NEW HANOVER COUNTY — After New Hanover County Commissioners heard an update from the organization tasked with developing a long-term plan for transportation improvements in Wilmington, Commissioner Rob Zapple thanked the representative for “delivering such bad news in such a polite and civil way.”
“We all know the N.C. [Department of Transportation] has some significant financial and budgetary issues,” Zapple said at the meeting. “They’re restricting everything, not just us here in southeast North Carolina, but across the entire state.”
The Wilmington Urban Area Metropolitan Planning Organization (WMPO) is federally mandated to produce reports that identify the Cape Fear region’s most pressing infrastructure needs, looking at least 20 years into the future. When senior transportation planner Abby Lorenzo spoke on behalf of the WMPO at Monday’s Board of Commissioners meeting, she told the board financial shortfalls within the NCDOT, as well as economic pressures brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic, will cause delays in Wilmington’s most anticipated infrastructure projects.
“Most projects in our region are on hold and they’re trying to develop new schedules in order to have that plan be fiscally constrained for them,” Lorenzo said at the meeting, referencing the DoT. “At this time, things are literally changing every day.”
Flyover projects at Eastwood Road/Military Cutoff, and Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway/North College Road have been pushed back a number of years, Lorenzo said. But the currently-underway project at the intersection of Military Cutoff and Market St. is still listed by the DoT as “under construction,” Lorenzo said, “with an anticipated completion in April 2022.”
Uncertainty is also touching even larger projects, like a new bridge over the Cape Fear and the Hampstead Bypass (the Military Cutoff Extension, Lorenzo noted, is still on track).
In all, the WMPO has identified a $7 billion gap “between what we estimate our needs are in the region in the next 25 years, and what we estimated we can anticipate seeing in terms of money in the region in the next 25 years,” Lorenzo said. “It’s a very significant gap.”
Lorenzo said financial planning and budgeting for this comprehensive plan started in 2018 and 2019, and in the time since then, economic upheaval has caused the timeframe of top-priority projects to be pushed back by approximately 5-6 years.
This includes a replacement for the Snows Cut bridge, the various flyover projects, a Hampstead overpass and the widening of Gordon Road, among other projects.
Zapple said the Gordon Road project in particular is something he wishes could begin as soon as possible.
“It’s in free fall,” he said in an interview. “The funding for it is simply not there.”
Despite the holdups, development on Gordon Road has continued at a rapid pace, causing the area to function as a high-traffic thoroughfare, but without the appropriate road structure needed for a busy section of town.
“All of it is for naught as long as our NCDOT doesn’t have the money or the funding to be able to put it into any of these projects,” Zapple said.
Lorenzo said in an interview that the shortfalls in the DOT budget have forced the WMPO to look elsewhere for ways to fund the various infrastructure projects on the City and County’s to-do list. Her presentation to the Board of Commissioners included suggestions like a quarter-cent sales tax, and vehicle licensing fees. WMPO also previously supporting tolling on the Cape Fear Crossing project — although a new bridge over the Cape Fear River isn’t likely to materialize in the near future, meaning toll revenue wouldn’t factor into short-term project funding over the next few years.
“In order to meet our needs, we’re going to have to continue looking for and securing additional sources of funding for transportation,” she said.
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