Like practically everything else these days, the economy is taking its toll on regional planning in the Piedmont Triad area, putting a damper on high hopes for the “aerotropolis” local leaders have been envisioning for years now.
Guilford County Commissioner Mike Winstead summed up the situation in February when he said “all of a sudden I don’t hear anything any more” about the Heart of the Triad, a regional plan to convert hundreds of acres straddling the Guilford-Forsyth county line into a mecca of economic development and Smart Growth principles.
The Heart of the Triad was to feed off the future success of Piedmont Triad International Airport. PTI had a rough 2008, especially after the low-fare carrier Skybus went bankrupt. But it was finally going to see the benefits of the much anticipated, taxpayer-funded FedEx hub, scheduled finally to open this summer. Then FedEx finished off PTI’s bad year with the news that it would delay opening the hub until December — and with fewer jobs than promised.
Another major player in the Heart of the Triad, the Piedmont Authority for Regional Transportation (PART), said last month that although it had a surplus now, it would soon run a deficit unless another source of local revenue was found.
PART’s role in the Heart of the Triad is to develop a master plan emphasizing mass transit. At the steering committee’s January meeting, Greensboro City Council member Robbie Perkins noted that PART was “continuing to work on the Seamless Mobility Project for regional public transportation” while simultaneously “working multi-modal regional transportation facility project.”
But those plans could be contingent upon PART making up a looming $3.2 million deficit. PART director Brent McKinney recently suggested that the deficit could be made up with a regionwide yearly licensing fee of up to $5 per car that could raise about $5 million a year.
PART has since received $1 million in stimulus money via the Greensboro Metropolitan Planning Organization and hopes to receive an additional $13 million from the state’s stimulus allotment.
Now the High Point Metropolitan Planning Organization is showing a deficit for its long-range plans. MPO administrator David Hyder told Guilford County commissioners that costs for long-term projects were $2.7 billion while projected revenues were only $1.5 billion.
As it is, the Piedmont Triad is a relatively complex planning environment that includes several facilities that are significant at the state and regional level. These include Interstates 40 and 85, Piedmont Triad International Airport, two pipelines, and two new Interstates — 73 and 74 — that are coming through the area.
High Point is in the middle of all that, and its geographic location already forces the MPO to coordinate its activities with several government entities, including the four counties and six municipalities in the region. But the MPO is quickly discovering that even the best-laid plans can’t be carried out without the funding to support them.
Hyder told commissioners that they expect population and employment in the PTI area to double in the next few years. The Triad area is included in an Atlantic Coast mega-region covering running from Washington to Atlanta, where most people will live in metropolitan areas.
With that in mind, Hyder identified four key “horizon years”: 2009, 2015, 2025, and 2035. The coming year should see the completion of two small bridge projects along with two High Point city bond projects. But the MPO hopes 2015 will be a key year when at least one major project — the U.S. 311 bypass from Business I-85 to U.S. 220 — will complete the major transportation leg that will be part of I-74.
Hyder also noted that alternative transportation would be incorporated into MPO’s master plan, including a network of bicycle routes and a proposed greenway system, plans for which the High Point Parks & Recreation department will submit shortly to the city council.
Sam A. Hieb is a contributor to Carolina Journal.