NC's poor roads tied to bad politics, poor management and Governor Easley's bad choices

News continues to flow regarding North Carolina DOT's inability to solve major funding issues and failure to avoid major problems providing safe and adequate roads for the state. Under the leadership of Governor Easley's appointee, Lyndo Tippett, the organization continues business as usual with more of the same after promising to get advice from a consulting firm to help solve internal problems.

News broke in late January about another costly failure on the new I-795 between Wilson and Goldsboro rivaling the botched I-40 scandal that cost taxpayers some $22 million to repair in 2007. The new I-795 road is crumbling under weight of traffic after only two years of service and will likely cost some $7 million more to the state's taxpayers.

The latest report indicates the department's problems are still strongly tied to politics and fund raising issues that continue even after attempts by the state to separate politics and fund raising from the DOT organization 10 years ago, force disclosure of members fund raising records and require the board have members with special skills in such fields as the environment and mass transit. Even that effort has failed and board membership "remains a plum spot for big political fundraisers who continue to ignore conflicts of interest and the wider needs of the state beyond their own districts"...

News & Observer
Dan Kane and Benjamin Niolet, Staff Writers
February 03, 2008

N.C. road building still mired in politics

Reforms in a 1998 law have failed to separate the state Board of Transportation from political fundraising

Nearly 10 years ago, state legislators championed a series of reforms for the scandal-plagued N.C. Board of Transportation that were intended to take the politics out of building roads.

Future appointees would have to disclose their political fundraising. Five of the 19 seats would be reserved for people with special skills in such fields as the environment and mass transit. Members would have to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest.

"The board's policies, effectiveness and integrity are important to almost every citizen," Beverly Perdue, then a state senator, said on Sept. 23, 1998, the day the bill cleared the legislature. "The public has demanded reform, and this bill lays the groundwork."

That groundwork has proven a weak foundation. A decade after Perdue hailed the reform law, the 19-member DOT board remains a plum spot for big political fundraisers who continue to ignore conflicts of interest and the wider needs of the state beyond their own districts.

For example:

* The fundraising disclosure rule is toothless. The only fundraising that board members must disclose is contributions directly handed to them. Asking people to give to a campaign or holding fundraisers -- two common ways to raise campaign money -- aren't considered fundraising on disclosure forms.

* Two of the five seats intended to bring more professionalism to the board have been given to fundraisers best known for running restaurant chains.

* Conflicts of interest continue to surface. Last month, board member Thomas Betts Jr. of Rocky Mount resigned after he sought to raise $20,000 in campaign money from country singer Randy Parton and the others behind the struggling performing arts theater in Roanoke Rapids. Betts had directed $2.5 million in road work to the theater over the previous year. He sought campaign money for Perdue, now lieutenant governor, who is seeking to be the next governor.

* Some at-large members, who are supposed to look out for the entire state, are steering their discretionary money to their home districts.

The board oversees a department with a $3.8 billion budget and a serious public image problem. A chorus of lawmakers, public policy advocates and even transportation department employees say that the department is dysfunctional -- at a time when the state's transportation needs are growing dramatically. A special "blue ribbon" legislative panel is meeting to figure out how to get the department back on track.

The department even bungled trying to fix itself. It hired a consultant at a cost of $3.6 million to help assess its strengths and weaknesses and foster change. But the department refused to disclose the terms of the contract and any findings until Gov. Mike Easley ordered them made public.

The board's makeup and activities have emerged as a campaign issue in the gubernatorial election. Perdue's rival for the Democratic nomination, State Treasurer Richard Moore, has made it a key part of his campaign. Last month, among other proposals, he announced that he would not appoint fundraisers to the board. Perdue has not called for banning fundraisers from the board.

Ten years ago, Perdue's DOT reform bill won favor over a stricter bill initially filed in the House that would have banned fundraisers from the board, required five experts in various areas, and taken away the governor's power to appoint the transportation secretary.

Last month, Easley said trying to ban fundraisers from the process would just push the money underground.

"When you get into the fundraising business, if people want to participate, they'll find a way, just like the squirrel into the bird feeder," Easley said. "I want to know how much somebody's given who's been appointed and I think people want to know as well."

Finding wiggle room

But when Easley was elected governor in 2000, two years after the reform bill passed, he quickly found wiggle room in the transportation reform law. Easley's counsel, Hampton Dellinger, asked Grayson G. Kelley, a senior deputy attorney general, for an interpretation of what made someone a fundraiser under the new law. (Dellinger is now a Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor.)

Kelley focused on the phrase "personally acquired" in the law. He said that meant the only disclosure required was of "funds the appointee personally accepted from a donor and physically transferred to the campaign, executive committee or political committee."

To make sure he had understood the intent of Perdue and other sponsors, Kelley said, he talked to the legislative staff who drafted the law. He said they support his view "that a narrow construction of the disclosure provision was intended."

Perdue declined to be interviewed for this report. Her spokesman, David Kochman, released a statement saying the legislation was a "starting point" for reform and stronger than the version passed by the House. Easley also declined to be interviewed.

With the opinion in hand, Easley's staff advised his appointees to the board in a memo that they did not have to disclose fundraising if it did not involve collecting the checks.

Shortly afterward, appointees Louis W. Sewell Jr. of Jacksonville and D.M. "Mac" Campbell of Elizabethtown wrote "none" on their fundraising disclosure forms. Interviews with other Easley fundraisers, and an internal Easley campaign document obtained by The News & Observer, show that Sewell helped meet a $125,000 fundraising goal in Onslow County, while the campaign counted on Campbell to help raise $50,000 in Bladen County. (An Easley spokesman, Seth Effron, said neither Easley nor Dave Horne, the campaign treasurer in 2000, could confirm the document's authenticity. Effron said Easley declined to comment on the information within it.)

Another Onslow County fundraiser for Easley, Joe Henderson, said that he, Sewell and another man solicited contributors by phone and held a reception for Easley at an inn that has since been torn down.

Sewell, who also served on the board under former Gov. Jim Hunt, did not return messages left at his home or at work. He is a retired executive with the Golden Corral steakhouse chain. In 2005, Easley awarded him one of the state's highest honors, the Order of the Long Leaf Pine.

Campbell confirmed that he raised money for Easley in 2000 and 2004 by holding fundraisers at his lakefront cottage, but he did not have to disclose his efforts because he did not collect the checks. He cited the Easley memo.

Another appointee, Lanny T. Wilson of Wilmington, said in his 2000 disclosure form that he would follow up with information about his fundraising, but no such documentation is on file with the legislature or the Governor's Office. Wilson said he doesn't remember whether he provided it and said he didn't have to anyway because he did not "personally acquire" contributions.

In the disclosure he filed for his reappointment in 2005, Wilson listed totals he raised for 17 candidates, including Easley. He also wrote that he held a fundraiser for Easley. But other than family members, Wilson does not list the names of any contributors. The form asks for the names of contributors; the law says that appointees are required to disclose contributions.

Some report fully

Three other DOT board members members provided more information.

Cameron W. McRae of Kinston, who owns a string of Bojangles' restaurants, provided a spreadsheet that listed not only contributors, but also everyone he solicited. They contributed $126,000 for Easley in 2000.

G.R. Kindley, the former mayor of Rockingham and a builder, and Paul Waff Jr., an Edenton contractor and developer, also provided lists of contributors. They raised $38,000 and $24,000, respectively.

"I wanted everybody to know who was contributing," Kindley said in an interview. "I think it's important to know."

Waff, who left the board in 2002, said he was appointed after he went to R.V. Owens -- a renowned fundraiser for Easley, state Senate leader Marc Basnight and other Democrats -- to express an interest in a seat.

Easley's appointee for transportation secretary, Lyndo Tippett, a CPA from Fayetteville, was also required to fill out the disclosure form. Like Sewell and Campbell, Tippett wrote "none" where the form asked for the names of those he had collected campaign contributions from. He attached an explanation that said he delivered bundles of contribution checks to the campaign in Raleigh, but he did not collect them from individual contributors. He said in an interview that he did not look to see who wrote the checks or the amounts.

Tippett said his disclosure was a "textbook" example of complying with the law.

Tippett was a member of the Cumberland County steering committee for the campaign, which held two fundraising events. In an interview, Tippett said that he helped organize at least one fundraiser, which Easley attended. He said he had a file on the fundraiser, but he couldn't remember what it contained. He said he didn't know if the file was still available.

"I don't know if it's still there," he said. "The shredder came through town a few months ago and shredded all the files whether it was personal or business. I have no idea at the moment."

The transportation secretary also said it was not his concern what board members reported regarding their fundraising.

"They don't report that to me, so I don't have a problem with that," Tippett said. "Not my issue."

Easley named Sewell and McRae to two of the five newly created at-large seats on the board. Though the three other at-large members were required to have "expertise" in environmental issues, mass transit or government-related finance and accounting, the two seats Sewell and McRae took did not have to meet that requirement. Sewell had to have only "broad knowledge of and experience in transportation issues affecting rural areas." McRae had to be "familiar with the State ports and aviation issues."

The reform law requires Sewell, McRae and the other at-large members to represent the interests of the entire state. But records of an economic development discretionary fund that lawmakers created in 2005 shows that Sewell, McRae and another at-large member, Larry Helms of Union County, have so far directed their allotments -- a total of $5.5 million -- to their home transportation districts. Original article ...

NC Highway Patrol to be independently reviewed

The North Carolina State Patrol will be reviewed by in international consulting firm of law enforcement experts according to a new report just published. Another of the state organizations under Governor Mike Easley's watch is having serious operational problems adding to the possibility that state organizations are being poorly managed by those appointed by the Governor and his team of advisors. Recent news headlines have revealed that the NC DOT and DMV have had significant operating problems and morale issues indicating a general trend of poor top-down management while being led by the Governor's appointees and now the Highway Patrol is being added to the list.

A number of significant reports have surfaced in recent months about conduct issues among highway patrol officers while on duty ranging from singling out and harassing young women drivers to having sex in police cars while on duty to not properly completing reports of arrests made. This has brought one of the country's best highway patrol organizations under scrutiny and continues to bring out problems within the Easley management team. Read the latest report about the review of NC's state police team...

News and Observer
December 29, 2007
Dan Kane, Staff Writer

Highway Patrol to get outside advice

A team of law enforcement experts will visit the N.C. Highway Patrol in January to review what has gone wrong in an agency that only last year was found to be one of the nation's top police forces.

Experts with an international consulting firm will consider a baffling string of incidents in the past several months. They range from a trooper accused of abducting Hispanic women and making sexual advances to an internal affairs captain who rear-ended a vehicle and wrongly let a subordinate investigate the wreck. The only apparent pattern in each case is a lack of good judgment.

N.C. Troopers Association leaders as well as Bryan Beatty, the crime control and public safety secretary, say the incidents are isolated cases in a force of more than 1,800 sworn officers. But despite efforts to re-emphasize professionalism and keep a closer eye on troopers, officers continue to get into trouble.

"Frankly, I don't know what's going on in their minds -- some of these troopers and what they are doing," said Sgt. Steve Lockhart, vice president of the association. "It just dumbfounds me." Read more...

Botched paving costly to DOT and NC taxpayers - $21 million

The botched paving job on Interstate in North Carolina cost taxpayers at least $21,000,000 dollars and many months of commuting hardships and misery for drivers.

At the tail end of a multi-year project to implement a major expansion of I-40 between Durham and Chapel Hill, NC, inspectors discovered that miles of new concrete pavement was breaking apart. More studies showed that the top layer of concrete had not been installed correctly and was breaking down even before the project was complete.

The project was already late and had cost taxpayers much more than originally planned and a major part of the work had to be torn up and reworked by contractors. The $21,000,000 repair is yet another demonstration of major mis-management and poor planning within North Carolina's Department of Transportation. The extension added another year of misery for weary commuters traveling the road each day.

Unfortunately for taxpayers, Governor Easley's hand picked director for the DOT, Lindo Tippett, has never admitted any responsibility for the blunder and has remained unscathed while lower level state employees were reprimanded and, in some cases, fired for the mistake. The Governor has not seen fit to replace Mr. Tippett and new reports emerge weekly of additional long postponement or cancellation of many needed major projects and continued severe budget shortfalls as taxpayers foot the bill for gross mismanagement and incompetence in the state's operations.

A new article has appeared in the October issue Asphalt Magazine by the manufacturer of heavy equipment that was used to tear up the broken new concrete and gives an interesting view of the magnitude of work required, done only at night, to undo the botched paving work. The contractor has now completed repairs made under a $21 million project. Interestingly enough the state threatened the contractor with significant fines of $10,000 per hour if workers had not moved out of the way of commuters by morning as the project was carried out.

Read more of this fascinating use of technology to repair one of North Carolina DOT's largest blunders to date....

Asphalt Contractor magazine
October 30th, 2007

Failed concrete overlay milled, replaced with HMA

A failing concrete overlay on I-40 near Raleigh-Durham, NC, was determined by the North Carolina DOT to be in need of replacement. The specifications for the project provided that the concrete overlay be removed by cold-milling and replaced with hot mix asphalt (HMA) each night.

The Lane Construction Corporation was awarded the $21-million project for the North Carolina DOT, and has undertaken the milling, while its Rea Contracting LLC affiliate performed the HMA placement on strict nightly schedules.

"We're grinding anywhere from 3 to 3.5 inches of concrete overlay off the Interstate using a Wirtgen W 2200 cold mill with full lane, 12-foot 6-inch drum," says J. Todd Moore, superintendent of the I-40 project for Lane. "We have approximately 21 lineal miles to do, two lanes eastbound, and two lanes westbound, as well as all off ramps and acceleration lanes."

The existing pavement is three lanes wide each way, with the third (inside) lane made of full-depth concrete, recently reconstructed. The concrete overlay being removed had been placed over existing Portland cement concrete and was experiencing spalling at the joints, and patched "blow-out" potholes where heavy traffic was pulling material from the pavement.

"We have about 290,000 square yards of concrete removal required for this project," says Richard Snow, P.E., construction manager for Lane. "Our average pace of 2,200 lineal feet per night of lane works out to about 2,700 square yards. On weekends we do a lot more with our marathon closures. While we still keep one lane open, we are able to keep the two lanes closed 56 hours straight."

"We're finding both conventional and high early-strength concrete in the overlay, but the W 2200 is chewing right through it all," Moore says. "We've used the W 2200 for scarifying concrete as well, but this 3.5-inch-deep cut is more of a test for the machine during the four hours we work each night."

New open-space tooth pattern

A new open-spaced tooth pattern drum design which applies more horsepower per tooth, but with fewer teeth, was being used on this cold mill.

"We're using Wirtgen teeth with 1.25-inch spacing of teeth on the drum, with some 130 teeth on the drum," Moore says. "We're not using up as many teeth on the drum as before, but it's grinding up the concrete more efficiently, and pulling the material off the existing concrete. It's coming up in a little bit larger chunks, and the milling is more efficient. It's leaving a nice pattern on the pavement, and both the state and the paving contractor are well-pleased."

Nonetheless, Moore and his crews have experimented with the right configuration for the drum and machine.

"At one time we slowed the cutter drum down, but had no success with increasing footage, because teeth were breaking off as the drum was going slower, and not keeping up," he says. "We brought it back to its original speed - about 21 feet per minute, and now things are rolling. Because we're limited at night to what can be repaved before rush hour, I'll open up anywhere from 2,000 to 2,600 feet, depending on how tight the concrete is in our four-hour period."

Thus a given night would see Lane begin milling after 8 p.m. and conclude about midnight, with Rea Contracting paving the next four to five hours, with the last hour striping and removal of the traffic control pattern. "We have to be off the Interstate by 6 a.m., with penalties of $10,000 per hour," Moore says.

Superpave replaces concrete

The concrete overlay was being replaced by two lifts of a Superpave mix, PG 76-24 polymer modified binder, with 9.5 D mm aggregate. The first was a 2-inch lift, followed by a 1.5-inch lift on top to bring to grade. The HMA was provided by Rea Contracting out of its Northern Raleigh plant. North Carolina DOT specified a material transfer vehicle be used between truck and paver.

At midnight, the milling and paving supervisors meet to run numbers as to how far the milling can go that night, so both crews can finish their jobs that morning.

"We see how far we will mill, so we can finish milling and Rea can finish paving, all at a happy medium," Moore says. "We also have to figure in cutter tooth changes, and that will slow us down a little. Right now we do a complete cutter tooth change every 1,000 to 1,100 feet; the more efficiently we can change the 130 milling teeth, and install new ones, the faster we can get back to work."

Lane's complete tooth change using Wirtgen quick-change toolholders will take about 15 minutes.

Hydro-sweeping and infrared drying

Following the W 2200, a standard street sweeper was cleaning the milled surface, followed by a contract hydrovacuum truck which was water-blasting any remaining material off the surface, and vacuuming it into a tank for disposal.

"We're picking up the heavy stuff with the sweeper, and then we have a 36,000 psi-capable hydrovac truck clean the pavement with sprayed water, and vacuum up the water and any fines," Moore says. "This surface has to be totally spotless before we apply our tack coat."

And because the surface has to be bone-dry before the tack coat - and not much time in which to dry - Lane was using an infrared heater truck with generator to dry the milled surface prior to tack and overlay. "The truck has two 195-mph blower fans which blow off any standing water, and heating coils which evaporate any remaining moisture."

Lane's W 2200 with full-lane width drum was giving Lane the power and reliability it needed to keep this project on schedule and in budget.

Moore was finding that the new Eco-Cutter drum from Wirtgen was keeping the job moving along with accrued savings from use of fewer teeth. "This is the first application for which we've used this full-lane drum," Moore says. "This application is nice for the full-lane drum because it's one lane, one way, without having to back up and go. And the drum has a coarser pattern to it. My feeling is, 'the coarser, the better', because the asphalt can hold tighter in the voids than it can in a smoother surface."

Fewer cutting tools on the new Eco-Drum means less resistance to cutting and a higher rate of advance, with lower tool costs per milled cubic yard. These drums, with smaller number of point attack tools, make sure work proceeds more quickly and cost-efficiently.

Despite the fact that the standard-width Eco-Cutter may equipped with only 114 cutting tools, its performance with 1-inch tool spacing is roughly 20 percent higher than that of a standard milling drum with 0.6-inch tool spacing when working in hard asphalt and at a milling depth of 8 inches.

About the Wirtgen W 2200

The W 2200 is designed for big, continuous cold milling projects in which a pavement must be removed mile after mile. The high-horsepower, deep-cutting, high-production

W 2200 lets users mill large projects in a short period of time.

The W 2200 has a standard cutting width of 87 inches, four large D-6 crawler tracks, a milling drum with a high-efficiency mechanical belt drive, and an efficient front-loading system. It has a mechanically driven milling drum and two-part slewing front-end discharge conveyor of variable height. The machine travels on crawler tracks. Robust welded construction with mounts for the individual function modules and superstructures. The tanks for diesel fuel and water are integrated into the chassis. The hydraulic fluid tank forms a separate unit.

Its maximum cutting depth is 14 inches and with the optional Flexible Cutter System, can cut up to 14 feet 1 inch wide. The W 2200 has an operating weight of 96,342 pounds with a 900-hp power plant.

The walk-through operator's platform with access ladder on each side is located in the middle part of the machine. It is equipped with two identical control consoles which can be pivoted and vertically adjusted. Both control consoles and the right-hand driver's seat can be displaced outwards beyond the edge of the machine. The steering and feed control operate with electrical proportional action and are controlled via joysticks.


The Wirtgen information and diagnosis system - called the WIDIS 32 - provides the driver with comprehensive up-to-the-minute information on the current status of the engine and hydraulic system and generates visual and acoustic alarms when necessary. The crawler tracks are suspended from the chassis via round cylinders, the height of which can be adjusted hydraulically. The height of each crawler track can be adjusted individually. The height required for the milling depth is adjusted via the two cylinders at the front, while the rear crawler tracks form a full floating axle. The large lift ensures considerable ground clearance simplifying such difficult maneuvers as reversing or loading and unloading the machine from a low-bed truck.

Report of NC DOT incompetence hidden from public

An alarming new report provides more evidence that NC's DOT organization is poorly suited to meet transportation needs of the state and reveals the organization is withholding a major consultant review of the DOT paid for by taxpayer dollars. The DOT continues to reflect the incompetence of director Lindo Tippett, appointed by Governor Easley, and the inability of DOT staff in managing thousands of state employees responsible for maintaining NC's road infrastructure and planning what is needed to handle the unprecedented growth in state traffic.

It is clear that the time has come to demand that the DOT director step down and a replacement be appointed that has the knowledge and ability to manage the organization and facilitate planning and funding of what is needed to build and maintain an adequate transportation infrastructure that will allow the state to be competitive.

Results from a comprehensive survey of some 13,000 thousand DOT workers and interviews with at least two dozen key legislators, state officials, business executives and local transportation officials, along with information from follow up discussions, strongly suggests a lack of understanding within the organization about the mission of the DOT and tells of poor use of funds and inadequate project plans and schedules. Mark L. Foster, the department's chief financial officer, confirmed that "DOT employees complained that they lack a shared understanding of their mission." He briefly described other criticisms: "Road projects cost too much time and money. It's hard to figure out who is responsible for any DOT project."

Read the report and learn more about the lack of a "unified vision", deception and confusion in the state's DOT organization...

News and Observer
September 29, 2007
Bruce Siceloff, Staff Writer

Consultants review of DOT under wraps
McKinsey & Co. was asked to prepare a sweeping evaluation of the transportation agency, but DOT and the company are keeping a tight rein on the information

State Department of Transportation officials are paying a consultant $2.5 million to help make the agency more responsive, accountable and transparent.

They are keeping much of the work secret.

Attorneys for DOT and McKinsey & Co., an international management consultant hired in April to evaluate DOT, blacked out several pages of contract details and stamped other pages "CONFIDENTIAL" before DOT released them to The News & Observer.

Other contract documents indicate that McKinsey initially was asked for a candid, sweeping assessment of DOT's "strategic direction and organizational structure." It was expected to file reports in May and June.

DOT has declined to release a word of its consultant's findings. The April 11 contract includes an unusual pledge that DOT will seek McKinsey's permission before making public references to McKinsey or releasing any "reports, analyses or other such materials" it receives from McKinsey.

DOT officials now say they did not request or receive any written reports from McKinsey, whose contract ends in mid-October. Read more...

I-40 repair completion ends DOT 21.7M blunder

Repair of NC DOT's $21.7 million blunder has ended. The contractor has finished removal and replacement of faulty concrete that was supposed to last for 30 years. A final surface layer will be applied that is intended to make the new surface last for 10 years.


The bottom line - NC DOT failed to make sure proper instructions were given to the original contractor rebuilding a section of I-40 in durham county. Now $21.7 million that could have been used to build new roads or repair damaged ones is gone forever to fix a mistake by the DOT.

This is enough money to eliminate the funding gap that would have allowed construction to begin on the western part of I-540 that is now on indefinite hold. Commuters in the southern and western parts of the area must continue enduring daily backups and extended commutes on crowded roads and town streets with no relief in sight.

Unfortunately the same management of the state's DOT organization is still intact and continuing with the same management style that led to the I-40 funding waste. Accountability is not a word known within the NC DOT and poor management of funds and inability to find ways to secure new funding for needed roads and repairs will be part of life in NC until the current Governor's administration comes to an end.

News & Observer
August 21, 2007
Bruce Siceloff, Staff Writer

Big part of I-40 repairs complete

Lane Construction Corp. ripped out the last of the bad concrete on Interstate 40 in Durham County Monday night -- and finished removing the N.C. Department of Transportation's 10.4-mile mistake.

The on and off ramps on westbound I-40 at N.C. 54 (Exit 273, Chapel Hill) were closed overnight while Lane replaced faulty concrete with fresh asphalt.

That, DOT engineer Eben Miller said Monday evening, completes a major phase of Lane's $21.7-million contract to repair concrete that failed because of DOT's blunder in a widening project in 2003.

The DOT gave the wrong instructions to a different contractor, who incorrectly applied a 3-inch concrete layer to a stretch of I-40. The problem affected two lanes in each direction from N.C. 147 Durham Freeway in Research Triangle Park to U.S. 15-501 and the Orange County line.

The new concrete was supposed to bond with the original concrete beneath it. It was supposed to be good for 30 years.

Instead, the top layer began to expand, buckle, crack and crumble.

So DOT hired Lane to remove the bad concrete and replace it with asphalt. The third inner lane was not affected, and it is still solid concrete.

Later this week, Lane will do some cleanup work.

Next week, probably Monday, Miller said, Lane starts putting down a 5/8-inch layer of special asphalt that will cap all three lanes in each direction (including the inside, all-concrete lane). The material is designed to make the ride smoother and safer and to make the new asphalt last about 10 years. Original article...

North Carolina bridges worst in the southeast

According to an August 2, 2007, AAA of the Carolinas statement "North Carolina's highway bridges are in the worst shape of any state in the Southeast, and two Charlotte-area counties -- Burke and Cabarrus -- are at the bottom of the list."

This follows on the heels of the terrible bridge collapse in Minnesota involving a 40 year old "unique design" bridge between Minneapolis and St. Paul.

The report does not say any bridges are in emminent danger of collapse but many are in need of significant repair now. As many as 30 percent of the state's bridges have problems that should be resolved in the near time frame.

The Charlotte Observer
August 2, 2007
Steve Lyttle, The Charlotte Observer

AAA: N.C. bridges need work

AAA of the Carolinas says North Carolina's highway bridges are in the worst shape of any state in the Southeast, and two Charlotte-area counties -- Burke and Cabarrus -- are at the bottom of the list.

Bridge safety figures to become a higher priority item across the country, in the wake of the collapse of a freeway bridge Wednesday evening in Minneapolis. At last report, at least four people were killed in the disaster, and another 20 are missing.

According to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, the bridge that collapsed was declared "structurally deficient" in 2005.

None of the Carolinas bridges listed by the AAA are in danger of collapsing, the agency said in its February 2007 report. But the AAA said a large percentage of the states' bridges are in need of repair.

In the Carolinas, more than a quarter of bridges were rated as "substandard" by the AAA in its survey this year. That figure was 30.6 percent in North Carolina and lower in South Carolina. Read more...

NC traffic among worst in nation

More bad news about trends in NC during Governor Easley's administration. A new study places traffic in North Carolina among the worst in the nation.

On top of frequent news about problems and delays in major road projects and insufficient funds to build new roads and repair existing ones, NC can't seem to keep up with growth in traffic anywhere in the state. This may be just a sign of the times but it is likely the DOT organization simply doesn't have the knowledge and leadership to properly plan for growth or find ways to produce funding for what is needed. It is most likely a top down issue and is consistent throughout the state. News articles frequently place blame for problems and construction delays on lower level staffers and never suggest that leadership is at fault.

Poor roads, sloppy maintenance and heavy traffic are visible all around the state. The quality of roads in neighboring states generally seems to be better than in NC and it seems that this trend continues to worsen.

The following AP article from the Winston-Salem Journal compares the best and worst state locations and indicates traffic in NC continues to worsen.

June 28, 2007
Associated Press

Study ranks NC traffic among worst in nation

WASHINGTON - Motorists in California, Minnesota, New Jersey and North Carolina have been stuck in some of the worst traffic in the United States, according to a study released today.

North Dakota and South Carolina roads rated highest in the study's overall rankings, while New Jersey roads ranked the lowest. The study ranked Montana highways as the deadliest in the nation.

The study, based on data from 1984 through 2005, found that while road conditions have improved in recent years, traffic congestion and highway fatalities have increased slightly.

The state-by-state evaluation of highways was conducted by UNC Charlotte and financed by the Reason Foundation, a libertarian think tank based in Los Angeles.

With the federal highway fund running short of money for major highway projects, state governments are faced with having to pick up a greater share of the cost of building and maintaining highways.

Dr. David T. Hartgen, the highway study's lead author, says the results show that states need to prioritize, directing their transportation money to projects specifically designed to reduce congestion.

"Gridlock isn't going away," Hartgen said.

The study ranked highway systems in each state according to their cost-effectiveness, which was determined with several factors including traffic fatalities, congestion, pavement condition, bridge condition, highway maintenance and administrative costs. Evaluations were done on highways and all state-owned roads.

The five states with the most cost-effective roads, according to the study, are North Dakota, South Carolina, Kansas, New Mexico and Montana. The bottom five states are New Jersey, Alaska, New York, Rhode Island and Hawaii.

The study found that traffic fatalities rose by less than 1 percent between 2004 and 2005. Montana had the deadliest roads, with 2.3 fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles traveled. Massachusetts roads were the safest, with 0.8 deaths per 100 million vehicle miles.

Congestion rose by a similar amount. According the study, almost 52 percent of the nation's urban interstate highways were regularly congested in 2005, the last year included in the evaluation.

In a statement, Transportation Secretary Mary Peters said that congestion has nearly tripled in metropolitan areas during the past 25 years despite increases in spending over that period. Resolving the issue has been a priority for the department, which last year announced a plan to combat gridlock through long-terms investments in key corridors.

"It's so important to get our transportation policies headed in the right direction - away from the federal government and back to the states and localities where innovation in America has always originated," she said.

Congress will have to find new sources of revenue if it wants to tackle the problems, said Matt Jeanneret, spokesman for American Road and Transportation Builders Association. His group estimates that Americans spend 47 hours a year stuck in traffic.

"This illustrates the capacity crisis that is facing this country, which is only going to get worse if trends stay the same," Jeanneret said. "We are bursting at the seams with motor vehicles and we're not adding capacity to that."

Janet Kavinoky, who works on transportation issues at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, says the nation's traffic woes are at crisis levels. "There's more bad news coming," she said. "You hate holiday traffic? Pretty soon it's going to be business as usual."

NC Issued 27,000 licenses on invalid social security numbers

More alarming news from the office of Les Merritt, our state auditor working on the state payroll and in his own personal business.

North Carolina has issued some 27,000 drivers licenses on invalid social security numbers. Why is this a big problem? This means that thousands of drivers licenses accepted for identification in all sorts of situations can't be traced back to known US citizens and could be used for virtually any purpose and could allow holders to gain access to places they should not be allowed into, cash checks or withdraw funds illegally, etc.

In a state audit report released March 20th it has been stated that "auditors don’t know if the invalid Social Security numbers were intentionally used to obtain licenses" according to Chris Mears, a spokesman for the auditor’s office. “We’re assuming that some of those simply will be keypunch errors [by DMV clerks], but we thought that 27,000 was a big number,” Mears said.

Yeah, right. This is a pretty large blunder to simply write off to possible data entry errors. This means we could have hundreds or thousands of unscrupulous people loose in the state that have accepted means of identification that could now gain access to many places where they can do harm or proceed to arrange further means to obtain funds or illegal accounts or whatever might serve their purposes without anyone knowing it.

Read the report out today..

News and Observer
March 20, 2007
Dane Kane

27,000 licenses on invalid Social Security numbers

A state audit released today has found that North Carolina has issued roughly 27,000 drivers licenses to motorists based on invalid Social Security numbers.

State Auditor Les Merritt said the problem lies with licenses issued under an older system that the state Division of Motor Vehicles now uses. The new system, which the division began using in August, checks Social Security numbers automatically before issuing licenses. The old system did not.

“The hole we discovered was that DMV did not review previously issued licenses," Merritt said in a news release. “That hole presents a potential threat to homeland security and exacerbates the problem of identity theft.” Read more...

Don't walk, don't even run

Don't even think about walking across Raleigh's Capital Boulevard. Even if you follow all the rules and do everything right there's a greater chance of being killed on the road than on most others around the region.

The boulevard is as wide as half a football field and has no crosswalks or pedestrian signals. Read the full report...

News and Observer
March 14, 2007
Sam LaGrone, Staff Writer

Crossing Capital on foot poses risk
Since 2002, road has claimed eight

RALEIGH - Sandra Hicks does everything right. She looks both ways. She crosses on green. But even then, Hicks, 42, says she has almost been hit at least five times this year while crossing at North Raleigh's Capital Boulevard and Calvary Drive.

Easy to see why.

Capital at Calvary is half a football field of asphalt from curb to curb with no crosswalks or pedestrian signals.

"It's not safe for the pedestrian," Hicks said. "And these drivers have a hard time screeching on the brakes." Read more...

NC 55 Widening in Wake County

According to Bruce Siceloff's note in the December 19 News and Observer the long awaited widening of NC 55 is about to be completed.

Mr. Siceloff had this to say in his December 19th article about NC 55 widening: "No fooling. By the end of this week, the state Department of Transportation expects to have all four lanes of N.C. 55 open for traffic from U.S. 64 in Apex north to Interstate 40."

Unfortunately neither the State DOT or the Town of Apex has a solution to address the fact that the part of NC55 through the southern part of Apex is now and will remain the sole major bottleneck providing commuters with a daily dose of traffic frustrations. There is no plan to replace the old train underpass in Apex or widen the part of NC55 that goes right through town so most of the commuters will still turn off NC55 and take short cuts through neighborhood streets as they have been doing for many years.

This is yet another demonstration of the shortsightedness of the State and the Town in getting ahead of traffic and being able to handle the rapid growth that wont slow down in our lifetimes.

The Town of Apex has recently released an announcement that a plan has been set in motion to add a new section of the "Apex Peakway" that is intended to provide a route to connect both ends of the NC55 Apex blockade but this will be at least two or three years (if not more) in the making. Even then commuters will have to make additional turns and navigate onto town streets to go around the bottleneck.

If you are one of the many that has to deal with this never ending problem get in touch with your state House or Senate representatives or the head of NC DOT and let them know what you think!

Who's responisbe for NC DOT problems?

It would seem that with all the major problems in road construction, planning, repair of repairs and mis-management of taxpayer dollar expenditures that the top person in North Carolina's Department of Transportation would bear the ultimate responsibility for bungled work. News articles are frequently seen about state funds falling short of what is needed for building new roads, repairing and repaving of existing roads and planning of major new roads needed to handle the rapid growth in many areas of the state. Could it be that there is a problem from the top down in running the DOT?

State Transportation Secretary Lyndo Tippett is at the top of the chain and is a political appointee in Governor Easley's organization. It's interesting that with all the problems that keep surfacing that the top man in the DOT has not admitted to being ultimately responsible for state road issues and has not been replaced. Could this be just another indicator that the "good old boy" system is alive and well in state politics and that nothing will change until a new Governor is elected?

A December, 2006, article discusses responsibilities and salaries of a number of people in the DOT organization and indicates that Secretary Tippett issues reprimands for poor performance. Nothing has been said about Tippett's salary and whether he should be held accountable for poor performance and management...

News and Observer
December 16, 2006
Bruce Siceloff and Toby Coleman, Staff Writers

3 rebuked for road failures
The transportation secretary issues written warnings, saying that the public's trust must be regained

State Transportation Secretary Lyndo Tippett said Friday that three department administrators were reprimanded for their involvement in the failed Interstate 40 widening project in Durham County that will require an estimated $18.6 million repair.

In a six-page report to the state Board of Transportation, Tippett identified 10 present and former Department of Transportation engineers and administrators who played key roles in planning, designing and building the 10.6-mile Durham County project, which was finished in 2004. Three of the 10 were singled out for the only disciplinary actions DOT has announced.

"The result of these errors has created a decrease in public confidence and trust in the Department," Tippett wrote in a memo. "Accountability for the errors is essential to re-establishing the public confidence and the integrity of the Department." Read more...