The North Carolina Department of Transportation said Thursday it will study the possibility of capping or placing part of Interstate 77 underground as part of its planned toll lane expansion.
DOT officials are trying to get the support of the Charlotte City Council — and residents — for the controversial new project.
Faced with intense public opposition, the DOT on Monday said it would delay issuing a Request for Proposals from four contractors for three months, until June. Many westside residents say the toll lanes will hurt their historically Black neighborhoods, just as the construction of the original highway did decades ago.
The state has pledged more public outreach, and Thursday, it discussed options with the City Council’s transportation committee.
Most were about “community benefits” — things like workforce development programs that wouldn’t mitigate the impacts of the toll lanes. The DOT has also said it could build community centers in neighborhoods nearby and said a highway project in Charleston, S.C., also came with affordable housing.
Sean Langley with the McCrorey Heights neighborhood has asked the DOT for months to consider placing part of the highway underground, either by a tunnel or a process known as “cap and stitch,” in which the highway is lowered and a concrete cap is placed on top.
The DOT had dismissed that request.
But Brett Canipe with the NC DOT said on Thursday the state would study the feasibility of tunnelling a small portion of the highway near uptown.
He also said the DOT would ask contractors to look at capping part of the highway to create park space on top.
“We could call it highway caps or land bridges,” Canipe said. “Call it whatever you want, but that could be a term if that’s something that the community wants to see these developer teams could compete based on that.”
The DOT said it would ask the four potential developers to consider alternative designs for the highway expansion. The state wasn't necessarily committed to placing the express lanes on top of the existing highway through uptown.
The DOT did not discuss scaling back the project by adding one express toll lane in each direction instead of two toll lanes.
I-77 is one of the state’s most congested highways and is in gridlock for much of the day. The Charlotte Regional Business Alliance is urging the city and the state to move forward with the expansion.
