News from the South - North Carolina News Feed
Roads in NC mostly controlled by DOT, not typical of other states
When Tropical Storm Helene tore across North Carolina in September, it left behind more than just downed trees and flooded homes. It ripped open a hidden fault line in the state’s transportation system — one that has existed for the state’s roads, largely unquestioned, for nearly a century.
North Carolina is one of just a handful of states where counties don’t own any public roads. Instead, the state’s Department of Transportation oversees nearly three quarters of its roadways, from rural stretches to urban highways. Towns and cities do own and maintain some roads within their own boundaries, but counties aren’t even allowed to do so.
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This centralized system, born out of the Great Depression, was designed to relieve local governments of financial burdens they couldn’t shoulder. But with billions of dollars in storm damage, drawn out emergency repairs and mounting pressure on state resources, questions are resurfacing: Should counties have more control over their roads? And would they even want it?
A system unlike most
North Carolina boasts one of the largest state-maintained road systems in the United States, second only to Texas.
“State-maintained” is the key phrase there.
Although both North Carolina and Texas own and maintain just over 80,000 miles of highway, the Lone Star State has nearly triple the amount of public roads once you account for those owned by towns and counties.
That’s because North Carolina has no county roads, even though one third of its population lives in rural areas. The state is one of only eight in the United States that have no roads owned at the county level. (Five of those states are in New England, where municipal governments own most public roads.)
In fact, North Carolina is one of only four states that own a majority of their public roads. This system gives the state’s Department of Transportation a massive amount of control when it comes to planning, repairs and upkeep of roadways.
But it didn’t always used to be this way.
So how did we get here?
A brief history of NC roads
For 200 years, counties controlled the roads of North Carolina. (Although for much of that period the transportation of people and goods happened primarily on trails, waterways and, eventually, railroads.)
The emergence of the modern automobile challenged that system.
Cars greatly increased the mobility of North Carolinians, and with that desire for movement came a greater demand for better roads to handle that traffic. Many public roads in the state had fallen into disrepair during the economic turmoil brought on by the Civil War.
A nationwide call for good roads was born out of the Progressive era around the turn of the 20th century.
In 1899, the state’s first Good Roads Association was established by Asheville residents to call on Buncombe County to improve its roadways. Many other local chapters sprung up across the state, and in 1915 Gov. Locke Craig established a commission to build a state highway system that would connect all 100 counties.
Such a project would require more than just county-level planning, and in 1921 the State Highway Act certified that the highway system would be maintained exclusively by the state government.
Ten years later, the state assumed control of most other public roads as well as the Great Depression sunk county governments into a budgetary crisis. North Carolina counties have been absolved (or excluded) from owning and maintaining roadways ever since.
The state of our roads
North Carolina has sometimes referred to itself as “The Good Roads State,” a nickname born more out of the branding of the state’s Good Roads Association than any objective measure.
But does that title still stick, all these years later?
It depends on whom you ask.
The Reason Foundation – a libertarian think tank – declared North Carolina first in the nation for road condition and cost-effectiveness in its Annual Highway Report published in March. However, that methodology rewarded North Carolina for spending less money on its roads relative to other states.
A separate analysis published last month by Construction Coverage ranked North Carolina 24th among the states in terms of road quality. That study found that 49% of the state’s major roadways are in “good” condition, 41% are in “fair” condition and 10% are in “poor” condition.
Those classifications were determined using a metric called International Roughness Index, which is a measure of the “bumpiness” of roads, according to Construction Coverage lead data analyst Michael Stromberg.
Although useful for comparing roads across large geographic areas, the roughness index isn’t a perfect measurement.
“Roughness is the best measure we have, and it’s pretty good, but it’s not comprehensive,” Stromberg told Carolina Public Press.
It won’t pick up rutting and cracking of roads, for example.
The ambiguity of determining road condition can lead to vastly different conclusions about the quality of a state’s roads, as evidenced by North Carolina’s paradoxical placements in the two aforementioned studies.
It also raises questions about how much control states should exercise over their public roads and how much money they should be putting into that effort.
The five states who own a majority of their public roads rank no higher than 20th in Construction Coverage’s rankings of road condition. However, three of those states – North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia – were top five in the Reason Foundation’s rankings mostly because of their relatively low spending.
The states with the most powerful transportation departments have opted for centralized decision-making in pursuit of cost-efficiency and scale — but that hasn’t translated into smoother rides.
When disaster strikes
The question of whether counties could do a better job of maintaining their roads is an unanswered one. The current system has been in place for so long that not many officials on either the state or county levels have questioned whether it is truly working as intended.
Both the Department of Transportation and North Carolina Association of County Commissioners were reluctant to give an opinion on whether or not counties should have more autonomy in the process of road maintenance.
Although state governments have deeper pockets, the money they spend on road maintenance can quickly get stretched thin by a large road system.
County governments, having a more immediate and intimate knowledge of their jurisdiction, could potentially conduct repairs and maintenance quicker than the state and without having to rely on the General Assembly to allocate funding for those projects.
Some states, wanting to drop smaller roads from their highway network, have occasionally set up turnback programs to relinquish control of specific roads back to the towns and counties in which they are located.
Aaron Moody, a communications officer for the Department of Transportation, told CPP that North Carolina has not attempted such a program on a widespread level.
“We are occasionally petitioned to abandon roads from the state system on a case-by-case basis through a very formal and public process,” he said in an email.
That only happens at the municipal level. It would take an act by the state legislature to undo the 1931 law that abolished county roads and put them in control of the Department of Transportation.
But even if the time it takes to repair and maintain roads would be faster under county control, those local governments may not want to take on the financial burden of doing so.
The Great Depression showed that a strong state road system can be a safety net for when disaster strikes. Tropical Storm Helene is the latest example.
The September storm caused an estimated $6 billion in damage to state roads, $1.7 billion to municipal roads and $460 million to private roads and bridges.
Although FEMA’s Public Assistance program covered much of the state’s and local governments’ emergency repair bills, it won’t cover all of the longer term repairs and mitigation projects. The state legislature and the Federal Highway Administration have also allocated millions of dollars in emergency relief spending for both public and private roads.
Meanwhile, county governments continue to be sidelined when it comes to those spending decisions.
This article first appeared on Carolina Public Press and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
The post Roads in NC mostly controlled by DOT, not typical of other states appeared first on carolinapublicpress.org
Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.
Political Bias Rating: Centrist
This content presents a thorough and fact-based overview of North Carolina’s road ownership and maintenance system without endorsing a specific political agenda. It discusses historical context, practical implications, and different perspectives on centralized versus local control in a balanced manner. The article includes data from various sources and highlights the complexity of funding and infrastructure management, which appeals to a broad political spectrum rather than leaning left or right.
News from the South - North Carolina News Feed
Boil water notice lifted in Hillsborough
SUMMARY: Hillsboro has lifted its boil water advisory, but the city and nearby Mebban still face water challenges following heavy rain from Shantel. Mebban closed non-essential businesses to conserve water as their treatment plant remains unrepaired with no clear fix timeline, leaving under two days of drinking water. Hillsboro’s plant was overwhelmed, causing multiple sanitary sewer overflows and flooding, releasing 174,000 gallons of sewage into Kate’s Creek. Repair efforts continue, with the main clear well sanitized and refilling, but full testing delays reopening. Meanwhile, Hillsboro relies on water from Durham and urges residents to conserve amid potential further storms that may worsen the situation.
Hillsborough’s boil water notice has been lifted, but the town’s water system remains vulnerable as its main treatment plant is offline.
News from the South - North Carolina News Feed
AdventHealth makes its most public case for building region’s second-largest hospital, but has yet to ask the state for permission
Months before it can get official permission from the state, Florida-based nonprofit AdventHealth is seeking public support for a 129-bed expansion of its already approved 93-bed new hospital under construction in northern Buncombe County.
Coupled with an earlier, pending certificate of need (CON) request to the state for 26 additional beds, AdventHealth will be proposing a total of 222 acute care beds for the new facility in Weaverville, making it — if approved by state regulators, and if it withstands possible challenges from Nashville-based for-profit HCA Healthcare — the second-largest hospital in western North Carolina and the first major competitor to HCA Mission Health’s near-monopoly on hospital services in Buncombe County.
Mission Hospital in Asheville has 682 licensed acute-care beds. UNC Health Pardee in Henderson County has 201. The Charles George VA Medical Center in Buncombe County has 119. AdventHealth already operates a 62-bed hospital in Henderson County, according to the Proposed 2026 State Medical Facilities Plan.
For months, AdventHealth, a Seventh-day Adventist nonprofit that is the largest Christian-based nonprofit hospital system in the United States, quietly has been pitching a proposal for the additional 129 beds to local leaders across the region. But this week’s public announcement of plans marks the first significant indication of AdventHealth’s vision for a much larger facility.
The announcement, however, comes months before any possible official action.
Applications for the additional 129 beds cannot be submitted to the state until Oct. 15, according to the 2025 State Medical Facilities Plan. AdventHealth, which owns more than 50 hospitals across the nation, has been gathering letters of support from town councils, health departments and residents in preparation for its application.
It’s already started grading work at the 30-plus acre site and is planning a groundbreaking ceremony later this year. When AdventHealth first applied for the project, the nonprofit told the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services’ Division of Health Service Regulation (DHSR) it would cost $254 million. Plans to expand the hospital will inflate the price, AdventHealth spokesperson Victoria Dunkle said.
“We will be sharing the updated scope, scale and costs in the final application,” she said.
Though AdventHealth originally said the hospital would open by 2027, expansion and a complex application process make that aspiration unlikely.
Weaverville Mayor Patrick Fitzsimmons said that although the delays are frustrating, the prospect of a large new hospital is welcome in this town of about 4,500.
“This is a positive development for our town,” Fitzsimmons said. “We’re talking about the addition of maybe as many as a couple thousand jobs as these new hospital beds are allotted, the kind we’re trying to attract to Weaverville.”
Service area: Buncombe, Graham, Madison and Yancey
Meant to serve patients in Buncombe, Graham, Madison and Yancey counties, the facility originally was slated for only 67 beds, according to the certificate of need application AdventHealth filed in 2022, which was approved by the state months later, despite competition and opposition from other big health care systems, including the HCA Healthcare-owned Mission Health system.
North Carolina’s CON law forces medical facilities to compete when they want to expand, add services, or buy expensive equipment. Organizations apply for projects and the state decides whether they are necessary.
In 2024 Advent added an application for 26 more beds to its original bid, bringing the total it was asking to 93. The extra 129 beds proposed this week would more than double the total bed count at the proposed Weaverville hospital.
“With 222 beds, the community will have more access to higher-level emergency and specialty care and more choices for how and where to receive this advanced care,” the release said, touting “not-for-profit, whole-person care” and “the growing needs of our region.”
Though a thumbs-up from the DHSR, the entity responsible for approving applications, is the first step to getting those beds, it’s hardly the last. CON law allows other hospitals to appeal the DHSR decision repeatedly, which Mission Health has done with all of AdventHealth’s previous approvals for the hospital. Last month an appellate court judge ruled against HCA-Mission’s most recent challenge to the 67-bed bid, which the DHSR approved more than three years ago.
Mission Health spokesperson Katie Czerwinski declined comment on Mission’s appeals. She did not respond to a question about whether Mission would also apply for the 129 beds come October.
HCA also challenges 26-bed AdventHealth award
AdventHealth’s announcement Monday highlighted the North Carolina Court of Appeals decision to finally greenlight the 67 beds, opposing Mission Health’s contention since 2022 that it didn’t get a fair shake in the CON process. Both Mission and Novant Health tried to win the beds that year.
“AdventHealth is grateful for the North Carolina Court of Appeals’ decision to uphold the State’s approval of our CON application for a 67-bed hospital in Buncombe County,” the news release said.
Because of CON laws and Mission’s legal contentions, AdventHealth is far from clear to finalize its vision of opening what would be one of the region’s largest hospitals by acute-care-bed count. Although the battle over the 67 beds is over now, another one is waiting on an Office of Administrative Hearings judge’s decision. Mission Health filed an appeal Dec. 20, 2024, stating that AdventHealth’s 26-bed application was erroneously granted to AdventHealth.
“By denying Mission a CON for the Mission Application, the Agency’s Decision prevents Mission from expanding Mission Hospital to meet the needs of Mission’s existing and future patients and therefore directly limits Mission’s ability to engage in its lawful business,” the appeal said.
AdventHealth did not mention the 26 beds in its release.
“The 26-bed approval is currently under appeal by a competitor,” AdventHealth spokesperson Victoria Dunkle said Tuesday. “That appeal is being reviewed through the Office of Administrative Hearings. Despite this delay, we remain steadfast in our commitment to bring these 93 beds — and the whole-person care they represent — to the people of Western North Carolina. We are confident that the State’s original decision will be upheld, and we continue to prepare to deliver on that promise.”
An effort to repeal CON laws, Senate Bill 370, made headway in the General Assembly this April. But that effort may be overshadowed by a 2020 lawsuit brought by a New Bern vision physician, Jay Singleton, in the state’s Supreme Court, arguing the multilayered application process “has nothing to do with protecting the health or safety of real patients.”
Currently, 34 other states have similar CON laws.
“Proponents of CON laws contend that if excess health care service capacity exists, price inflation may occur to compensate for new, underused health care services or empty beds,” according to a summary by the National Conference of State Legislators. “Opponents believe CON laws stifle competition by protecting incumbent providers and creating a burdensome approval process for establishing new facilities and services.”
Asheville Watchdog welcomes thoughtful reader comments on this story, which has been republished on our Facebook page. Please submit your comments there.
Asheville Watchdog is a nonprofit news team producing stories that matter to Asheville and Buncombe County. Andrew R. Jones is a Watchdog investigative reporter. Email arjones@avlwatchdog.org. The Watchdog’s local reporting is made possible by donations from the community. To show your support for this vital public service go to avlwatchdog.org/support-our-publication/.
Related
The post AdventHealth makes its most public case for building region’s second-largest hospital, but has yet to ask the state for permission appeared first on avlwatchdog.org
Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.
Political Bias Rating: Centrist
This content offers a straightforward, fact-based report on AdventHealth’s hospital expansion plans and the surrounding regulatory and legal environment. It primarily focuses on healthcare infrastructure development, regulatory processes, and competition dynamics without expressing partisan opinions or ideological viewpoints. The article presents multiple perspectives, including that of AdventHealth, its competitors, local officials, and regulatory authorities, maintaining an objective tone typical of centrist reporting.
News from the South - North Carolina News Feed
Homeland Security ends mandatory shoe removal at airport screening
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