No Plan Exists for U.S. 1 Corridor

As of Tuesday, October 2, 2012

In the Q&A you published of my interview with your editors regarding the U.S. 1 corridor (Sept. 23), I said, “If the locals are saying, ‘This is not only not a priority. It’s not even on a list of things we want,’ then it’s not going to happen.”

How could I be more clear than that? If that’s “evasive bureaucratic gobbledygook,” as you termed it in your Sept. 26 editorial, let me explain again:

NCDOT will not impose a highway project on a local community that the community does not want. We look to the community to tell us its long-range transportation needs, priorities and solutions in the form of a Comprehensive Transportation Plan, as we do with every county. If the Moore County plan does not include a U.S. 1 corridor bypass, it will not be built.

As transportation secretary, I cannot kill a project on my own authority; that would subvert the fair and open process of deciding projects based on data-based assessment and on local input.

NCDOT has no plan for a U.S. 1 corridor bypass. As I said in our interview (but you chose to leave out of the published Q&A), how can I kill a plan when it does not exist?

Gene Conti

N.C. Secretary of Transportation

More like this story

CSmithson 7 months, 3 weeks ago

Great news! Now if we can just get all of NCDOT on the same page. We've been told for years now that we have no choice over whether or not we get a bypass.

Ever since we started this process up again two years ago, DOT has said, "Under the current Vision Plan, only the corridor alignment is negotiable." ( Powerpoint: "NCDOT Transportation Planning Branch Proudly Presents...The Moore County Comprehensive Transportation Plan, November 4. 2010")

JimHeim 7 months, 3 weeks ago

I wonder how they define 'plan.' If they mean that they haven't drawn up the specifications to put out for bid, okay. But I suspect that they really mean that they are going to do it, but the i's haven't been dotted and the t's are not crossed.

Until they say that they have no intention of implementing a 'freeway' through Southern Pines, I don't trust them one bit.

And to say that 'NCDOT will not impose a highway project on a local community that the community does not want' is simply absurd.