To everyone from Winston-Salem: How can we stop the Northern Beltway?

In 1989, North Carolina passed the Highway Trust Fund Act, which, among other things, provided for the creation of loop highways around Charlotte, Raleigh, Greensboro, Winston-Salem, Durham, Wilmington, and Asheville. So far, beltways have been completed in Charlotte, Raleigh, and Asheville, and are under construction in Wilmington and Greensboro. Durham has rejected the beltway.

This leaves Winston-Salem, which has plans for a beltway to begin construction in 2011. It has been held up by funding problems and a lawsuit.

The DOT report justifying the need for the beltway argues that poor roadway connectivity in east and west Forsyth, projected capacity deficiencies on existing roads, and lack of highway connections outside downtown make it necessary. The DOT's analysis is incomplete, and the beltway plan contains problems it does not address that would make it not only not worth building, but a setback for Winston-Salem and Forsyth County.

To take the justifications point by point: roadway connectivity in east and west Forsyth is not "poor." All settlements outside of Winston-Salem are connected, both by roads that pass through Winston-Salem and roads that go around it. There is no freeway connecting them, sure, but that's a pretty high standard to set for connectivity. The projected capacity deficiencies of existing roads makes bad assumptions: it fails to account for the rising price of gas as we approach (or, according to many experts, pass) peak oil. Americans are actually driving less, for the first time ever, due to gas prices. It's unrealistic to expect that as supply gets even tighter and gas prices rise, traffic will increase as much as projected from current levels. Finally, the fact that the major highways intersect in central Winston-Salem is not a problem meriting this costly action. Traffic is not a major problem most of the time, and the location of existing highways is more than adequate to get people where they need to go.

The report ignores numerous problems with the beltway. First, by providing highway access to more open spaces, it will open them to subdivisions and cause more sprawl, which will cause more traffic, which will defeat the purpose of the beltway while destroying Forsyth's remaining open space. Second, it will undercut efforts to revitalize downtown and other existing areas of the city. When highways open up new areas to development, it means that new strip malls are constructed far from the city center, while empty ones (and trust me, we've got plenty of 'em) are left empty and the land is wasted. This would suck business and development far from downtown. How the city could have pursued both the beltway and revitalization is beyond me. It will also leave us even more dependent on cars than we are now. Right now, my location in Winston's close-in suburbs means that I can bike everywhere I need to go. I could probably even walk to most of those places. These new developments are not going to be like that, and the people living there will be driving everywhere. Also, this will vastly increase the number of vehicle miles traveled in Forsyth, driving up both our ground ozone levels and greenhouse gases. Not to mention that this is insanely expensive and the funds should be used somewhere else.

In short, the beltway is a terrible idea. The people promoting it completely ignored what peak oil will mean for car dependency, and also the beltway's effects on open spaces, sprawl, and pollution. We should be moving toward denser, non-car-centric development, not spreading ourselves out even more.

Does anyone have any idea how this can be handled? Who has the authority to get this canceled? I know very little about highway politics except that too damn many are getting built and no elected officials seem to think it's a problem. Something's got to be done, though, before the developers and road construction people turn every last acre into soulless subdivisions.