A federal judge ruled October 25 that he won’t call a halt to building the Monroe Bypass, but the Turnpike Authority still faces legal challenges to getting the project under construction.
Judge Dever concluded the data used by the Turnpike Authority was bad, but it wasn’t so important that the build decision was wrong.
"What they actually did was they ended up comparing building the road with building the road," Southern Environmental Law Center attorney Chandra Taylor has said. The build – no-build comparison is the heart of the environmental impact analysis.
U.S. District Court Judge James Dever agreed that state officials did make mistakes in some of their calculations of the road’s potential impact. But he concluded the mistakes were not central to the decision, and that the state followed up make sure those errors didn’t affect the final outcome of the study.
The North Carolina Wildlife Federation, Clean Air Carolinas and Yadkin Riverkeeper filed the lawsuit with the help of the SELC. They plan to appeal the decision, which could well delay Turnpike Authority plans to borrow the money early next year and get started on construction. There are also separate legal challenges to a state water quality permit, which could also delay the willingness of Wall Street to loan money to finance the project.
The Monroe Bypass decision has no direct impact on the Garden Parkway. The Turnpike Authority still hasn’t issued the final record of decision for the Garden Parkway. Originally they had scheduled to issue it by March 2011, but they are clearly having problems getting it finished. Some of those problems are coming from its expert conclusions that the Garden Parkway will suck jobs away from Gaston County into South Carolina. Until the Turnpike Authority issues its final decision, no one can say if they have done a good job or not.
Unlike the Monroe Bypass, the Turnpike Authority simply does not have the money from the state legislature to start work on the Garden Parkway. Our job next spring will be to make sure the legislature does not put any money towards this toll road to no where.
TURNPIKE AUTHORITY HELD BACK CRITICAL MONROE BYPASS DATA
Garden Parkway Data Showing Job Loss to South Carolina Also Appeared Manipulated
The North Carolina Turnpike Authority deliberately presented false information in order to proceed with Union County’s Monroe Bypass, the Charlotte Observer reported in a front page story. One federal official says the Turnpike Authority outright lied to her about material information. "That's cooking the books," said transportation consultant David Hartgen, professor emeritus at UNC Charlotte, who is not connected to the Monroe Bypass.
In Monroe, an environmental group has filed a lawsuit to stop the Monroe bypass.
The Southern Environmental Law Center says the Turnpike Authority is
biased toward constructing the bypass and has rigged the books by
overstating the need, brushing off cheaper options and understating the
impacts of the Monroe bypass on the local community. It is no different
than what the Turnpike Authority has done with its evaluation of the
toll road to no where in Gaston County. The lawsuit against the Monroe
Bypass is serious and has delayed financing the project.
News that the Turnpike Authority cooked the Monroe Bypass books comes right on the heels of earlier revelations that the Turnpike Authority appears to have deliberately underreported the 950 jobs that the nearly $1 billion toll road to nowhere would drain out of Gaston County. “I don’t think there would be much support for a project … that appears to benefit South Carolina the most ….” the lead engineer on the project, Jill Gurak, wrote to Turnpike officials nearly a year ago when she called for “out of model smoothing” to improve numbers that show 950 jobs leaving Gaston County for South Carolina and elsewhere by building the Gaston East West Connector. Click here to read the front page article in the Charlotte Observer. Click here to read Gurak’s entire email calling for manipulation of the unflattering jobs data.
Based upon these reports, there can be no denying that the Turnpike Authority will do whatever it takes – including lie – to build projects that keep its unelected state officials in business. That just isn’t right. And you have to wonder just who they are trying to please.
Reproduced with permission of Charlotte Observer
The Charlotte Observer feels so strongly about this pattern of deception that it has now written two strongly worded editorials. The first one calls attention to job loss data that appears to have manipulated out of concern for political fall out, and condemns the Gaston East West Garden Parkway as a “boondoggle” waste of taxpayer money that won’t relieve congestion and will cost North Carolina jobs. The other editorial denounces the Turnpike Authority for the “lack of forthrightness from the state, if not blatant deception.”
The Turnpike Authority is running amok, without adult supervision. It was even proposing to run the Wake County Triangle Expressway toll road straight through the middle of downtown Garner. The state legislature had to adopt special legislation last week to back the Turnpike Authority down on the Garner fiasco. Click here to read the story in the Raleigh News and Observer. There can be no doubt left that the Turnpike Authority is a group of state employees who will lie, say and do whatever it takes at whatever cost to build its toll roads.
Reproduced with permission of Charlotte Observer
North Carolina should learn from South Carolina’s costly mistake with taxpayer-guaranteed toll roads. Greenville, South Carolina’s 16-mile toll road filed for bankruptcy last year when less than half the predicted cars were willing to pay the $2.50 toll. Like the Garden Parkway/East West Connector, the four-lane Southern Connector was built to spur new development and provide an alternative route to I-85. The Greenville Connector went belly up in less than ten years because commuters wouldn’t pay the $2.50 toll. Now South Carolina taxpayers are stuck with the entire bill.
State legislators need to pull the plug on the Turnpike Authority and its tainted projects. There is a reason why 64% of Gaston County rejected the Gaston East West Garden Parkway in a scientific independent poll – because it is a dumb idea that won’t work. Gaston County residents simply won’t pay $5.50 to cross the county on a toll road that includes six miles of two lane country road.