The Charlotte Regional Transportation Planning Organization votes September 23 on whether to revive the I-77 South toll lanes, the public-private partnership, or P3, it rescinded in May by a two-thirds weighted vote. At its August 19 meeting, the last one before that vote, Charlotte's delegate delivered the update the board asked for in July. "The position of Charlotte remains unchanged, that we are not in support of reinstating the P3 project," said Ed Driggs, the District 7 council member who casts the city's 31 weighted votes, the largest single bloc on a board where voting power follows population.
The pressure behind the September vote comes from the state budget signed July 7. As The Mercury reported when the provision surfaced, members who voted to rescind and now reverse course are exempt from repayment; those who do not owe a share of what NCDOT says it has spent on the project, apportioned by their weighted-vote share, with their other state projects paused until they pay. The law's reversal window runs 90 days from the signing; the board's chair has put the deadline at about October 5, and the September 23 vote sits twelve days inside it. No vote was taken August 19. What the board did instead was argue about the bill, and about the clock.
The $60 million that may be $32 million
The repayment figure driving the September vote came under attack from the members who would owe it. NCDOT advertised its request for qualifications, the 2025 solicitation the state treats as the project's point of no return, three years into the current design. Mecklenburg County Commissioner Leigh Altman, who holds the county's three votes, told the board the state's own transportation department undercuts the number in the budget law. "We know from NCDOT that not 60 million but 32 million is what has been spent since the RFQ went out," she said, calling the $60 million figure "on its face illegitimate." The $32 million was not documented at the meeting; it is Altman's account of NCDOT's own accounting. She argued the provision is "expressly punitive in its intent," retroactively penalizes conduct that was lawful when it happened, and singles out Mecklenburg County, and she returned to what she called "the heart of the problem": the corridor maps were shared with the community only after the deadline to object had passed. The constitutional judgment, she allowed, is her opinion.
Matthews Mayor John Higdon asked for receipts. At least two board members besides himself, he said, have repeatedly requested an itemized, public, line-item accounting of what the state says it has spent, and have not received one. "If we're going to have to pay a fine, I'd like to see what we're paying for," he said. No accounting was presented at the meeting, and the meeting did not take up what margin a reinstatement vote will require.
What Charlotte is doing with five weeks
Driggs told the board there is "activity underway to explore whether there could be a path forward." At the August 3 meeting of his Transportation, Planning and Development Committee, city staff laid out two efforts: independent third-party engagement with the public and with interest groups, run by the city rather than NCDOT, to establish what opponents of the project would accept; and an independent analysis of alternatives, to satisfy council members that no option has gone unexplored.
The question hanging over both, by Driggs' own description, is whether any of it is possible after October 5. He warned what a wrong guess would mean: "There is the possibility of just a miscalculation." He would not predict where his colleagues land: "I'm not able to speculate at all about whether or not current activity on city council is going to lead to a change in Charlotte's position." His own preference was not hidden; he personally hopes a way can be found, citing what he described as $300 million in corridor investment and $100 million in bonus money.
"An impossible deadline"
Higdon, whose town holds two votes and, as he reminded the room, never supported the toll lanes in the first place, said the analysis Charlotte wants cannot exist by the next meeting. "This is an impossible deadline to have a real alternatives analysis done in a month or 40 days," he said. The Mercury reported on August 5 that the review Charlotte's council discussed runs about five months, against a deadline then eight weeks away.
Wingate's delegate, Martin Graves, made a version of the same point: he voted against the May rescission because he had no time to consult his town board, and he will not repeat that. "I can't show up blind again," he said.
The case for reinstating
Stephen Rosenburgh, who sits on the regional board as an alternate for the state Board of Transportation's two local divisions and said his comments were his own, made the case for reversal. "This is the most important decision for transportation this city, region, state may ever make," he said. The project has been "approved nine times since 2014." As he reads the law, the state must pull a rescinded project from its ten-year plan, work stops on every state project in jurisdictions that vote no, and a court fight would add "another seven years." By his arithmetic, the corridor money, the ancillary road money and the developer's committed community investment total "a billion dollars."
A board voting under protest
Davidson Mayor Rusty Knox, the board's vice chair, spoke to what the fight has done to the board itself. His town has not met and remains "an affirmative rescind," he said, and what changed other members' votes was not persuasion: "We're making a decision because we've been strong-armed by the legislature." The board, he said, risks becoming "the policy board only that makes its decisions based on a head nod from the legislature."
Four residents spoke at public comment, split along the same line. Larry Shaheen, an attorney representing the Real Estate and Building Industry Coalition and a commercial development association, urged the board not to "say no to $4 billion in growth." The other three speakers opposed reviving the lanes.
The rest of the meeting
Two pieces of business advanced. The board endorsed its final list of local funding priorities for the state's next ten-year transportation plan, due to the state's scoring office by August 28. And the paperwork rebuilding the region's transit governance is nearly finished: every voting jurisdiction has signed the amendment seating the new Metropolitan Public Transportation Authority as a voting member of the board, and the document is with the governor for final signature.
The board votes September 23, at 6 p.m., in room 267 of the Government Center. The window it spent the evening arguing about closes twelve days later.