Read the interview here:
“An interview with Secretary Foxx”
Category: transportation
LaHood-Foxx love-fest?
Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx in 2012 as city’s bike-share program opened. |
When former Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood told President Obama he was leaving the job, he suggested Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx as his replacement. At least, that’s what LaHood tells Chicago magazine, in a wide-ranging interview with Carol Felsenthal, “A Complete Q&A With Ray LaHood.”
Here’s the section about Foxx, who did indeed win the job of U.S. Transportation Secretary (and who snagged some noticeable face-time on national TV on Tuesday night during Obama’s State of the Union Speech):
Absolutely. When I met with the President and told him that I wanted to leave, he and his team gave me lots of opportunities to consult with the White House.
I did, but they knew Mayor Foxx because the Democratic Convention was in Charlotte and they liked very much working with him on that. One of the reasons I suggested him is because we worked with Mayor Foxx a lot on his streetcar and his light rail project…. He was a transportation leader so it was pretty easy to recommend him.
McCrory, Dalton talk transportation
To view the video, watch below or click here to visit the WRAL website.
Here’s a lightly edited version of what White, director of the Mayors Coalition, sent via her regular email newsletter:
At 13 minutes into the debate the candidates concurred in their thoughts that the state should continue the current cap on the gas tax. Dalton cited the fact that we are efficient with our transportation system through our state-maintained system of roads and said we don’t need 100 smaller DOTs across the state.
Twenty-two minutes into the debate the candidates were asked if there were inequities in how transportation dollars were distributed across the state. McCrory said that most regions of our state – rural and urban – have major interstates running through them and are therefore punished because the interstate spending leaves little for other roads. He referred to the equity formula as the “unequity” formula and said that many mayors of both large and small towns have been complaining about it for years. He cited I-95, I-85, I-40, and I-26 as examples in both rural and urban parts of the state that have a difficult time affording to address their needs outside the interstates.
Dalton said tolls should be a last resort and if you implement them you must offer an alternative route that is not tolled. He said it was less offensive to toll a new road. He advocating prioritization of projects and talked about the recommendations related to inland ports from the Logistics Task Force he chaired. He advocated that we work with the congressional delegation to ensure the federal government returns to North Carolina the same amount of federal taxes we send to Washington, D.C. And he advocated for the expanded use of public-private partnerships, the lease-purchase of roads and more innovative financing options.
Why greenways matter
UNCC student Jamie Prince and her dog, Tolstoy |
I took a brisk walk today on the Ruth G. Shaw Trail along the Toby Creek Greenway through the UNC Charlotte campus. It was part of my job. Really. I was taking photos of the greenway for an article we’ll be publishing, with luck this week. (Update: It’s now posted here.)
It was warm-ish for January, and as I walked to where the trail intersects with the Mallard Creek Greenway I saw runners, bicyclers, one skateboarder, and a woman with a child in a stroller. Except for roller skates and hand-powered wheelchairs, I think I saw just about every non-motorized mode of transportation. Which makes the point: Greenways are a transportation venue as well as a recreation venue. If I had had the time and inclination, I could have used the greenway to head south instead of north and I’d have arrived at N.C. 49, aka University City Boulevard, at a light where I could have crossed to get to the strip shopping center at Harris Boulevard which has many useful businesses: grocery, drug store, bank, restaurants, etc.
Greenways are good for exercise and recreation, and most of the people I saw today were using it that way. But they’re also a good way to get from one place to another without using gasoline or creating carbon emissions. In the University City area and other suburban-developed places that lack sidewalks and pedestrian crossings and lights, greenways can provide essential, off-road walkways and bikeways.
But while the Mecklenburg County greenway system (sections of which are part of the larger Carolina Thread Trail) are welcome and much-needed, here’s something that makes me sad. Most of the greenways run alongside creeks, on land that A) is difficult to develop anyway, and B) parallels the county sewer system’s sewage lines. That leads to unpleasant sights such as this one:
Pipe crosses Mallard Creek near the Toby Creek Greenway |
This is a sewer pipe that crosses Mallard Creek just below the spot where the Shaw trail intersects the Mallard Creek trail. It’s not a pleasant sight, especially with the debris clogged against the column holding the pipe up. The many raised concrete cylinders holding manholes along the Shaw trail don’t exactly make one’s heart soar, either. It all makes me wish that the county and its taxpayers valued greenways enough to find the money to build more of them through places where our sewer system isn’t quite so noticeable. Not that I’m not grateful for what we have … just wishing.
(One more greenway note: In watching Showtime’s series “Homeland,” filmed in and around Charlotte, I noted that one key scene, in which one important character kills someone, appears to have been filmed in one of the spots along the new Little Sugar Creek Greenway near uptown, where the path goes through a concrete tunnel under a street. Given the nature of the scene, it’s clear the spot was chosen for its eerie sense of being a concrete-flanked, urban no-mans’-land. I had to muse over the situation: We Charlotteans are celebrating the arrival of our wonderful new uptown greenway, yet an out-of-town location scout has chosen a piece of it for a scene of creepy ugliness. Hmmm.)
Bike-sharing deferred, but tax talk moves forward
The result: Much information about higher registration fees, new sales taxes, new toll roads and even a vehicle-miles-traveled tax. (For details, see below.) The council’s transportation and planning committee voted to refer the whole topic to the council’s budget committee and to urge city staff to make sure the topic comes up during the council’s retreat next winter.
But no bike-sharing discussion. The committee ran out of time. That discussion is now scheduled for the committee’s Oct. 10 meeting.
For transportation policy geeks and tax policy geeks (I plead guilty), the how-to-fund-it-all discussion was meaty and even, well, sort of fun. The presentation from developer Ned Curran, who chaired a 2008-09 citizen group called the Committee of 21, is here. (For details, read that PowerPoint.) In a nutshell, the Transportation Action Plan, adopted five years ago and due for an update, lays out a series of countywide transportation improvements. The Committee of 21 concluded the gap between identified road needs and known funding sources (federal, state and local) over 25 years is $12 billion. So … how do you find that money?
Curran, CEO of the Bissell Cos., made clear that the committee’s charge was to look specifically at roads, not at other transportation modes. They looked at 19 different revenue options, such as sales tax and gas tax increases, driveway taxes, impact fees, sin taxes and even parking surcharges. (The full list is on page 6 of the presentation on the committee agenda.) They assessed the options based on how related they were to driving, how much revenue they’d produce, how easy to implement and operate, political reality, etc.
The Roads Final Four:
- Doubling the $30 vehicle registration tax from $30 to $60 = $18 million a year.
- A half-cent Mecklenburg sales tax increase for roads = $81 million. Note, that estimate was before sales tax revenues plunged in 2009. A more recent estimate would be $55 million, Charlotte Department of Transportation chief Danny Pleasant said.
- Tolls on all existing interstates in the county = $52 million a year. This, obviously, depends on the toll assessed and what revenue-splitting agreements would be forged with the federal and state governments.
- A vehicle miles traveled (VMT) tax. Curran said this option has gotten plenty of national discussion and would likely have to take place nationally, but as federal and state gas tax revenues sink due to more efficient cars and and people driving less, the VMT tax will get more credence. Privacy concerns? “If any of us have our phones on in our car, we’re being tracked anyway,” Curran quipped.
As Curran and Pleasant discussed the toll roads situation, it got interesting. A multistate agreement is in the works, they said, with which other states would agree to help each other capture the cents-per-mile tolls if, say, a New York driver zipped through North Carolina on I-95 and didn’t pay the tolls. New York would collect the money (how? that wasn’t clear) and send it to N.C. Meanwhile, North Carolina is one of several states applying for a program to inaugurate tolls on parts of I-95. With more tolls and more states cooperating – and with innovations such as a High Occupancy Toll lane being planned for I-77 in north Mecklenburg – pretty soon you’ve got a VMT anyway.
One doubter about all this: Council member Michael Barnes. “There has never been the political will among elected officials to deal with it [funding transportation],” he said. “I am tired of it.” Count him among skeptics who think council members will, once again, after discussion fail to enact any specific measures to fund the city’s plans for transportation.
Bike-sharing in Charlotte – soon?
The inequities of NCDOT board
Dear Gov. Perdue, House Speaker Hackney, Senate President Pro Tem (corrected, with apologies) Basnight:
Your state Board of Transportation is ridiculous. Got your attention? Good. Here’s why I say that:
I just received an e-mailed press release from my friends at the N.C. Department of Transportation, about committee assignments for that august body, the N.C. Board of Transportation. I had lost track of who my local representatives on the board are, so I decided to check it out. I popped up the online roster for the state transportation board, a body that has major sway in allocating state transportation money. Guess what I see. Charlotte – by far the state’s largest city and largest urban area – has only one member: Developer John Collett.
Of the 14 divisions, we in Division 10 (Mecklenburg, Anson, Stanly, Cabarrus and Union counties – population 1,374,357) have exactly the same number of NCDOT board members as Division 14 – Cherokee, Clay, Graham, Haywood, Henderson, Jackson, Macon, Polk, Swain and Transylvania counties – population 338,405. Notice how that’s a little more than a third of the population of Mecklenburg alone (913,639).
Now obviously Division 14 needs representation, too. I’m not saying it doesn’t. Rural areas shouldn’t be overlooked just because they’re small. But that doesn’t make it right, or smart, to overlook urban areas just because they’re big.
So let’s take a look at the at-large members of the board, who are supposed to represent various interests. Let’s see, there’s an at-large member for State Ports and Aviation Issues. So it makes sense for that rep to be Leigh McNairy (again, corrected, with apologies) from Kinston, right? Sure, Kinston has no port, but at least it’s on the Neuse River, isn’t it? Only thing is, the state’s ports are in City and Wilmington, neither of which has a rep on the DOT board.
Is it because of Kinston’s vast airport – the state’s busiest, and US Airways’ largest hub and all that? Oops, I forgot! That would be Charlotte. There’s even a Ports Authority Inland Terminal in Charlotte, ahem.
(If you give up on that Kinston mystery, here’s a clue. The state-funded Global TransPark – a yet-to-bear-fruit effort that attempted to revive all of Eastern North Carolina by building a big airfield – is in Kinston. Well, now there’s a parts factory there, too. Whew. I was starting to get worried that that Kinston appointment didn’t make any sense.)
There’s an at-large member for “rural issues.” The position appears to be unfilled. Hmm, I wonder who’s the at-large member for “urban issues.” Guess what. There isn’t one. But don’t cities have urban-style issues in much the way rural areas have rural-style issues? Don’t they deserve some attention too? Gov. Perdue, please hop on this.
There’s an at-large member for environmental issues. Good! That’s forward thinking. That member is from Raleigh, Nina Szlosberg-Landis. So the cities in the Triangle (Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill) get two board slots, because the District 5 member, Chuck Watts, is from Durham.
There’s an at-large member for government-related finance and accounting issues (huh?). He’s Ronnie Wall from Burlington.
Aha. Here’s an at-large member for mass transit. Since Charlotte has the only light rail transit system in the state, and is the only city with funding to build the state’s only streetcar system, and has the largest bus system and the only dedicated sales tax for transit in the state, it makes all kinds of sense that the at-large member for transit is – Andrew Perkins, from Greensboro?
And that gives the cities in the Triad (Greenboro, Winston-Salem and High Point) two board members as well, since the District 9 member is Ralph Womble from Winston-Salem.
Throwing aside the ridiculous way in which the DOT districts are configured (dating to where the state prisons were located, and I am not making that up), it’s fair for all sections of the state to have voices on the board. But it isn’t fair for people in cities to be disproportionately voiceless.
Charlotte and the state’s other cities are the economic engines of North Carolina. When they sink, the state’s economy sinks. That should be reflected in all state policies, not just transportation. It simply makes no sense that they get disproportionately tiny attention when it comes to transportation representation, or any other forms of representation.
I’m guessing the legislature can change those silly DOT districts. But when it comes time to make appointments, Gov. Perdue, Rep. Hackney and Sen. Basnight, could you please notice that your largest city – you know, the one with the busiest airport, the biggest traffic problems, the biggest mass transit system – might need a little more representation on your state transportation board?