New route: Gene Conti tries to get somewhere with moving the politics out of state transportation planning.

• Author: Martin, Edward
• Position: COVER STORY

In 1971, the smell of tobacco scented the morning air as Allen Joines, fresh out of college, arrived for his first job at the old brick-and-granite city hall. Winston-Salem's cigarette plants were at peak production. In rural communities north of town, growers had heard the rumors: Someday a big road would cut through their farms to whisk traffic around the city. Joines would retire 29 years later as deputy city manager and, the following year, be elected mayor. By then, smoking had fallen from favor, costing the Twin City thousands of jobs. Still, the state's fourth-largest city continued to grow, as did a its traffic. Relieving the congestion, its leaders knew, was essential to its revival. But the 34-mile Northern Beltway remained unbuilt.

Politics had long been the rule of the roads in North Carolina, with a seat on the N.C. Board of Transportation one of patronage's prize plums. Marc Basnight, for example, had used his as a springboard to a 27-year career in the state legislature, including 18 years as Senate president pro tempore. By the time he retired in 2011, U.S. 64 barreled across the coastal plain, a highway of almost interstate quality from Raleigh to his hometown of Manteo. What got built where often was based not so much on need as whom you knew and what strings they pulled.

First proposed in 1965 but stalled by politics, lawsuits and lack of money, the Northern Beltway inched its way up the state's priority list. Then, in 2010, it got what seemed to be a death sentence. "We'd been ranked No. 3 in the state but got pushed back to almost dead last," Joines says. The irony was that the project was victim of a new system, one supposed to be based on data rather than deals. The previous year, Gov. Beverly Perdue had named Gene Conti her secretary of transportation. "We can't have personal friendships and politicians influencing the projects we pick and their outcomes," she says she told him. "That was the old. I want a secretary able to withstand the political pressures."

That Perdue, a New Bern Democrat who rose to power among the eastern politicians who pulled those levers, had tasked this to someone who had spent his career in politically appointed posts was a paradox. Conti's sole job in the private sector, which he had left and taken a pay cut to accept the $120,000-a-year cabinet post, was with an engineering company that concentrates on public works projects.

"Historically, roads and votes have been one and the same," says Christie Barbee, executive director of the Raleigh-based Carolina Asphalt Paving Association, whose mem-bership includes those delivering millions of dollars of road materials to the state each year. Nearly three quarters of Conti's depart ment's $4.5 billion budget in fiscal year 2011 went to the contractors and vendors that build highways and bridges and provide services for the transportation system. North Carolina has 80,000 miles of state roads, second only to Texas, maintained by roughly 12,000 state employees. The Department of Transportation also operates two major port and passenger rail service, a railroad and ha a hand in funding more than 60 airports. It's a vast, rich empire, ripe for regional feuds, conflicts and, occasionally, outright corruption. "Projects are now rated and prioritized based on need," Barbee says. "He's made tough choices, but they're working."

Against that backdrop, the crestfallen Winston-Salem leaders headed to Raleigh. Instead of the political ammunition traditionally needed, they packed data on cost, safety and traffic. "We never argued the formula wasn't a good idea," Joines says. "We just argued there was a flaw in the calculation." Adds Winston-Salem Chamber of Commerce President Gayle Anderson: "Needless to say, some of the negotiations got pretty testy" But their arguments won out. Early next year, the state will begin buying S34 million of right-of-way for the first 2 1/2 miles of the $1.1 billion project.

It was one of the first tests for a department long considered the most politicized arm of state government, now run by a soft-spoken man making hard decisions not likely to win him friends. Last year, for example, he alienated powerful politicians by firing the CEO of the state's ports without consulting members of the Ports Authority, who were used to wielding power on their own. "Everywhere he goes, nine times out of 10, people...