While the county or city can request funding through grants and other state and federal programs, a certain amount of local matching funds are typically required and a dedicated funding source is preferred by the state and federal government. So the transportation sales tax would help ensure a consistent amount of funding is available for our community to leverage and apply for significantly larger infrastructure dollars to accomplish even more.  

Historically, across the state, this type of sales tax has been used to enable funding for large scale, transformative transportation projects that do not qualify as highway projects (like the Rail Realignment Project or Bus Rapid Transit). Over 90% of all NCDOT spending is allocated to highway construction and maintenance, leaving comparatively little funding left to fund changes and improvements to other transportation modes. A sales tax has been a tool for other local government to make big, meaningful changes to non-highway transportation networks.