Council Aims to Set Path of City’s Future Roads: Vote Set for Monday on Plan That Could Change Growth in Charlotte

By Richard Rubin, The Charlotte Observer, N.C.

Apr. 22–Charlotte’s new road map for the future could change the way the city grows.

The 25-year Transportation Action Plan carries a hefty price tag — $3.57 billion — but its importance is much broader than a list of road projects.

It marks Charlotte’s most thorough attempt to define where dense development belongs — near transit stations and in key locations such as SouthPark and Ballantyne — and where it doesn’t. It confirms the city’s push toward a better-connected street network and an urban model that doesn’t rely so much on individuals driving cars.

The document, slated for City Council approval on Monday, could also lead to tougher rules on private developers.

Some possibilities: impact fees to pay for roadwork, new rules on gated streets and required walking connections between cul-de-sacs. None of that is certain, but the city staff would launch a series of studies on those topics over the next two years.

Although most of the money would be spent on roads, city planners say the plan’s power comes from its “multimodal” approach, where bicyclists, pedestrians and transit riders get serious consideration as the city designs streets and divides up the cash.

“This plan will not work if it’s just that the freeways get widened, that the thoroughfares get finished,” said Norm Steinman of the Charlotte Department of Transportation.

The stated goal: make Charlotte “the premier city in the country for integrating land use and transportation choices.”

Said planning director Debra Campbell, “All of these studies, analyses, policies are necessary to lay the fundamental groundwork for some real revolutionary changes in Charlotte over the next 10, 15, 20 years.”

But the lack of clarity worries Mary Thomsen, deputy executive director of the Real Estate and Building Industry Coalition.

“How do you pass something when you don’t know what the details are yet?” she asked.

Charlotte needs a strategy to plan for future growth, said Republican Pat Mumford, who chairs the City Council’s transportation committee.

As for all the studies that could lead to impact fees and other changes, Mumford said the city has not made any decisions yet.

“We’ve been discussing them somewhat abstractly for several years,” he said. “That was a means to put those topics more formally on council’s agenda.”

The council has spent more of its time talking about paying for the plan and naming it. (The current favorite is “Go Charlotte.”)

Names aside, the document immediately makes a few significant changes. For the first time, the city would set targets for where growth goes.

For example, the plan says that Charlotte would “ensure” that 70 percent of new multifamily homes would be built in the “centers and corridors.” That includes mass-transit lines, the areas around transit stations and major hubs such as uptown, SouthPark and Eastland Mall.

Right now, those areas contain just 62 percent of multifamily housing.

“Some of (the goals) are pretty sweeping, and it’s unclear to me exactly how that’s going to be accomplished,” said former city planner Walter Fields, now a consultant to developers.

Thomsen said she worries that the city’s continued focus on directing growth to certain parts of Charlotte could meddle too much in the free market for housing, essentially saying: “Here’s where you get to live. Here’s where you get to have your business.”

City officials say they’re not doing anything nearly that drastic. They are trying to direct growth and transportation dollars to the same locations.

Concentrated pockets of dense development, Mumford said, can help protect single-family neighborhoods in the so-called “wedges” between the transit corridors.

“The point,” he said, “is that we need to be able to have both.”

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ON THE WEB

To read the plan, go to http://cdot.charmeck.org . Click on the link for “Transportation Action Plan.”

Can We Afford It?

The Transportation Action Plan would cost $3.57 billion over 25 years. That doesn’t include mass transit, and that doesn’t include improvements to state roads, such as Interstate 485 and W.T. Harris Boulevard.

For the long term, City Council members have talked about getting the state legislature’s approval for a new source of money, perhaps a “transfer tax” charged when property is sold.

In the short run, the only likely source is the property tax. Last week, City Manager Pam Syfert suggested three options for starting the plan. All feature bond referendums in 2006, 2008 and 2010 and all require a property-tax increase. The council will make a decision as part of the annual budget vote in June.

Richard Rubin: (704) 358-5832

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