Proposed Schedule
Your phone calls and letters are making a difference. If you think this toll road to no where is a bad idea, make your voice heard! Working together our communities can stop this toll road to no where. Click on the What You Can Do button to see what you can do now. This toll road can be stopped!
New Schedule; Higher Tolls
The latest schedule has the Turnpike Authority awarding bids in November 2011. If our elected officials don’t pull the plug and make this monster die, private properties will start to be purchased sometime in early 2012. If the toll road is finally built, the TPA now says tolls will run between $0.15 and 0.25 per mile, or $3.25 to $5.50 for a pay ride on the two lane back country road.There is no doubt now that the parkway will hurt Gaston County. Because of the toll road, Gaston County will lose jobs to South Carolina and Mecklenburg County. Any growth the parkway brings will be residential. And that means more kids in schools that are already overcrowded and underfunded. We must continue to push our elected officials to use the $35 million a year gap funding to provide lasting fixes to real problems in our County and State. At a time when existing roads are falling apart, the state is firing teachers, closing mental hospitals and parole officers are carrying four times a proper caseload, we don’t need to be wasting money on this piece of pork.
Turnpike Authority Schedule Slips <Revised February 2011>
| Finished | Evaluate Public and Government Comments |
| Finished | Final Environmental Impact Statement |
| Spring 2011 (from October 2010) | Record of Decision |
| November 2011 (from October 2010) | Traffic and Revenue Study |
| November2011 | Borrow Money |
| Spring 2012 (from March 2011) | Buy Land & Begin Construction |
| 2015 (from December 2014) | Open to Traffic |
Construction Plan
The plan is to start at I-485 in Mecklenberg and work west past 321 and up to I-85. The Authority is proposing asphalt construction because it is cheaper, but only concrete will support the trucks that supporters keep saying they plan to get off I-85. And that also means there cannot be the truck warehouse distribution other supporters say will bring jobs in connection with the intermodal facility at the Charlotte Douglas Airport.
West past US 321 the toll road will be a two-lane back country road. No word yet on how toll-payers would be able to pass slow moving school buses.
Financing Issues
There are several significant financial steps that have to work out. First, the Turnpike Authority has to get enough traffic and revenue information to convince Wall Street that Gaston County drivers are willing to pay back $402 million in tolls just to save just a few minutes drive time through the country. Click here to read about the study to determine the solvency of the toll road project in the Gaston Gazette.
Second, North Carolina’s taxpayers will have to step up with the promised $39 million a year for forty years in gap funding. Right now, we are facing a $3.7 billion dollar state budget shortfall that means Gaston County is likely to lose school teachers. We need to let our elected officials know that now is not the time to be subsidizing developers and residential sprawl that will just put more stress on our already overcrowded schools.
There are many folks who doubt that the estimates of toll users are solid enough to support a bond sale. Unrealistic toll revenue predictions, like those for the Greenville toll road fiasco, have made investors skeptical about putting their money into bonds for toll roads that don’t have any operational history.
If the Authority decides to go forward and the community doesn’t launch a lawsuit to stop them, they will borrow the money for the project in November 2011. If the banks will loan the money, then the Authority will sign a contract at the same time, and hope to start collecting tolls in 2015.