Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, CaryThe Triangle Area
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And you too would have had a "free freeway" if you had just been willing to wait for it, like North Raleigh waited 30 years for 540 and the south side of Charlotte waited 30 years for 485. But you wouldn't wait, so your legislators cut a deal to get a freeway built 15 years sooner than it would have been. It came with a price tag, though. And besides, you got a free four-laned NC 55 in the process. No sympathy from North Raleigh.
540 will eventually be tolled to control the amount of cars using it - just look at other states and what they are doing with their over capacity highways.
Virginia has a toll road going from NoVa to DC (I-66) that is free for HOV's (2+) but if you are a single driver you have to pay a variable toll (only in the direction that rush hour traffic is headed in, inbound in the AM and outbound in the PM) that changes based on how many other cars are utilizing the road at the same time - the more congested it is, the higher the price is to discourage more people from getting on the road (it was in the news because it went up to as high as $44 last week). Strategies such as this will be implemented to encourage people to carpool and to spread out their commutes so that not everyone is trying to get on the road at the same time. The proceeds from the tolls are going towards new express buses along the highway and other transit projects in that area.
So tolls aren't always about paying for projects faster, I suspect in the future they'll be used for managing congestion as well.
And you too would have had a "free freeway" if you had just been willing to wait for it, like North Raleigh waited 30 years for 540 and the south side of Charlotte waited 30 years for 485. But you wouldn't wait, so your legislators cut a deal to get a freeway built 15 years sooner than it would have been. It came with a price tag, though. And besides, you got a free four-laned NC 55 in the process. No sympathy from North Raleigh.
What you're saying may be true, but I'd hardly consider NC-55 a consolation prize.
540 will eventually be tolled to control the amount of cars using it - just look at other states and what they are doing with their over capacity highways.
I don't think so. I don't have a crystal ball, but tolling existing roads is not as easy in NC as it is in some states.
Maybe not the existing lanes as is, but whenever 540 gets a new lane added to it, that lane will be tolled.
Maybe. Maybe it will be an HOV lane. Maybe it will take long enough so that it is neither. But in all those scenarios there will be non-tolled options for those who don't mind spending an extra 5 minutes in traffic.
Maybe not the existing lanes as is, but whenever 540 gets a new lane added to it, that lane will be tolled.
Yeah, there's a map floating around on the NCDOT website somewhere that shows HOT/HOV lanes on the northern part of 540 in a decade or so. The entire thing won't be tolled but any additional lanes most likely will.
And you too would have had a "free freeway" if you had just been willing to wait for it, like North Raleigh waited 30 years for 540 and the south side of Charlotte waited 30 years for 485. But you wouldn't wait, so your legislators cut a deal to get a freeway built 15 years sooner than it would have been. It came with a price tag, though. And besides, you got a free four-laned NC 55 in the process. No sympathy from North Raleigh.
I remembered when they called me and asked me if I was willing to wait. Also I told them to name my free four-laned NC 55 Awesome Avenue and they messed that up too.
And you too would have had a "free freeway" if you had just been willing to wait for it, like North Raleigh waited 30 years for 540 and the south side of Charlotte waited 30 years for 485. But you wouldn't wait, so your legislators cut a deal to get a freeway built 15 years sooner than it would have been. It came with a price tag, though. And besides, you got a free four-laned NC 55 in the process. No sympathy from North Raleigh.
I’m going to have to disagree a little bit with this. The road was on the map, tying up people’s land for over 20 years. This was during the previous “equity” formula days that had this area and Charlotte sending all their Highway money for pet projects down east and they were of course robbing the highway trust fund as well to pay for the general fund stuff. Had things been managed properly, they could have built it. Instead they created a somewhat artificial problem and then rammed the toll road bill through practically in the dead of night. Oh yeah, and also stole $60 million in tax money built road from 54 to 55 at the same time.
So, it definitely accelerated the road from what they claimed was possible, but I beleive if they had applied the formulas in use now and were not siphoning money it would not have been nearly as far away as they claimed. Also, it would have been built as 4 lanes and would have not had all the toll infrastructure and some of the extravagances of the current toll road, such as the decorative concrete standards for signs (which I personally think look worse than just using metal) the fancy bridges, etc, so it would have cost less as well. Though it probably would have reasonable radius off ramps instead of what we got but hey, what can you do?
Now, no disagreement the N raleigh sections were also delayed long after it should have been too. The cities really got shafted in the 70s to 90s on road money while legislators and their friends got nice highways to land in the middle of nowhere which made it worth much more money.
This small increase doesn’t bother me and was expected. It does suck some because I have to track my mileage and expenses for business, use the road a fair amount and had just gotten most of the segments memorized. Now I have to relearn it!
Last edited by Sherifftruman; 12-20-2017 at 06:18 AM..
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