LELAND — The focus of conversation surrounding the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge has largely taken place on the Wilmington side of the platform, though it shifted west earlier this week as Leland Town Council received an update on progress.
READ MORE: 135-ft. CFMB now at $1.1B, council favors different resolution over 100-ft. preference
Trevor Carroll, North Carolina Department of Transportation Division 3 engineer, gave a presentation and answered council questions, namely how the bridge would be paid for.
Though it is considering three bridge options — a 65-foot movable span, a 100-foot (plus or minus) fixed bridge and a 135-foot fixed bridge — NCDOT has issued a price point only for the 135-foot. It’s $1.1 billion.
“Right now, NCDOT cannot produce this project without a toll or an alternate funding source,” Carroll told the council members.
Carroll said NCDOT has run out of grant options after nabbing the federal government’s $242 million award last year. However, the status of this grant remains pending as the Trump administration reviews federal spending to ensure compliance with its policy goals.
NCDOT has committed to finding as much grant funding for the bridge as possible to avoid, or diminish the cost, of a toll. A tolled bridge is incredibly unpopular among tri-county leaders, with Wilmington, New Hanover County and Leland leaders speaking out against it.
Without a toll, the project continuously failed to rank high enough for funding in NCDOT’s State Transportation Improvement Program, leading the Wilmington Urban Area Metropolitan Planning Organization to pass a resolution to explore all funding options. Earlier this year, the WMPO also discussed “alternative funding sources” local municipalities could enact — vehicle registration fee, local sales tax and a transit tax, and vehicle rental and license taxes — but chose not to endorse any in favor of keeping their options open.
Though, like their neighbors across the river, Leland council members again indicated they would not be happy with a toll.
“I know from listening in on the WMPO meetings that to have an existing structure replaced with a toll road is unprecedented in the state of North Carolina — so that’s disturbing,” council member Veronica Carter said. “Really we’re kind of guinea pigs right now, and it’s a very expensive guinea pig if you’re asking people to pay tolls to get to and from work to and from the hospital to and from other places.”
The state does prohibit tolling existing highways, but NCDOT considers the three bridge options new structures, in that the design does not follow the same blueprint as the current bridge — thus, it’s not considered a replacement and can be tolled.
Council member Bill McHugh asked Carroll if he thought larger sums from Congress or the North Carolina General Assembly was a reasonable option to help with the funding gap.
Carroll admitted he didn’t have a direct answer.
Mayor Pro Tem Bob Campbell shed some doubt on the General Assembly coming through. He revealed a conversation he had with Brunswick County state representatives Sen. Bill Rabon and Rep. Frank Iler at a mayor’s meeting Monday morning.
“[Iler] pretty much said they’re out of money,” Campbell said. “The feeling I got from the two representatives was the only way this is going to happen is if it’s tolled.”
McHugh asked Carroll to explain what a toll would look like, mentioning “horror stories” he’s seen with other municipalities that regrettably approved a toll. He pointed to Chicago selling its parking meters to a private company earning $150 million off them in 2023 alone. Carter brought up New Jersey’s Garden State Parkway still being tolled decades after its implementation.
Carroll said there were different ways to run the toll, one being through a public-private partnership like the offer NCDOT received in 2021. Unsolicited, an unnamed company proposed the toll option to NCDOT and the WMPO, though it was rejected.
“We’re more interested in having the options for NCDOT to have that toll and not have a public-private partnership — that’s what I can share today,” Carroll said, adding the goal would also be to put a time limit on the toll.
Still, McHugh wasn’t satisfied and questioned if the state’s system was “set up to fail.”
“We seem to be number one in business, but unable to fund education and critical infrastructure,” McHugh said. “So there seems to be a priority gap here, and we’re now operating within a system that simply isn’t allowing this to move forward without some sort of private intervention.”
Carroll reminded Leland council members that the WMPO could choose to nix the tolled bridge up until the point of a construction contract; though that would leave the Cape Fear with the un-tolled bridge option, which has failed to score high enough for funding.
Emails obtained by Port City Daily show NCDOT recently checked in with the WMPO to ensure it still wanted to move forward with the tolled option.
David Wasserman, deputy director of the NCDOT’s STIP, Feasibility Studies, and Strategic Prioritization, emailed WMPO executive director Mike Kozlosky on April 30.
“We would like feedback from the WMPO on whether to continue studying the bridge as a toll project, with the understanding that the project would need to be included in the WMPO Metropolitan Transportation Plan in order to move forward as tolled,” Wasserman wrote, adding the official STIP was to be completed in July 2025.
Kozlosky responded that the WMPO has not taken formal action to alter its position from February 2022, when the WMPO supported NCDOT exploring all funding options and seeking grant funding. The director said this still remained the organization’s position.
Reach journalist Brenna Flanagan at brenna@localdailymedia.com.
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