Roads formula leaves rural areas uneasy

Editorial by Fayetteville Observer, November 18, 2013.

Gov. Pat McCrory and Tony Tata, his transportation secretary, have said from the start that their new highway funding formula would use scarce dollars where they were needed most.

It's a good applause line, but its weakness is right there in front of you: the presumption that they know where those scarce dollars are needed most.

In their shoes, most of us would say the same thing - with entirely different projects in mind. But we're not in their shoes, and that's what will make highway funding in 2014 an experiment.

True, they won't personally be making the funding decisions. But who decided what the decision-making architecture should look like, and for what reasons?

Fayetteville's interests, as we noted when the idea was floated some time back, are likely to be more closely aligned with those of Raleigh. Our needs are real and obvious, so you won't hear us begging the state to send our share elsewhere. But areas without major metros are left to compete for 20 percent of what once was divided among all districts, and those people are legitimately fearful that they'll be shortchanged.

It's not just the 20 percent that's different. Great emphasis will be placed on congestion, and that probably doesn't mean Main Street in some ill-planned small town laid out along a wagon road a century ago. "Congestion" means the money will gravitate toward large concentrations of people, meaning cities.

That's not a bad thing if the concerns of rural districts aren't shrugged off as invalid merely because their numbers are small, or equally urgent projects aren't made to compete against each other.

There's another change. Projects can climb the ladder because they'd promote jobs and growth. How much economic potential do you suppose planners will see in rural areas, where in many instances the need for economic growth is acute because there's no textile mill anymore?

Safety has been getting little mention in the public discussions. What trumps safety?

This is, as more than one official has noted, all speculation - or, to return to our word for it, an experiment. The formula addresses some longstanding concerns, and might go well. But "rural" doesn't mean "unworthy of consideration," and that distinction must be preserved.