Some question where tax money will go as light rail project reaches end of the line
Now that the Durham-Orange light rail project is all but dead, many are wondering what will come next and what will happen to the tax dollars already raised for the project.
The GoTriangle Board of Trustees voted unanimously Wednesday to pull the plug on the project, although it will ultimately be up to the Durham and Orange county boards of commissioners to make final decisions based on their recommendation.
A lot of time and millions of dollars went into the light rail project, but supporters say it wasn’t all for nothing.
“It was a difficult decision,” GoTriangle board member and Orange County Commissioner Mark Marcoplos said. “Economic benefits from this project would have been enormous.”
In Orange County, voters passed a half-cent sales tax in 2012 to help support the light rail plan. While that project is going away, the tax is not.
Marcoplos said the tax was never meant to only fund the light rail project. There are other needs, including bus and bike routes, as well as plans to build a train station in Hillsborough along existing tracks, he said.
“It is not a light rail tax,” he said.
There is also the matter of the $130 million that was already invested in the light rail project.
A pile-up of problems – cost overruns, languid private fundraising, lackluster legislative support and no deals in sight with key partners in Duke University and the N.C. Railroad – made the project untenable. GoTriangle, the area's regional transit authority, was spending $7 million a month on design work and consultants to keep things moving forward months after the project's end seemed nigh.
“We will learn from the work that has already been done, how we might apply that to future transit solutions,” Marcoplos said.
GoTriangle CEO Jeff Mann said Wednesday staff would wind down the project so it could restart if possible, and look for ways to re-use planning already done along the corridor. But once the counties vote to end, the project will be out of the running for $1.2 billion it was depending on from the federal government.
There is hope among some light rail supporters that the already completed work could be used for another shot at light rail in the future.
