Monroe Litigation: Latest Update

Facts

The Project

• The Monroe Bypass would be a $740 million, 20-mile highway through the large exurban-rural area of North Carolina, east of Charlotte.  The project would have nine interchanges, and has been heavily promoted by real estate speculators.
• The Bypass would destroy at least 499 acres of active agricultural lands. 95 homes, including a number of Century Farms, and 47 businesses will have to be relocated, with 7 neighborhoods being disturbed.  Three churches are also directly impacted. 
• Only about 40 percent of the cost of the project would be paid by tolls. The rest would come from taxpayers in the form of an appropriation from the State of $24 million every year for the next 30 years.
• There are lower cost alternatives to solving traffic in the region that would spare the many homes and family farms in the way of the bypass project.  An NCDOT study found that the vast majority of the congestion in the U.S. 74 corridor could be addressed for $15 million, a fraction of the cost of the Monroe Bypass.

Purpose and Need of the Bypass

• The stated purpose of the Bypass is NOT to improve congestion on existing US 74.
• Rather, the stated purpose is to improve high speed travel between I-485 and the Town of Marshville.
• NCDOT predicts that construction of the Bypass will NOT greatly alleviate congestion on US 74.
• Recent statements indicate that the Turnpike Authority would not be in favor of improvements to US 74 that would have a “competing interest with the Bypass.” 
• Constructing the Bypass will remove the “Strategic Highway Corridor” designation from US 74- meaning that US 74 will no longer be a priority for state improvements.
• The Turnpike Authority has never looked at how much traffic in the US 74 is local traffic, versus through traffic.  Thus the Authority does not have a good sense of who will actually use the Bypass.
• The Authority has indicated that truck drivers are mixed about whether they will use it or not and significant truck traffic will stay on US 74.
• Statewide planning documents indicate that a key purpose of the Monroe Bypass is a proposed 5,000 acre business park called Legacy Park that is planned to be constructed near Marshville. 

The Court’s Decision

• The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit found that the North Carolina Turnpike Authority misled the public and other agencies in their environmental analysis of the proposed toll highway.
• State and federal permitting agencies and environmental groups repeatedly questioned the Turnpike Authority about fundamental flaws in the analysis throughout the administrative process.
• The agencies continually denied the flaws, which they knew to be present in their analysis, and even published a denial in the official federal Record of Decision.
• The appeals court recognized that the “critically important” flaw of including the project in the base case “no build” scenario masked the environmental and human impacts of the project and thus prevented a fair comparison of less expensive, community-friendly alternatives.

SELC filed suit in November, 2010 to put the brakes on the bypass - one of the biggest highway expansion proposals North Carolina history- and May 2012 the Appeals Court ruled that federal and state agencies illegally approved the controversial project.

NCDOT botched environmental study for bypass

SELC has been opposing this project for years due to the unacceptable impact on water quality and wildlife habitat in the Yadkin River watershed. Further, the Monroe Bypass would lure sprawl development of subdivisions and strip malls, which would increase traffic in the corridor, and add to tailpipe pollution in greater Charlotte, which already fails to meet federal air quality standards for protecting public health. 

SELC's lawsuit identifies numerous flaws in the state's assessment of environmental impacts from the bypass:

• The agency's analysis for the "no build" option assumes the highway already exists, nonsensically concluding that the project would have virtually no impact on subsequent development.

• The study vastly overstates the traffic levels that would result along US 74 if the toll road were not built. 

• NCDOT failed completely to analyze alternatives to solving traffic in the US 74 corridor, again, in violation of federal law.

Better solutions for solving US 74 traffic

The good news is that there are less destructive, less costly ways to undo traffic congestion in the US 74 corridor. Upgrades to local road networks and improvements to the existing US 74 would meet traffic needs and enhance efficiency in the corridor. According to NCDOT's own report in 2007 (click here for a pdf ), improving existing roads and connections would fix all but one of the traffic bottlenecks, at an approximate cost of just $13.3 million. Incredibly, the agency ignored its own findings in the final environmental study, leaving tens of thousands of US 74 users stuck in traffic even after the tollway is built. 

The Monroe project is one of a half dozen proposals in the state's transportation planning pipeline that continue the outdated vision of building a massive system of expensive, sprawling beltways and bypasses throughout North Carolina.  Getting the study right, rather than rubber-stamping the Turnpike Authority's narrow perspective on available alternatives and their impacts, is critical to the state's transportation future.