While all eyes were on Virginia and New Jersey elections on Tuesday, N.C. Republicans quietly followed the same pattern, flipping key elections in areas critical to legislative and congressional elections next year. For Wake County, Republicans flipped the mayor in Fuquay-Varina, and had a clean sweep in Holly Springs, picking up three town commissioner seats...
If we forget that there are lots of Democratic voters in “red” counties and Republican voters in “blue” ones, we exaggerate the extent of the partisan divide and oversimplify conditions that are actually complicated and interesting.
Progressive Democrats and conservative Republicans tend to disagree about growth policy not because of external pressure by special-interest groups but because their preferences are fundamentally different.
Two Republicans hope to gain their party’s nomination to represent District 92 in the state House, a district that begins near Lake Norman and stretches southward to Lake Wylie, hugging the western boundary of Mecklenburg County along the way.
Toll roads are an excellent concept, but North Carolina has managed to turn them into tax machines, like the rest of the state's sorry roads program.
CHARLOTTE — Charlotte Area Transit System officials expect the next few years to be busy at the transit agency. In addition to a light-rail line under construction, CATS officials hope to begin work on four more lines by about 2010, the CATS Web site says.
The toll road fix for traffic congestion will get its most serious look yet. It is a chance for the region to break free of the failed transportation models of the past.
CHARLOTTE — When the Federal Transit Administration released its proposed fiscal 2005 budget in February, there were plenty of disappointed transit supporters in both the Triangle and Charlotte. Rather than committing to pick up half the tab for new rail transit systems in the two communities, the FTA’s upcoming budget recommended providing only limited funding for the systems. Though the two authorities may well get the funding they sought in the future, the coming year’s limited authorization makes it likely that the completion date for the routes will slip. The Charlotte route was to open in 2006, the Triangle line a year later.
CHARLOTTE — The Charlotte Area Transit System has received federal environmental approval of the first of its five transit lines, setting the stage for construction to begin soon. At the same time, a local group was protesting the proposed routing of another rail line, which might require the relocations of hundreds of graves in two historic cemeteries. With federal environmental approval, CATS is expected to act quickly to buy land along the future 10-mile light-rail line. The route will run from uptown Charlotte south along South Boulevard to just short of Interstate 485 in Pineville.
