Road hog: The I-26 Disconnector

BY BILL BRANYON

Finally! After almost 35 sword-of-Damocles years, the N.C. Department of Transportation (NCDOT) is actually going to start building the immense Interstate 26 Connector this year. A John Boyle article in Asheville Watchdog states that as of May 9, the NCDOT has been buying and condemning property for the project.

In response to pressure from horrified citizens, the state agency held countless community meetings during which it considered and ultimately rejected many alternate options. Now, however, the final route has been chosen, and those who aren’t in the line of fire can breathe a deep sigh of relief. But while small portions of the road do appear to be much-needed transformations, will we now turn away in disgust and denial over what we’re doing to the people, animals and environments that will be most dreadfully affected?

There’s still time to at least lessen the damage. The Wikipedia entry titled “Highway Revolts in the United States” tells over 100 inspiring stories about American cities that have stopped or mitigated planned freeways, often after the contracts had been awarded and sometimes even after the projects had been built.

But we almost certainly won’t try to stop or modify our own connector: We’re just too darn sick of worrying about it and fighting traffic jams. Thus, here’s a requiem for all the poor souls in the road’s path.

Living like a refugee

According to the NCDOT’s final environmental impact statement, the connector will plow through 114 houses and force 35 businesses and two nonprofits to move. But never fear: The agency’s “Residential Relocation Brochure” cheerily assures us that these affected residents may be eligible to receive a payment whose maximum amount would be “the asking price … of a comparable replacement dwelling.” They’re also “entitled to reimbursement of … moving costs and certain related expenses.”

Of course, some folks may be happy to get the windfall. But what about the ones who love their current home and neighborhood and really don’t want to move? Besides, for those who want to stay in the city, good luck finding anything “comparable” in Asheville’s notoriously tight and prohibitively pricey housing market.

The 7-mile-long, mostly six-lane road seems likely to cleave seven neighborhoods in two, including the historically Black Burton Street community as well as areas around Kentucky and Hanover drives, the Pisgah View area, and Fairfax and Virginia avenues. When the NCDOT finalizes project plans, it will identify any areas that qualify for “noise walls” to contain the freeway’s noxious noise and frenzied motion. The good news is that residents living within hearing or sight distance of those areas will get to vote on whether they want one. If they vote yes, they can imagine they’re living in a walled fortress with dragons roaring 24/7 right outside.

The connector will then cut across Patton Avenue before fracturing the historically low-income Emma community. After crossing over the French Broad on a new bridge, it will execute its coup de grâce, demolishing Salvage Station, an extremely popular outdoor music venue.

The NCDOT also identifies a “direct community impact area” that is “likely to be directly affected in any way during and after project completion.” It encompasses the UNC Asheville campus and the West End-Clingman and Montford neighborhoods; 650 public housing units; 14 parks, including Aston, Burton Street, Carrier and Montford; eight French Broad River access points; six schools, including Asheville School, Isaac Dickson Elementary and Rainbow Community; at least 25 churches; and Riverside Cemetery.

For these affected entities, the I-26 Connector may turn out to be a massive disconnector.

No animals were harmed in the making of this picture

The environmental impact statement also confidently declares, “The proposed project is not expected to result in adverse impacts on wildlife due to the existing urbanized nature of the project study area.” Tell that to the untold numbers of rabbits, raptors, songbirds, squirrels, raccoons, chipmunks, possums, pollinators, turkeys and other animals — yes, even bears and coyotes — who’ve carved out precarious niches in the highway’s path. They’ll now have to flee from bulldozers trashing their habitats, and their search for other places to live won’t get any assistance from the “Residential Relocation Brochure.”

The impact statement does concede that the highway is “likely to adversely affect” the endangered gray bat and Appalachian elktoe mussel. Let’s just hope they don’t go extinct. It also claims that the connector “is not anticipated to create any adverse effects on the air quality” and “is not expected to result in a noticeable impact to natural resources or downstream water quality.” In addition, “Impacts to floodplains will be minimized to the greatest extent possible.”

A look at the numbers casts doubt on those claims, however. The Wikipedia entry titled “Interstate Highway Standards” details the minimum lane, shoulder and median widths. Using those figures, the six-lane highway will be well over 100 feet wide. That means the roughly 7 miles of planned road will consume somewhere between 93 and 110 acres — as much space as 70-83 football fields.

Won’t that much additional impervious surface inevitably cause massive increases in tainted runoff during downpours, intensifying the devastating floods that are already all too common in Asheville?

Meanwhile, according to a 2023 WLOS report, “NCDOT engineers estimate about 100,000 drivers travel the Asheville area stretch of I-26 every day.” The planned improvements will presumably speed up traffic, so how can those 100,000 vehicles not add to the pollution of our precious mountain air?

And that doesn’t even factor in the climate change implications of cutting unknown numbers of trees and paving over 114 gardens, yards and other green spaces.

Car crucifixions or progress jurisdiction?

The impact statement blithely opines, “Mass Transit Alternatives were determined to not be reasonable because they would not meet the Purpose and Need for the project.” But if the need is simply to transport 100,000 vehicles a day more safely and quickly, is all this devastation really necessary?

Couldn’t those goals be achieved simply by widening and rationalizing the dangerous dysfunction junctions of I-26, I-40 and I-240 and reconfiguring the merges from what is currently U.S. 19-23 onto I-240 and the Bowen Bridge blooper? And then, with the resulting hundreds of millions of dollars in savings, we could finance a north-south commuter rail, perhaps using tracks that already exist.

Asheville is home to powerful local organizations such as MountainTrue, the Sierra Club and the Preservation Society of Asheville and Buncombe County, not to mention a progressive City Council and county Board of Commissioners. Nonetheless, there are no significant efforts underway to promote a rail alternative. Are we so blindly addicted to car culture that we can’t imagine other ways to transport people? If you think so, you might want to call the groups mentioned above.

Or are we merely experiencing the inevitable, brutal growing pains of a booming city? In that case, maybe all we can do is sing along with North Carolina native James Taylor, whose song “Gaia” proclaims:

“Run, run, run, run said the automobile and we ran/ Run for your life, take to your heels/ Foolish school of fish on wheels/ Turn away from your animal kind/ Try to leave your body just to live in your mind/ Leave your cold cruel mother earth behind/ Gaia … Pray for the forest pray to the tree/ Pray for the fish in the deep blue sea/ Pray for yourself and for God’s sake/ Say one for me/ Poor wretched unbeliever/ Someone’s got to stop us now/ Save us from us, Gaia. No one’s gonna stop us now.”

Bill Branyon is a freelance historian.