The state budget that Gov. Josh Stein, a Democrat, signed July 7 handed the Charlotte-area governments that killed the I-77 South toll lanes in May a deadline and a bill: reinstate the project within about 90 days, or repay the state the $64 million it has spent designing it and see other road money frozen until they do. On July 15, the regional board that cast the original vote set the date it will decide. It will be September 23.
The board is the Charlotte Regional Transportation Planning Organization, and whether the toll lanes come back starts with Charlotte. The city holds 31 weighted votes, more than 40 percent of the board's total and more than any other member by a wide margin, enough that Davidson Mayor Rusty Knox, the board's vice chair, asked that Charlotte report where it stands at the August meeting "in light of the weighted vote."
The project would run privately financed and operated toll lanes down I-77 from uptown to the South Carolina line, under the 2024 public-private partnership the board rescinded in May. Opponents, including three residents who spoke against it again on July 15, argue the region already weighed its options through a planning effort called Beyond 77 and should spend its money on transit and other alternatives rather than another toll corridor. In May they persuaded the board to strike the project from the State Transportation Improvement Program, the state's funding pipeline for road work. "We voted to have it removed from the STIP," one resident told the board. "You need to respect that."
That program is also the leverage, and the budget uses it twice, CRTPO Chair Brad Richardson, a Stallings Town Council member, told the board. A statewide provision keeps a project a planning body has removed in the STIP until 90 days after the transportation department reports the removal to legislators, a report it has not filed. A second provision, written for CRTPO alone, drives the September vote: the members who rescinded the project in May have until about October 5, by Richardson's calculation, to reverse course and escape the repayment. It is a requirement state Sen. Vickie Sawyer, R-Iredell, has called "a punitive measure."
When the board met July 15, no jurisdiction had formally switched, but the ground was moving. Ed Driggs, Charlotte's District 7 council member and its delegate, said the city's position was unchanged, then added the line that mattered most: "There are some conversations going on about whether there could be a path forward that's acceptable to opponents." He did not describe what that path might be, and promised a fuller update in August. Mecklenburg County, whose seat was filled that night by at-large Commissioner Arthur Griffin, was blunter. Its position, Griffin said, "has not changed since 2024."
The one unambiguous move was toward the project. Michael Osborne, a Cornelius town commissioner, told the board that Cornelius had voted June 15 to support the toll lanes going forward. Matthews' delegate said his town's position, which turns on a dispute over interchange design, was likewise unchanged.
Waxhaw Mayor Robert Murray III asked whether anyone was looking for a way to build the project without the toll lanes, given a cost he put at roughly $3 billion against the $600 million the state has offered. Richardson said he knew of none.
The board meets next on August 19, when Charlotte is expected to say where it stands. The vote comes September 23.