Mayors wonder: Can towns still cooperate on transit and roads?
A proposed interlocal agreement to form a regional transportation planning body among Huntersville, Davidson, Cornelius and Mooresville is dead, and the four towns’ mayors are discussing other ways to jointly lobby for road and transit funding in north Mecklenburg and south Iredell.
Forming a regional transportation organization was the major recommendation in an April final report of the four-town Mayors Transportation Task Force. The task force was formed last winter by Mayors John Woods of Davidson, Jill Swain of Huntersville, Jeff Tarte of Cornelius, and Bill Thunberg of Mooresville.
The group of citizens, corporate executives, planners and elected officials from the four towns met weekly from January through April to study issues including I-77 widening, the North Commuter Rail Line, regional roads, public safety and other transportation issues.
After publication of the final report, the four towns began negotiating the terms of a proposed interlocal agreement, which would have spelled out how they would cooperate and fund a new regional transportation group.
But on Aug. 18, the Huntersville Town Board voted 5-0 not to join the proposed agreement. It was the second time two years that Huntersville’s board has declined to join a major effort at regional cooperation. In early 2007, the town dropped out of a regional consortium that proposed to buy the local cable TV system. (After other towns quit as well, Davidson and Mooresville eventually went ahead with the deal, and now own the system, now renamed MI-Connection.)
Some Huntersville commissioners were unhappy with the proposed agreement’s focus on mass transit and I-77 and wary of committing the town to participate, Mayor Swain said this week. She said she had tried to remove the vote from the agenda.
“My board wanted to make a statement that they didn’t want to be hamstrung with an interlocal agreement, so they kept it on the agenda and they voted it down,” Mayor Swain said.
Mayor Woods was disappointed. He said it became clear during a meeting of the four mayors two weeks ago that the interlocal agreement “was just not going to work.”
Randy Kincaid, the former Davidson mayor who chaired the task force, had little to say this week, other than he’s not sure what Huntersville’s vote will mean for his dream of a coordinated regional effort to plan and advocate for improved transportation.
The mayors are hoping the four towns can build on the momentum generated by the task force, even without a regional transportation organization.
“From my personal point of view, it is valuable on behalf of all four towns that we work together,” Mayor Swain said. “Based on some of the comments that were made at last Monday’s Town Board meeting, I have the sense that our board members are interested in working with the other towns on transportation issues, but they would just prefer not to have the confines of an interlocal agreement.”
Mayor Woods said the region’s transportation troubles remain, and the towns will still need to find a way to work together. “It seems best that we stay involved in an informal organization that focuses on key issues around us,” he said.
He said the mayors have defined four major issues to address informally, and each mayor has agreed to chair a regional committee to work on them: Mayor Woods, transit; Cornelius Mayor Tarte, I-77; Mooresville Mayor Thunberg, planning; and Huntersville Mayor Swain, thoroughfares
The big question is whether a more informal approach can carry enough weight to sway county and state transportation officials, who hold the road and transit funding purse strings.
“In each case, funding is going to always be a key issue, especially when it comes to roads and transit,” Mayor Woods said. “And how we can together create more leverage on these issues is really the heart and soul of this effort.”
The mayors and other area officials are especially concerned about planning for a North Commuter Rail Line, which would run on existing track from Charlotte north to Davidson or Mooresville. Charlotte and Mecklenburg County officials already have funded engineering studies for both the $261 million north line and a proposed $750 million extension of CATS’ existing light rail line from downtown Charlotte northeast to the University area. Officials eventually could face a choice of funding either the north rail line or the light rail extension, and Mayor Woods said it may take some lobbying from north Mecklenburg towns to keep the project alive.
“I think we’ve got to pull our own nest together. We’ve got to repair the issues that have erupted among ourselves and we’ve got to create a united front,” Mayor Woods said. Huntersville’s decision to pull out of the interlocal agreement “does require a lot more work, and it does create challenges going forward.”
“At this point, we’re just trying to figure out how we continue to do things together, if we’re not willing to do things together,” he said.
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Read about the Mayors Transportation Task Force meetings, download the final report and learn more about the proposal for a regional transportation organization on our Transportation Task Force page. CLICK HERE>
After watching 3 hours of the Democratic National Convention last night and its emphasis on the importance of unity in solving local and world problems, I find it a bit disturbing that local leaders- Huntersville Town Board– won’t even get together to discuss bus routes.
This sends a strong signal, whatever the intent supposedly may be. It should give a big boost to the northeast light rail line. It would be good to speed up Charlotte’s east-west streetcar line, too. It makes more sense to provide services to people who are dependent upon public transportation than to cater to the whims of spoiled affluent suburbanites.
The North Corridor was planned with at least three stations in Huntersville. It really doesn’t make sense to build it with fewer stations there, just as it would be a bad idea to have it unless it extends well into Iredell County. We don’t really want Davidson to become a big parking lot for the commuters of the region. The best argument for going ahead with the North Corridor was that it would be much cheaper than the other projects. Hours of operation would be limited, and ridership wouldn’t be that large, but it could be built expeditiously. Even if the riders have been as greatly underestimated as they were for the Blue Line, anticipated years of bickering by the towns involved negate most of the rationale for proceeding.
Huntersville is destined to become even more of an obstacle in northern Mecklenburg, physically as well as operationally. The claim is that I-485 really is, for real this time no kidding, going to open this fall as far as I-77 and NC 115. The bottleneck at exit 23 will get worse with the increased traffic dumped on to northbound I-77 just four miles down the road. I wonder how long it will take until the first time that traffic backs up on the ramps of I-485.