Skip to main content

Garden Parkway (NC) cost more than doubles!!

As a former resident of Gaston County, NC...I hope to follow this closely.

From an article in last week's Charlotte Observer, the projected cost for the Garden Parkway has more than doubled to $1.25 billion when compared to a $600 million projected cost that was given this past February! The reason after working with consulting firms on everything from construction to tolls they had to update their preliminary findings.

There were some more details. The road would like be built in three stages. Stage one: I-485 to NC 279 (New Hope Road) near Gastonia. This would be about six miles in length and cost about $410 million. The second stage would runs from New Hope Road to US 321 about two or three miles north of the South Carolina state line. The third state would be from 321 curving to the north until reaching I-85 near Bessemer City. Nothing is said about the highway continuing north to US 321 near High Shoals.

It appears that a route for the highway won't be determined until 2009 with the possibility of construction to start in 2010. There are currently 12 different routing alternatives for the proposed toll highway.

Some clues on what the tolls will be were given. The six miles of the first stage would be $1.50. The entire 22 mile highway; $2.50.

Commentary:

Granted, costs for highways have skyrocketed. But you don't see costs double in eight months. The article says first estimate four years ago was $400 million. But what concerns me is the amount of the jump from studies conducted this past year. How could it go that much? State leaders have conceded the tolls won't cover the entire highway's cost, and any NC Resident knows what the state of highway funding is right now.

If the cost for this highway was out of line in the first place, what about the other possible toll highways? Is the NC Turnpike Authority out of their league?

Some more links:
Gaston County East-West Connector Project ---NCDOT (Note: The Gaston East-West Connector is another name for the Garden Parkway).
North Carolina Turnpike Authority

Comments

Anonymous said…
I live in Country Woods, where one of the proposed routes would run behind my house in a field. I assume the state would have to buy my property, but can I be assured of a fair settlement? Replacement costs?

Popular posts from this blog

Memphis & Arkansas Bridge (Memphis, TN)

  Like the expansion of the railroads the previous century, the modernization of the country’s highway infrastructure in the early and mid 20th Century required the construction of new landmark bridges along the lower Mississippi River (and nation-wide for that matter) that would facilitate the expected growth in overall traffic demand in ensuing decades. While this new movement had been anticipated to some extent in the Memphis area with the design of the Harahan Bridge, neither it nor its neighbor the older Frisco Bridge were capable of accommodating the sharp rise in the popularity and demand of the automobile as a mode of cross-river transportation during the Great Depression. As was the case 30 years prior, the solution in the 1940s was to construct a new bridge in the same general location as its predecessors, only this time the bridge would be the first built exclusively for vehicle traffic. This bridge, the Memphis & Arkansas Bridge, was completed in 1949 and was the third

Old River Lock & Control Structure (Lettsworth, LA)

  The Old River Control Structure (ORCS) and its connecting satellite facilities combine to form one of the most impressive flood control complexes in North America. Located along the west bank of the Mississippi River near the confluence with the Red River and Atchafalaya River nearby, this structure system was fundamentally made possible by the Flood Control Act of 1928 that was passed by the United States Congress in the aftermath of the Great Mississippi River Flood of 1927 however a second, less obvious motivation influenced the construction here. The Mississippi River’s channel has gradually elongated and meandered in the area over the centuries, creating new oxbows and sandbars that made navigation of the river challenging and time-consuming through the steamboat era of the 1800s. This treacherous area of the river known as “Turnbull’s Bend” was where the mouth of the Red River was located that the upriver end of the bend and the Atchafalaya River, then effectively an outflow

California State Route 203 the proposed Minaret Summit Highway

California State Route 203 is an approximately nine-mile State Highway located near Mammoth Lakes in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of Mono County.  California State Route 203 as presently configured begins at US Route 395, passes through Mammoth Lakes and terminates at the Madera County line at Minaret Summit.  What is now California State Route 203 was added to the State Highway System in 1933 as Legislative Route Number 112.  The original Mammoth Lakes State Highway ended at Lake Mary near the site of Old Mammoth and was renumbered to California State Route 203 in 1964.  The modern alignment of the highway to Minaret Summit was adopted during 1967.   The corridor of Minaret Summit and Mammoth Pass have been subject to numerous proposed Trans-Sierra Highways.  The first corridor was proposed over Mammoth Pass following a Southern Pacific Railroad survey in 1901.  In 1931 a corridor between the Minarets Wilderness and High Sierra Peaks Wilderness was reserved by the Forest Service for po