- [Narrator] This is a production of PBS Charlotte.

- Tonight on "Unspun", the future of toll lanes in the Queen City.

As Charlotte continues to grow, so does the pressure on our roads.

State and local leaders are looking for ways to fund improvements, reduce congestion, and keep people moving.

But not everyone agrees on the right approach.

And I'll tell you the real reason politicians try to dodge the toll lane debate.

In today's America, welcome to the spin game.

Believe me, I know, I'm Pat McCrory.

When I was governor and mayor, I played the spin game.

I was played by the spin game.

But aren't we all done being spun?

Let's take the spin out of the world we're in here on "Unspun".

(dramatic music) Good evening, I'm Pat McCrory.

Toll lanes have emerged as one of the most controversial solutions to Charlotte's traffic problems.

Supporters say they offer choice and reliability.

Critics say they change the very idea of what public roadway should be.

Now, a new plan for expanding toll lanes on Interstate I77 is reigniting the debate.

The North Carolina Department of Transportation expansion of lanes from uptown to the South Carolina line would cost $3.2 billion and is getting pushback due to potential home demolitions in historic Black neighborhoods and the destruction of city parks.

Joining me now to talk about what it means for drivers across the region is Ed Driggs, a veteran member of the Charlotte City Council and Chairman of the Transportation Planning and Development Committee.

Ed, it's great to have you.

- Good morning - Back.

- Yeah, it's good to see you, Pat.

- It's thanks so much for your public service for such a long time.

- It has been a long time.

- So this toll lane issue, most people don't realize it goes back a long way.

Even back to the Beverly Purdue administration before Governor Pat McCrory.

- Yes.

- Tell us a little bit about the history and how did we get to where we are today?

- It actually goes all the way back to 2007 when there was a fast lane study that was done by NCDOT in Charlotte and other communities deciding that we would need managed lanes in order to meet the transportation needs of North Carolina.

And in particular in this area.

In 2014, the CRTPO, which is the Municipal Planning Organization, put the I77 project in the pipeline for state funding.

And so all the way back until then, and then for years, there wasn't enough money and every year they looked at it again.

They moved it forward to the next cycle of the planning process.

The cost went up, the available funds didn't, and so it was stuck.

And then back in 2014, NCDOT came to the CRTPO, on which I am Charlotte's representative, and said, this has to be a public private partnership.

Now, needless to say, because of the controversy that you know so well around I77 North- - Right.

Oh, I still bleed from it.

- People were kind of reluctant, right?

To tackle this thing and they weren't quite sure how to go about it.

Elected officials realized that careers had been disrupted.

So CRTPO decided to create a working group to study the possibility of a P3 and I77 South, taking into account- - A P3 is what?

- A public private partnership, right?

- Right.

- And to study I77 north and other issues.

A lot has happened since that project was done and the industry has gained more understanding of how to do them.

So we looked at all of the requirements that we would have, and we told NCDOT, okay, you can move forward with an RFQ on these conditions, - RFQ, for proposal.

- Well, actually RFQ- - Is for.

- Qualifications, right?

So it's the first round where you basically tell the developer community, guys, is anybody interested?

And if you are, tell us why you think you're qualified to do it.

And then NCDOT evaluates those, there were six of them in the end that did come in and chose four that they wanted to engage with further and invite to bid.

So where we are right now is those four have been identified, and I'm afraid I can't name them offhand, large international companies and NCDOT is evaluating those proposals in the process of doing it.

- So a little history back in I77 when I became governor, they had studied the issue.

They had made a proposal to all the mayors in the region, including at that time, Mayor Fox, I believe, and said, do you want this toll lane?

And in return, you get some additional road money to connect to I77 with I85 through Davidson and a few other roads around the Lake Norman area.

And those local officials, including Mayor Fox, said, yes, we want this toll lane.

So I went ahead with it because the local region wanted it, but I found out later that a yes didn't necessarily mean a yes when the public feedback comes back.

- Well, the problem that you had and that we are dealing with too, is that people didn't wake up until late.

Right?

So this whole thing, I77 North, moved forward quietly without controversy until a time when it was really too late to change course.

It had been in the works for years and so on this one, NCDOT was being more careful, and they were covering- - Like this one, the one in Charlotte - On south, right?

South, right?

- Right near the center city.

- So going south from Center City to South Carolina, they approached it with caution because of that bad experience.

Well, so much caution, I could argue everyone was quiet about it during the entire Cooper administration, during the time Mayor Vi Lyles and others before her, they stayed silent during the past decade.

The plan was always out there, but the media didn't talk about it.

Politicians didn't talk about it.

Well, maybe because of the McCrory effect.

- I think that that experience made people reluctant- - Political experience.

- To tackle it.

Yes.

It made people reluctant to tackle it.

And on South too the issue was, as I said, every planning cycle, it kept getting moved forward.

There was $600 million of state money budgeted for it.

A hundred million dollars of bonus money, which is what you just talked about.

But that wasn't nearly enough.

The latest project estimates was 3 billion, over 3 billion.

- So during Cooper's eight years, Governor Cooper's eight years kind of silence.

Then all of a sudden, when Governor Stein just got elected, Mayor Lyle's in her fifth or sixth term, all of a sudden it's on your plate and you're chairman of the Transportation Committee appointed by Mayor Lyles, and it's thrown to you.

So what was the problem?

All of a sudden the neighborhood saw the plan?

- So here's an interesting thing.

The CRTPO considered the question of whether- - C, I'm sorry, - Acronyms.

Yes.

The Charlotte Regional Transportation Planning Organization.

- All right.

- All right.

Which is the federally mandated body that is responsible for making decisions about projects like this.

And the law required that in order to proceed with a public private partnership, the same kind of model that was used on I77 North, the CRTPO, this planning organization had to basically give its permission.

So the question was put to us by NCDOT, should this be funded- - North Carolina Department of Education?

Transportation.

- Transportation, yeah.

You get used to the acronyms.

- I didn't allow acronyms when I was governor.

That's one of my rules.

- I know.

It's alphabet soup.

- Yeah.

- Anyway, they, the Department of Transportation came to us and said, so, you know, should, and they basically told us, you have two choices.

You can do a public private partnership or you can't do the road.

You decide.

- So the only way they were gonna widen the road was to do a toll lane.

- And you know, the conditions on I77 South are terrible.

Right.

It's jammed all the time.

High accident rate, a lot of pollution coming from all the slow moving cars, - High density along the road.

Not a lot of room to widen, if any room.

- And the interchanges were not very efficient, right?

It's an old road technology, 50 years old.

So we decided, yes, on the conditions, as I suggested that were worked out by our working group, we studied the whole thing.

You need to do the fares, for example, the fees on the road, the tolls in such a way that you not only have a minimum rate of flow of traffic, but you also have utilization of that lane.

'Cause one of the issues that has come out on I77 North is the utilization of the lane is actually low.

You get very crowded free lanes and you get cars whizzing through at intervals in the managed lanes.

So we thought, okay, we're gonna pay more attention to the algorithm used for the tolls to make sure that we have good utilization.

- Wow.

- As well as all of the benefits, bus, rapid transit type of things, emergency vehicles and predictable travel times, all the things that people were looking for from managed lanes.

And then we went back and we told the NCDOT, the Department of Transportation, okay, you know, you can do it.

We did that November of 24.

They then- - And the city council voted for it?

- Unanimously.

- Wow.

- Unanimously.

I went back to the council and I said, hey, I'm your delegate on CRTPO.

- Right.

- I need your instruction on this one.

I'm not gonna make this call myself.

And I explained the whole situation and there was a unanimous vote.

Everything was quiet.

We didn't hear anything.

- But they had not seen the plans yet.

The detailed plans.

- Well, they, they, NCDOT has a process that it uses, which is NEPA prescribed.

And, and I can't tell you what that stands for.

It's the federal- - Another federal group.

- It's another, it's the federal rules around studying these projects.

Taking into account community input, environmental impacts, all of the things that you need to think about when you do something like this.

- So they kind of hinted it's gonna be a big project to go into.

- It's huge.

It's gonna get wider, right?

So anybody near it should know it's getting wider, it's coming closer to me.

But nonetheless, it was quiet.

So council didn't hear anything.

CRTPO didn't hear anything.

And then the next step in NCDOT's process was to issue these maps.

And they were just concept maps illustrating what it might look like.

And at that point, the neighborhoods, particularly McCrorey Heights in Wilmore saw those maps.

- And this is around West Boulevard goes underneath I77- - You're uptown.

Yeah.

- Yeah, - Yeah.

- Yeah.

- I saw the maps, and then they started to protest, and then the protest kind of went viral and organizers got involved and the Black political caucus got involved, and it kind of graduated to being almost like a referendum on race, because Macquarie Heights was a, an historically Black neighborhood.

- Right, right.

- And, and so - It's a EY, not RY different spelling of my name.

- Yes, that's right.

- Very historical, - Right?

Yeah.

It wasn't named after you, I was gonna- - Connection to Johnson C Smith University, I think actually.

- And so therefore sensitive.

Right?

Even though by now it's actually quite a mixed neighborhood.

But nonetheless, historically, I77 south was put in there and there was disruption to that historically black neighborhood at the time.

- Yeah.

- It was very insensitive.

And therefore this was a touchy subject.

- So politically all hell broke loose.

- Basically- - The district rep, all the district reps joined together and the at large reps all of a sudden going, we can't do this politically.

- Right.

And it became sort of a referendum on race.

- And you were alone by yourself.

- And I really was.

- I saw that.

- That one night on council, you know, 10 of them wanted to send me back to the CRTPO with a motion to delay or cancel a project.

- Well, I saw, I saw you in a meeting just Monday.

- Yes.

- Last week.

- Yes.

- In which another Malcolm Graham, former council member who I served with along with you, walked outta your meeting.

- Well, we had a little bit of an exchange in the meeting.

- I watched that.

I, for the few times I was turning the channels and I saw how tense this issue is politically.

- It's, yeah, it's very intense.

And what I'm trying to do basically is protect us from a really bad outcome for everybody that would occur if the council actually did vote to send me out to CRTPO and make a motion to cancel the project.

- So what's next?

I mean, you've got a council members who are looking at the next election already, right?

- Probably for mayor, you have a mayor's race, - A number of them.

Yes.

- A lot of people run for mayor - A number of them.

Yeah.

- You've got DOT- - You should run again.

- We could really use your help.

- No, no, that's not gonna happen.

I couldn't get elected dog catcher and I can't afford the alimony payments if I do.

- [Ed] Yeah.

- All of a sudden you have no council support, yet you have DOT members saying, if you don't do this, you get nothing.

So what's, what's the plans of remaining members?

- Well, what's going on right now is NCDOT has basically realized the situation that we're in.

And they're making great efforts to engage with the community, offering community benefits, negotiating.

So my plan is that we move forward with those negotiations.

We reach a point where the neighborhoods realize they have an advantage from this.

They will get, the few people that need to be relocated will be relocated very generously.

- Is Governor Stein gonna come get involved in this issue, or is he gonna stay back like a smart politician would?

- I haven't heard- - Like Governor Cooper did.

- From or about him.

But the Secretary of Transportation- - Reports to Governor Stein.

- I know.

And he did come to Charlotte.

He's been meeting with the residents.

And so I think NCDOT is doing the right thing.

And therefore the the outcome I look for is a negotiated deal with those neighbors to compensate them generously and then go ahead with the project.

- 30 seconds.

Do you think that's gonna happen?

If so, when?

- I believe it needs to happen over the next couple of months because NCDOT deferred the next step in their process until June, and we need to be in a better place by June.

- And they could maybe go, we'll spend this money elsewhere in the state.

- They would absolutely.

We were told if that, if it doesn't get used for this public private partnership, $600 million plus a hundred million in bonus money, plus the benefits all get spent elsewhere.

- Ed Driggs, thanks for clarifying this very, very difficult political and planning issue.

Thanks for being on "Unspun".

Appreciate it.

- We'll see ya, Pat.

(dramatic music) - All right, it's time for "Unspun" top five countdown and a countdown right now are the top five reasons politicians don't like to talk about this whole toll lane issue.

Start out with number five.

Number five, the public and the media often refer to them as toll roads, not toll lanes.

So there's confusion when we start talking about toll roads.

They think the whole road is gonna be tolled when in fact it's one lane.

But even with that, there's still a lot of opposition.

Number four, the construction of toll lanes causes a lot of delays.

Well, that's true with all new roads, but especially with a very congested road like I77, there's already a lot of traffic.

So during the construction, people are moaning and complaining, and they hate toll lanes even more.

Number three, major operators are foreign companies.

Well, this time there's actually one American company also bidding.

But guess what?

The price is gonna remain the same regardless of a foreign company or American private company is running the toll lane.

Number two, the toll lanes only help those people that have the money to pay for 'em.

And boy, that irritates people in the middle class and lower classes that can't afford the toll lane while other cars are zipping by.

And number one, guess what?

The word freeways for a reason.

Everyone thinks they're free, but nothing is free in today's society.

(dramatic music) Ben Kenney is publisher of Business North Carolina Magazine.

He joins me now for this week's one-on-one.

Ben, it's great to have you back.

Boy, this toll lane issue, it was controversial when I was governor and now it's controversial again, I think Governor Stein's gonna have to deal with this issue sooner or later while Governor Cooper kind of got away with eight years of being silent.

- One way or another.

Yeah, definitely.

It's gonna come up for sure.

And one of the things I thought Ed did a great job was, is explaining a very complex issue in a very, you know, in a short amount of time as well, so that people kind of get an idea of what's happening down here in Charlotte.

I will say one thing that was, I thought was kind of interesting that, that I'd like to know a little bit more about is, is it gonna be different, the south part compared with the north part?

Is it, as I understand it, more cars and less money or something?

- Something Ed Driggs has just notified me of, which is unique.

What we probably made a mistake on the toll lanes going toward Huntersville, Cornelius and so forth, is we said we didn't put a maximum or minimum on how much cars should be in the toll lane.

- Right.

- And therefore, what's happening is the company has decided they can charge a maximum price for fewer cars that like to go 60, 70, 80 miles an hour.

- Right.

- Well now we're going, well, if it comes through the center of Charlotte near the Wilmore neighborhood, East Boulevard or the West Boulevard area, they're gonna have to let more cars go through at a lower price and maybe limit the amount of money they have in their formula.

So that would be a big change in the contract.

- You know, one other challenge that I thought about that, that area that they're talking about the expansion is, is also, I think I had mentioned a mixed area as well.

- Well, it's called gentrification, - Right?

Right, exactly.

- Yeah.

The Wilmore neighborhood, well, it used to be a blue collar neighborhood, then in the '60's and '70's it became more African American.

Now it's becoming more gentrified because of the price of housing in Charlotte.

So you have a more of a mixed neighborhood now, not only mixed race, but mixed income.

- Right, right.

And those high income folks, and I know that- - Very high income folks, you have people in 500,000 to a million dollar and more houses in the Wilmore neighborhood because of the South rail line.

- And for what I understand from folks that live in that neighborhood, I mean, if you have to get an addition to your house done or something like that, it almost takes an act, act of Congress to have it done.

So for something like a new, you know, lane coming into your area and affecting that, I'm sure that's also pretty controversial.

- And Ed is showing the politics of it.

He's kind of by himself, not that he's for or against him, but he's going, the city council voted for these things.

It's bringing back memories of me where the local area, Mayor Fox and Mayor Lyles and, and Mayor, Governor Perdue, all supported this effort.

But then when it got to the actual point of making the decision, that's where the public starts shouting the loudest.

- Okay.

Well, speaking of bad memories, sorry.

- It's a (indistinct) - Tell me a little bit about when this happened on your watch, what would you have done anything differently?

- I don't think I could have, because the contract was about done.

- Right.

- I could have played politics and canceled the contract and maybe won the governor's reelection, but then the taxpayers would've been, had to probably pay 140 to $250 million penalty.

- Right.

- So I wasn't willing to play that game with the taxpayers, but politically that might've been the wisest thing to do.

But even Governor Cooper, who won the election by 10,000 votes, moved on with the toll lanes.

He didn't stop a thing and in fact, signed Secretary Brogden.

He was the guy who did the contract for me as governor and Governor Perdue.

So, you know, that's how politics works.

- Exactly.

And it does.

I was looking at a, I was, I think I was reading a news article the other day, and obviously North Carolina, here we go, is another hotbed of national politics in the spotlight again and such.

And somebody they really focused, and this was like right before some of these special elections that are still taking place, but someone focused on North Carolina specifically.

- Yeah.

- As a hotbed and a lot of interesting things.

Speaking of, Cooper has a fairly substantial lead over his Republican opponent right now- - Michael Wiley.

- Michael Wiley right now.

And this is a question that we do, and we have in business North Carolina and North Carolina Tribune all the time, and it's, it is, what kind of a state are we?

It seems like we're a little bit of an anomaly from other states.

Are we a purple state, if that is a word?

- How do you combine blue and red?

What color does that make in chemicals?

I don't know.

But we're a blue red state blue in Charlotte, Durham, Greensboro, Raleigh, I mean, Asheville, totally blue- - Right?

- There are no Republicans left in local politics except for Ed Driggs.

- Right.

He's the one Republican in all of Mecklenburg County politics.

That's it.

And in the rural right outside of here, union County, Lincoln County, Cabarrus County, it's red.

- Ruby red.

- So the problem the Republicans are gonna have is the cities are growing so rapidly, you know, Charlotte's a thousand people a week.

Are those all gonna be Republicans, Democrats?

And what I think they're gonna be is independents.

And they're willing to go either way.

And that's gonna determine the Senate race is which way the independents go.

But right now, the independents are going against Trump, therefore that will help Cooper.

Cooper's timing is very good.

- Let me ask you a question from a an economic side and kind of a business side.

Is being red blue a good thing for business or a bad thing?

Or is does that make it attractive to business or?

- I think it's gonna, in the long run hurt.

- Mm.

- 'Cause when I was mayor, we used to sell our bipartisanship in Charlotte.

We had a six five Republican or Democrat, and now we're becoming like Atlanta and we're becoming like Philly or Detroit, one blue city, and then outside the blue city, it's all red.

And the business community's going, oh gosh, how do I play this?

And believe me, they'll play it one way or the other.

They know the politics, they'll keep their political instincts, they'll do what their lobbyists say, and it's gonna cause more confusion.

- That's really- - And the other danger is the cities might pass, start passing local laws against state what the state wants.

Can you recall HB2?

- Oh yeah.

- That was where that debate was really not about just transgender locker rooms and bathrooms.

It was really about does the city have the authority to make laws that the state should be making instead of the cities?

So you're gonna have this conflict like you do between the federal and state government.

- So you see it, this is interesting.

You see it a little bit more as a very extremes in different portions of the state compared with maybe a little bit more compromise and things like that.

- So I think it's gonna be tougher to compromise because of gerrymandered districts.

The cities are gerrymandered for the Democrats.

The rural areas are gerrymandered for the state legislature and the Republicans and the elections are decided in the primaries, not the general election for state legislators, city council, county commissions and school boards.

That's the life of politics today.

And it's not good for democracy.

Not just in North Carolina, but all 50 states.

Thanks for having me.

- Hey, thanks sir for that.

Great to be on here.

- Thanks for coming back.

Appreciate your publication too.

- Appreciate you.

(dramatic music) - So most political experts say I lost the close governor's race in 2016 because of the so-called bathroom or locker room bill.

They're wrong.

The bigger factor, the debate on toll lanes and I77, right in the middle of an election year.

During that race, I received nearly 30,000 fewer Republican votes in North Mecklenburg than I had just four years earlier.

Well, that's not a coincidence.

I lost the election by just 10,000 votes out of 4.6 million votes cast.

Proof every local issue matters.

So what happened over the next decade?

Well, the plans didn't go away, the conversation did.

State and local leaders kept toll lane expansion in their long-term plans, but they stopped talking about them publicly.

Not Governor Roy Cooper.

Not Mayor Vi Lyles, not Republican legislators.

Why?

Too much political heat.

They had seen the political fallout up close, me.

You may not know that the top transportation official in the Cooper administration had been directly involved in structuring the original I77 toll lane deal.

It's true.

So why push toll lanes without public support?

Because the reality hasn't changed.

And it's not very popular to say out loud, road funding is tight.

Gas tax revenue isn't keeping up and construction costs keep rising.

Translation?

The money has to come from somewhere.

In recent months, new toll lane proposals surfaced again for Interstate 77, this time forcing local leaders, including the Charlotte City Council to take a public vote.

And just like before, the public reaction was immediate and loud, another political backlash.

And now many of the same leaders who quietly supported these projects for the past decade are suddenly creating distance.

That's politics.

Some things don't change and free ways aren't free, whether you talk about them or not.

Well, that's the truth as I see it.

See you next time on "Unspun".

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] A production of PBS Charlotte.

(gentle music)