The following is a Counterpoint column:

By Steve Joyner

As a citizen of North Carolina and mayor of Roxboro, I am concerned about the methods used to improve our transportation infrastructure.

As expressed by county and municipal officials year after year, the results of the Transportation Improvement Program fail to adequately meet the needs of our citizens. We must change the process in order to meet the needs of our urban areas and to help spur economic development in our rural communities.

While the underlying problem is a failure to allocate enough money to meet our transportation infrastructure needs, we can and should make improvements to the process. To wit, I offer the following suggestions:

1. We need to rethink the geography of our DOT divisions, taking into account the nature of the areas included in each division and their membership in the various Metropolitan Planning Organizations and Rural Planning Organizations. Here in rural Person County we are grouped with the very urban counties of Wake and Durham. As a result, we fail to receive funds for our road projects because of the obvious needs of our larger partners.

2. We need to rethink the so-called equity formula used to determine transportation funding. In addition to need, the formula should also take into account gas tax contributions from each county, population and economic development priorities.

3. Urban counties like Meck­lenburg, Wake, Durham, Guilford and Forsyth should be allowed to impose local option gas taxes to fund new road construction, thus giving local officials the ability to respond to their constituents and meet their own transportation needs.

I call on the governor and the General Assembly to work with the state's counties and municipalities to change the way our state's transportation infrastructure is funded, and to ensure we develop methods for allocating resources that are fair to urban and rural citizens alike.