive right past bridge pillars. 

Here is the Clanton Road overpass over I-77. Is there enough room for an extra lane? Maybe.

The I-77 overpass over West Boulevard would have to be widened. But it could be done in a way to prevent any homes in Wilmore from being demolished.

In a perfect world, that would be widened as well. But many of those drivers are from South Carolina. They can wait for relief until the 2040s.

The DOT said in a statement that it is “evaluating next steps and does not have any additional information available regarding CRTPO’s decision and the project’s status.”

Brad Richardson, the CRTPO chair, said he’s thought about when the board should discuss how to move I-77 forward – but he doesn’t think that will happen this summer.

On the Charlotte City Council, Victoria Watlington has been pushing for an independent analysis with UNC Charlotte engineers.

Mecklenburg Commissioner Leigh Altman also wants an outside group to look at I-77 because a “significant trust gap” has developed between the DOT and the community.

She said the DOT’s plans to remove I-77 from the STIP “appear punitive and premature.”

Whatever happens, there will be competing visions for I-77. Some don’t want to give up on toll lanes, even though they are extremely expensive and difficult to finance without a public-private partnership. Sustain Charlotte wants investments in transit, possibly by using the I-77 shoulder for express buses.

And most drivers? They just want relief.

Steve Harrison is a reporter with WFAE, Charlotte’s NPR news source. Reach him at [email protected].