North Carolina's Department of Transportation has only a fraction of the funding it needs to cover road construction and maintenance. Transportation Secretary Daniel Johnson told WUNC News his agency has to prioritize $144 billion in requests from local leaders, including everything from new turn lanes to new interstate highways.
"That $144 billion is competing for $5 billion of available funding, so that gives you some sense of scale as far as what people are seeing on the ground of what they need, and what our ability to fund those projects is," he said.
Transportation projects are mostly funded by gas tax revenue, but Johnson says that money is inadequate. The state is growing rapidly, and so are the costs of road construction. Johnson says finding more funding will be up to the legislature.
Senate leader Phil Berger says that's been a constant concern since he was first elected decades ago. "Folks don't like to vote for tax increases, and at this point it may be the only way to get more money, is to do that," he said.
A bill approved unanimously in the state House last week calls for a study of transportation funding formulas. The Senate, meanwhile, is expected to vote soon to confirm Johnson's appointment by Gov. Josh Stein to lead NCDOT. He previously spent eight years in other senior roles at DOT and is also a Navy veteran and a former Wake County prosecutor.
Johnson joined the WUNC Politics Podcast to discuss the state's transportation funding challenges and why tolling may be the best option to fund major urban highway projects.
This conversation has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
Are revenue streams that typically have funded DOT, like the gas tax, going to be adequate for these needs and this growth?
"I think we're going to have to look at a wide variety of options. The gas tax has been great... The gas tax simply isn't keeping up with both the rising costs in infrastructure construction, and then also the growing demand and need throughout North Carolina, so we're looking at a variety of options. We'll work with the legislature to identify what will be the taxpayers' preferred option to pay for infrastructure going forward. I don't think it's going to be a one size fits all."
The joke has always been that you cross into South Carolina, and your car starts to rattle because the roads just aren't as good on that side. At a certain point do we stop being the Carolina where the roads are smoother?
"No shade to our good friends to the south — all states are struggling with this issue. We've got a lot of need, and it's not just in the Charlotte and Raleigh area, it's all across the state. It's not just on the construction side, but it's also on the maintenance side. To your point, I think our most recent estimate of what we need for maintenance across the state was around $3.3 billion a year, and our available budget for maintenance was $2.3 billion. So there's a billion dollar gap. That's a pretty substantial gap."
We've seen a lot of headlines recently about major road projects in urban areas becoming difficult to fund without going for a tolling option, whether that's widening Interstate 77 in Charlotte or Capital Boulevard in Wake County. What's making it so difficult to fund these types of major projects through NCDOT's budget without having to consider tolling as an option to raise the money necessary?
"Whether you're looking at just a simple turn lane or a major interstate expansion, you're seeing the cost rise... so as those costs have risen you're seeing it getting more and more difficult to fund those projects through traditional means. If you're looking at the completion of 540 around Raleigh, we would not have been able to complete that project if it had not been a toll project.
"The cost of some of these projects is so extraordinary. If you put them in the current structure of how we're funding projects and what our available funding is, I think 'never' is probably the option for a lot of those projects (without tolls)."
Are you anticipating more projects in that category of 'we can do it with tolls, or otherwise our existing revenue streams are just not going to be enough to get it done'?
"We only get to tolling when the traditional methods aren't available. I like to avoid it when we can. Most of them are in your major urban areas, you're not going to see as many of them outside of areas where the traffic volumes are sufficient that tolling can fund the project. We're continuing to analyze that across the state, and where appropriate, we'll utilize that. In North Carolina, we only use tolling when it's approved by local governments."
Listen to the full interview with Johnson on the WUNC Politics Podcast.
