Speaker 1: What's going on. Thank you so much for listening to
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your support. Alrighty, so let's talk about transportation and the
looming increase in taxes that's coming to Mecklenburg County. Well, anybody, visitors, locals, residents, everybody.
This is actually there was an interesting write up about
the about the impact of the transportation sales tax increase
or transit sales tax increase that we will be asked
to approve or reject in this upcoming November election. And
this is by Steve Harrison. It was published over at
the Charlotte Ledger, which I'm a subscriber to, and Steve
Harrison as a reporter over at WFAE, and I think
this is They call this feature transit time, I believe.
And so he's got the numbers. He crunches a bunch
of the numbers as to what impact this is going
to have. So in case you aren't to wear. The
North Carolina legislature put together this plan, but it would
require voter approval first because it would include an increase
in the sales tax, which the City of Charlotte and
Mecklenberg commissioners and transportation advocates have been clamoring for for
years in order to get more revenue into the train
system basically and to a lesser extent, the buses. Yes,
but it's really about building out this, uh this train
plan which was first and back when this was first done,
with the original sales tax increase and the original transit plan,
I was a reporter here at WBT. I covered this extensively,
and uh, you know, they they ended up approving it,
and they built the South Corridor light rail line, and
I remember the arguments for and against there were. You know,
we even hosted a debate at one point pro and con.
It did pass, and I suspect that chances are it's
going to pass again, and a tax increase on the
sales tax will pass again. I don't know if it will.
I'm not predicting it will, But I suspect if I
had to bet, if I had to make a prediction,
I'd say chances are probably pretty good. Now that being said,
there is a chance that it could fit. It is
an off year election, right, which means lower turnout, which
means if you can organize and motivate, galvanize the opposition
movement whatever it is, you can actually, oh, you can
vote this thing down. Part of the problem, though, I suspect,
is going to be that a lot of the conservative,
limited government, low tax kind of Republican voters they left.
Those are the people that would help you vote against
this kind of a thing, And many of them have
gone to the surrounding counties because they got tired of
all of the other tax increases that boosters and Democrats
have done over the years in Charlotte to build all
sorts of as the former WBT host Keith Larson used
to call it, all of the shiny things in order
to attract businesses and new residents. Right, to grow the city,
you had to spend all this money, millions and millions,
hundreds of millions, billions of dollars you had to spend
for growth. Because growth doesn't pay for itself. We were
always told, And one time I asked a planner, well,
if growth doesn't pay for itself, then why would you
want growth? Like, well, then you'd be dying. That's even worse,
like okay, So it sounds like there's never an excuse
to hold the line and to maintain a status quo.
You're always growing, okay, and that always costs more money.
So it seems like sort of a built in formula
of heads eye, wind tails, you lose. So here's Steve
Harrison's piece at the Charlotte Ledger. Mecklenberg voters will decide
in November on whether to increase the county wide sales tax.
It would go from seven and a quarter percent up
to eight and a quarter percent. This would fund a
multi billion dollar transportation plan. So far, most of the
focus has been on what the plan will build, roads,
new rail lines, more frequent bus service, and vastly more
on demand micro transit. Have you heard of this term
micro transit? Uber? Basically, so we're going to build an uber, Okay,
why don't Why don't we just offer credits? Why don't
we just cut some sort of a deal with Uber
and Lyft?
Speaker 2: Why?
Speaker 1: Why do we have to maintain a fleet of vehicles
running their own Uber program. I don't get it. Why
do we have to control it? Probably because the credits
to Uber would not you know, because they're going to
charge people probably next to nothing to get taxi service.
That's what we're talking about. It's a no on demand
taxi service that's run by the local government, which will
of course crowd out a lot of those Uber drivers,
lift drivers and taxi companies, because that's what happens when
the government enters into the marketplace and competes with private
companies that are fulfilling a demand. They're providing a supply,
they're doing so at a profit. Government comes in and
subsidizes low prices with taxpayer funds, and so it's going
to crowd out. In other words, it's going to put
out of business these other companies. See this is my
problem with the micro transit model. When gov Co runs it,
gov Co should not be running this. I also would
submit it's probably going to be less efficient and effective
than Uber and Lyft and a taxi company. But how
much would residents pay under this new tax Charlotte Area
Transit System and the Charlotte City Council have not focused
on the cost to residents, which is a complete shock
to me, which would be substantially large. Get this then
a typical property tax increase. So this is a key
point here. People complain about property taxes going up, right,
but they don't go up on an annual basis as
much as this is going to cost you on an
annual basis by an order of about three to five
depending on the calculations you're going to. So this increase
is three to five times greater than your normal kind
of property tax rate increase in real dollars. According to
a slide that was part of a presentation back in June,
the city estimated that the increased tax would cost the
average household in Mecklenberg County two hundred and forty dollars
additionally a year. That's additional that's on top of this
was the old Parks Helms argument. Parks Elms was the
former county commission chairman, state legislator Democrat, and during one
of the tax increase debates at the county level, he
made a comment about it's only the price of a
cup of slaw when he went to Chick fil A's.
That's all that's all it is. It's just a cup
of slaw, and that that was used plentifully. Let me
say against him on this very station, because it's not
just the cup of slaw. It's the cup of slaw
plus all of the other costs before you tacked on
the slaw. Right, it's like saying, well, I just got
this cup of slaw, that's it. Well, no, you didn't
just eat the slaw. You ate like a seventeen course meal,
and then you threw on a cup of slaw and
you're you're billing me to pay for it all two
hundred and forty dollars a year. The city estimates that
average low income households, the average low income household would
pay one hundred and thirty two dollars a year, and
that's also still more than your normal average property tax
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that'll last a lifetime. So the increase of one percentage
point in the Mecklenburg sales tax if voters approve it
in November, adds little to the cost of any individual purchase.
According to the piece at the Charlotte Ledger by Steve Harrison,
it's just twenty cents more on something that costs twenty dollars.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you buy something for twenty bucks, it's an
additional twenty cents on the dollar. However, it's eight percent,
So it's well, I'm not going to do the math
on that. It's eight It'll be eight and a quarter
percent of the twenty dollars. That's just the the county
wide tax, don't I don't believe that includes the state
sales tax. Right, So you're somewhere in the neighborhood of
on a twenty dollars purchase. Now you're spending probably over
two bucks, maybe two fifty. Right, we're over ten percent
over the course of a year, though that additional twenty
cents adds up, and the range is, he writes, somewhere
the estimate is somewhere between two forty and two ninety
a year. The sales tax is applied to things like clothing, toys, electronics,
restaurant and bar food, most drinks, furniture, and books. Some
items are exempt, such as medicine, most groceries, and cars.
Thirty percent of the sales tax proceeds according to the
Charlotte Regional Business Alliance, which I guess was that the
Chamber of Commerce, at one point, thirty percent of those
tax proceeds will be paid by non Mecklenburg residents, so visitors,
commuters from out of county, right, thirty percent paid by
out of countiers. That a word, out of towners, although
it is county wide. Okay, so thirty percent non Mecklenburg residents.
Thirty five percent will come from mecklenburgers. The rest would
be paid by businesses, so the same people basically, because
if you are a business and you have to pay
more when you're buying your stuff, right, you're buying your
If you're a restaurant owner and you have to buy,
you know, more to go cups, you're making that purchase,
you've got to pay a sales tax on that, and
you're going to pass that cost onto the consumers. Assuming
that this split is similar, then we should take the
remaining what it's got thirty and thirty five, so another
thirty five percent and split that roughly half. So let's
say what forty five percent is paid by out of towners,
fifty five percent is going to be paid by residents,
so most of it will be paid by us. Okay.
Mecklenburg increased the county increased property taxes last year, and
the county estimates that the median household will pay seventy
four dollars in higher property taxes for the two increases
of last year in this year twenty five and twenty six,
seventy four dollars a year increase. And this had this
had the county commissioners all twisted in a knot. I
don't know if we can raise these property taxes. Is
too much, but we've cut to the bone. There's nothing
lab that we could cut. Here's some DEI contracts. Yeah,
they can't cut anymore. They were so torn up about it.
Seventy four dollars, This is two hundred and forty. It
passed eight to one to put it to voters. The
City of Charlotte did not raise property taxes this year,
but it did increase them last year. That tax increase
cost forty nine dollars for the median home. So forty
nine dollars plus seventy four you're at about one hundred
and twenty. That's still half of what the sales tax
increase will cost us. Luckily, I live right near the
county line. I will be going to a nearby county
to spend all of my money on these purchases. The
sales taxes applied to things like oh, I already mentioned that,
sorry this page. The biggest hikes have been fees that
homeowners pay for garbage stormwater water service. In fiscal You're
twenty twenty five, the city said those hikes would also
cost the median homeowner an additional sixty seven dollars for
the next year, ninety dollars. Gosh, I don't know why
people can't afford to live here anymore. It's a mystery.
Let me go over to Chris. Hello, Chris, welcome to
the program.
Speaker 4: Thanks Pete, sir, you kind of touched on my point
right there at the end. I'm up here in Combar's
County fighting against property tax hikes. I moved from Charlotte
up here, and you know, the sales tax thing is
a great idea in a way for all of us
to share the burden instead of just homeowners, and also
having our lively our homes threatened by taking away by
force if we don't pay the property tax. But the
scary part is, like you just touched on, if I'm
going to go buy anything of substance, I'm not going
to buy it where it's a you know, a percent
or a percent and a half two percent more than
the neighboring county. I'll take that half an hour drive
to buy a fifty thousand dollars car or you know
whatever cars are.
Speaker 1: Cars are exempt from the sales tax, so okay, yeah, yeah,
but but to your point, stands about a large purchase.
So yeah, if you're going to go, if you're going
to go buy some appliances, let's say, and you're going
to drop two thousand dollars, well, you know, you know,
ten percent plus sales tax in Mecklinburg County, that's going
to run you an extra two hundred bucks or so
too fifty So yeah, that's that's worth a drive.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, and people will do that. But I do want
protection on our property, like the property tax increases are
even worse to me. But unless they raise all the
sales tax at a state level, it's not going to
protect like certain counties are going to be able to
protect their citizens with a proper a sales tax increase
because they won't, they'll just go to another county. So
it's slippery slow. But I'm out of Mecklenburg, thank goodness.
But we were fighting the same exact thing. Yeah here
in Cobar's County, we're just a little behind you.
Speaker 1: Well, it's here's the thing. It's about priorities, right, It's
about focusing on course services. And when cities believe that
they have gotten all the course services funded and they're
running smoothly, and then they start focusing on these other things, right,
and then they start getting visionary. Shall we say, let's grow? Yeah,
and so let's do all these things. And that's well.
And that's the reason why this plan, as approved by
the state General Assembly, got approved was because it mandated
forty percent of this revenue to go to RHADS. So
that because the original plan the City of Charlotte, they
did not want it to go to roads. It was
all going to be for transit.
Speaker 5: And the state said, my gas tax go h.
Speaker 1: Well, there's some federal gas tax revenue that's collected at
the federal level, and then the state gas taxes go
to the state dot.
Speaker 5: Where's my registration fees all of the different birds.
Speaker 1: The registration fees, your registration fees for just the registration
that go well, hang on a second. There's a small
fee that goes to the DMV to cover those costs.
But then there are property taxes for your vehicle as well,
and that's assessed at the county level, and I believe
those go to the county, but I'm not sure.
Speaker 5: So many taxes, yeah, no, it's yeah, And that's what
I mean.
Speaker 1: When governments do more and more and more, they have
to fund these things and keep them funded, and so
they just keep inflating the balloon. And then they just
squeeze different sides of the balloon, like oh, lower property taxes,
but higher sales taxes, or squeeze it the other direction.
So yeah, but it always comes down to prioritization. Chris,
I appreciate the call, Buddy, good to hear from you.
Have a great weekend, all right, if you're listening to
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Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it
also supports ground News as they make the media landscape
more transparent real quick on the numbers. By state law
which was adopted this session that authorized this vote, at
least forty percent of the money from the tax has
to be spent on roads or road related projects, which
includes by the way, sidewalks, and street lights. So I'm
going to go out on a limb and say that's
probably where the City of Charlotte's gonna funnel most of
this money. No more than forty percent can be spent
on rail transit, and twenty percent can be spent on
other transit uses like buses and the micro transit option.
The city has said that the sales tax would generate
more than one hundred and thirty million dollars a year
county wide for roads and road related projects, money that
Charlotte and the six Mecklenburg towns would be free to
spend on streets, sidewalks, crosswalks, street lights, and redesigning intersections. Now,
there was some comments, There were some comments made at
a Charlotte City council meeting where I believe the county
or the city manager said, well, you know, we can
get this extra money in and then we can look
to reduce our spending at the city budget level to
basically supplant that money. And when the state lawmakers heard that,
they were like, yeah, you know what, we're gonna put
an amendment into this bill. And you can't do that.
You have to maintain current funding levels taken over like
a five year your recent five year average that's what
you got to maintain. It appears most of the money
we go to expanding the new micro transit service that
mimics Uber. They started this in North Mecklenburg in February.
They planned to add eighteen additional zones. They're also going
to be doing according to the transit law, calls for
the Red Line commuter rail, which is not light rail,
it's a heavier rail to go to Lake Norman to
be built first. Katz has prioritized the Silver Line, which
runs from the airport to Bojangles Coliseum, and then completing
the Gold Line street car which is a complete waste
to the east down Central Avenue and to the west
along Baty's Ford Road, and then extending the Links Blue
Line down into Pineville and by the way Pineville. Although
those many years ago rejected the light rail line going
into it, they did not want the South Quarter light
rail line going into Pindel, and now they do. In
the past, it should be noted here that they said
they could build and operate the transit system for the
amount of money that the one sent sales tax had
was projected to bring in. This may shock you to learn,
but those projections were not accurate in an ambition, abitious,
ambitious project. List CAT said it can build and operate
the trains for one hundred and thirty million dollars annually.
But it's important to remember that what was promised when
voters chose not to repeal the existing half sent sales
tax for transit in two thousand and seven. At the time,
the Links Blue Line had just opened. KATS built the extension,
but it had to cut the line short and terminated
at UNCC to save money. It shifted construction and operations
of the street car to the City of Charlotte. I
call that the Anthony Fox Line because Anthony Fox promised
to leap frog that project over the other transit priorities
in order to win the votes of the East Charlotte
people in the mayor's race. It was the first race
after Pat McCrory said he wasn't going to run for
reelection again after seven terms. It was a tight race
between John Lasseter the Republican, Anthony Fox the Democrat. So
Fox made this promise to build the street car, and
you know, McCrory was apoplectic. He's like, we sold everybody
on this thing, Like the street car is a lower priority.
It is not going to get a lot of usage.
We should not be doing this, but you know, Anthony
Fox needed the votes, so I guess it all worked out.
So Katz underestimated how much it would cost to build
and operate the trains at that time. They over promised
eighteen years ago. Is it doing so again? I would
say yes. That's kind of the way these things go. Tony,
Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2: Hello Tony, Hey, good afternoon, Pete. I hope you're doing well.
Speaker 1: I am sir. How are you?
Speaker 2: I am good. A tremendous amount of growth in Charlotte
Drow's got to be improved, some public transportation. I get
all that, even with the funny projects they have. But
what bothers me the most is when you get into
these billion dollar projects, you've got the usual pigs at
the trough. It is a circular take from the taxpayer.
I know these engineers that work on these large state projects.
These guys are making over three hundred thousand dollars a
year base salary. They get bonuses fifty thousand to one
hundred thousand. On top of that, they get vacations paid
for all the booze they want to drink. All this
stuff is coming from the taxpayers. Well, I just who
who's accountable for this? It's not the state audi there's
they you know, every everybody in Raleigh seems to be
as corrupt as the next person. And it's not the
legislators who who keeps an eye on these things?
Speaker 1: Well? Like which kinds of things? So are you talking
about the firms that.
Speaker 2: Are talking about the I'm talking about the fat cats
that are involved in these people?
Speaker 1: Yeah, But when you say who are involved in the projects,
I'm asking like, are you talking about like private firms
that get contracted? Are you talking about government officials?
Speaker 2: It's the closed network of private firms, right, It's it's
a it's just a circular laundering basically that's done legally
within the system. These these these firms, the contractors are
way overpaid and who knows what's going back to the
people that make it available to them. It's just it
is just, Uh, these projects are just so bloated and
there's there's no urgency to them. How long has that
darn bridge hanging over forty five and Valentine. They're just
I mean, they just they just linger there's no I mean,
it's just the whole thing is just ridiculous, and we
get to pay the bills.
Speaker 1: Right. Well, the the issue you run into is that
there are not a lot of firms that can build
a transportation system, that can and that can do this
kind of work. So because you don't have a lot
of competition for that work, they get to charge whatever
they want. And you know what if the city comes
in and says or cats comes in and says, no,
we're not going to pay that, we want a lower price,
and they're like, well, no, we're not going to give
you a lower price. Like who do you Who else
do you go to?
Speaker 2: They're out there, I mean, we've got the whole country
to work with. They're they're they're available.
Speaker 1: They're gonna well yeah, but you're you're asking. I mean
we are. They are soliciting bids from all over the country,
but there are only so many firms that can do
the work at this kind of a scale.
Speaker 2: You know, I don't I don't buy that part of
it now.
Speaker 1: Okay, well I mean you don't have to. I just
remember when they were doing it the first time, like
Siemens was it. Yeah, you know that then they sub
out like they have firms that they contract with and
they sub it out. Like I'm not defending the amount
of money that these people make. I'm just saying, like
these are the This is the reality is that there's
not a lot of competition for the kind of work
and the kind of project management. Like there are not
a lot of entities that can do this large of
a project. And so because you don't have this huge
supply of qualified firms, you end up picking from only
a couple and then yeah, they know what each other charges.
Speaker 2: So there's only a couple of firms work at all
these fast growing cities across the country.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, because I mean you think about it,
I mean they sub them out. Don't get me wrong,
Like they have subcontractors and firms that they deal with.
But again, like, how many companies do you think produce
light rail train cars?
Speaker 2: Well? How many? I mean, there's an infinite supply of
engineers to design projects. Okay, so there, I mean they
on your end with the contractors. I don't know, but
I know that there's there's major road projects happening all
over the country.
Speaker 1: Well, those are road projects. I'm talking about the trans
I'm talking about the light rail lines. I'm talking about
the train projects.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a boondog as well.
Speaker 1: Oh, I thought your beef is on the roadside.
Speaker 2: My beef is the bloat and the abuse of taxpayer dollars.
And it is blatant. It is blatant, and I just
I would love I'll nominate Pat McCrory to be the
guy to go to look into that. I don't think
he's doing anything else these days, but somebody please, well look.
Speaker 1: And you should call in Tony, I would say, call
into the State Auditor's tip line. The State auditor has
a tip line. If you've got something you want the
Auditor's office to look at, definitely use that. I appreciate
the call. Good to hear from you, sir. You know,
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dot com. A message from Russ who says, my wife
and I grew up in Charlotte. Even though we moved
a mile across the border almost twenty years ago, we
still mostly live our lives in char We're friends, a
lot of entertainment and shopping. For years, we've bought big
ticket items though in South Carolina. One of the few
good things about the COVID restrictions was learning we could
easily adapt to doing everything in South Carolina instead of Charlotte.
We've gone back to a lot of our pre pandemic
behavior since, but switching back if the new tax goes
into effect will not be that difficult. Regarding Tony's call,
there this message from Kenny who says it sounds like
that guy's mad that engineers make a fair amount of money,
does it? Yeah, and look, I don't know anything about
the going rate of an engineer. I don't He said,
you know, the supply of engineers is infinite. I don't
believe that. I think there is a finite I don't
know what the number is, but I think there is
a finite number. Bo, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2: Hello, Bo, Hey, good good as How are you?
Speaker 1: I'm well, how are you well?
Speaker 2: I'm slightly injured because fell out of my chair.
Speaker 1: Uh oh yeah.
Speaker 2: When the guy said that we should call Pat McCrory
to help us, you'll look into some boon doggles. I
think I've injured multiple pieces and parts. I'm on the
impression we got the biggest boondoggle potentially. That's the still
on record, although I think they're trying to challenge that.
When we got the McCrory line after we voted that
we didn't want it. I think Pat's writing a book
on how to get boon doggles after you're considering.
Speaker 1: Well, no, now that was the arena referendum, so too. Yeah, yeah,
that was the arena referendum for a new uptown arena
and a new ballpark uptown for the Charlotte Knights, and
a new Mint Museum and a new Afro Am Museum
and a new Discovery Place, and voters rejected that. I
think it was two thousand or maybe two thousand and one,
And then, of course nine to eleven happened. The financial
markets were wreck and so it actually turned out to
be a very good thing that we did not start
taking out a lot of debt. But then, yes, right
after that vote, then there was another city council election,
and literally the night of the election, the winning candidates
started saying they're going to bring back the arena projects,
and lo and behold, all these years later, they got
every one of those projects done. They built every one
of the things that voters said no to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we really need to reach out to Pat right away.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, And now, look in Pat's defense, and I
had many discussions and arguments with him after city council
meetings during this time period when I was reporting, and
I would go up to him and I would ask him,
you know, questions during the interviews, and then when I
would stop, the interview would be over, and then you know,
we would go back and forth and he'd make fun
of me for being a libertarian and that sort of thing.
And I will say, though, he was always consistent that
the light the South Quarter light rail line was in
order to provide options to the congestion. Right, it was
never going like the argument that people were making pro
transportation people make is that it's going to take cars
off the road. That has never been, in my mind,
has never been a persuasive argument, because what happens is
you end up with a lot of transit oriented development
around the lines, and those people then also have vehicles,
maybe not as many, but they will have vehicles. So
when you pack in the development which we see on
the South Line, there are people that have cars down there,
and South Boulevard is now even more congested than it
was before it got completely built up with all of
the apartments. Right. But it's to provide the option.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is. You know, Charlotte has not is not
has not been designed to be a walkable city, right
and won't be in my.
Speaker 1: Lifestyle, no, right, because it was not originally. There was
another story from that time period was when they brought
a guy named Andres Dewane to town and he is
the sort of the pioneer, if you will, in neo
urbanism design when it comes to like planning and zoning
and that sort of thing. And if you've ever seen
the movie The Truman Show, it takes place down is
a real life town. That's a real life place. I
think it's called Seaside in Florida. And that was the
first big neo urbanism project and you see a lot
of Burkdale Village. They did Burkdale Village then, and he
came to town and he was talking about you know,
development and that sort of thing. And it was in
one of those meetings where they explained, like why do
our roads, why are our roads laid out as they are?
It's because they followed the old trading paths and then
they just would pave the trading paths. Well, where did
the trading paths come from? Well, they came from hunting paths.
That was initially like they would have hunting paths and
they were just kind of worn down. Where did the
hunting paths come from? Animals? Where the herds moved, so
basically like animals designed our road system here, it has
never been I mean except for like Center City where
you actually have like a grid pattern going on. But
then they ran interstates right through it because they thought
at the time that that was the thing to do,
that that was going to get people to, you know,
pull off the interstate and stop in their town. And
that's been a mess and absolutely well tithe.
Speaker 2: The good thing is is that Charlotte, particularly parts of uptown,
is going back to the animals, so you know we
do have that going.
Speaker 1: It is going back to nature. Oh I appreciate the call, sir,
have a good weekend. Yeah, it's nature's healing itself. Yeah.
This was one of the things I learned when I
was up in Asheville. They did the exact same thing.
Two seventy seven. The interstate that runs no sorry, I
was going to confuse. Two forty runs right through Ashville,
and they built that because they thought our downtown is dying,
mainly because they went bankrupt during the Great Depression because
they spent way too much money, took out all these bonds,
they went bankrupt. State had to bail them out, and
they thought, well, our downtown is dead, So what do
we do to get people to come into our downtown
spend money? And they thought, well, we'll have an interstate
run right through it, and then people will see the
downtown and want to pull off. And then, of course,
as you know, people began moving back after they got
out from under the bankruptcy. They you know, now you
just sit in traffic, not moving while you look at
the downtown and then you're like, yeah, I got to
get out of here. And then you get into the
downtown it's like, oh my gosh. These roads are terrible too.
But they I mean, they got geographical problems because it's
the mountains. You know, there's very few straight lines you
can draw between point A and point B because you
got to go around a mountain to get there. You know. Yeah,
bad planning decisions made long ago. They we are still
suffering those effects. I mentioned this the other day. You know,
Highway seventy four Independence Boulevard, and they keep widening that
and widening that, and I've seen signs for twenty years
that's say future seventy four. So they want to turn
they want to turn that into an interstate at some point,
you know, and they're making it more and more lanes
wide because they build all the strip malls along there,
and this whole idea that like, look, I am of
the mindset that you take your interstate type roads and
you keep them away, you keep them away from towns,
away from cities, and then you have loops, you have
branches that come off of there take you a couple
miles to get into that city, because the interstates are
supposed to be where people could just move quickly and
get between cities. And then you if you want to
go to the city along the way, then you would
pull off and you would take another access road all
the way in rather than running like seventy seven right
through the center of the city of Charlotte. And every
single time I'm on seventy seven, it is a mess.
Doesn't matter the time of day anymore. All right, that'll
do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening.
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