N.C. ferries told to implement new toll system in 2027

Part 1 of a Series

North Carolina’s General Assembly has gone off and done it again – “a’messin’ where they shouldn’t ‘ve been a’messin’” – borrowing from the lyrics of the hit song written by Lee Hazlewood in 1965 and performed by Nancy Sinatra…“These Boots Are Made for Walkin.’”

 

The new state budget includes a requirement to charge tolls on all state ferries, effective Jan. 1, 2027. 

Eliminating the “free state ferry” routes in eastern North Carolina is not only a bad decision, the start date appears to be totally unrealistic.

The ruling, if left unchanged, puts the State of North Carolina on a course to encounter a huge “train wreck at sea.”

Coastal community leaders and local elected officials are pleading for at least a one-year extension. It’s a reasonable request, given all the hurdles that the N.C. Department of Transportation and its Ferry Division must jump over to meet an arbitrary deadline established by the General Assembly.

 

This is a complicated ball of wax, with many tentacles to boot. North Carolina got into the ferry business in 1947, when it began taking over private ferry services. The system has grown steadily over the years, and now North Carolina has the second-largest state-operated ferry system in the nation, serving nearly 2 million passengers a year, trailing only the State of Washington.

 

Today, North Carolina maintains seven regular ferry routes that routinely transport both passengers and their vehicles. 

Three have tolls: Cedar Island-Ocracoke; Swan Quarter-Ocracoke; and Southport-Fort Fisher.

Four do not: Hatteras-Ocracoke; Cherry Branch-Minnesott Beach; Currituck-Knotts Island; and Bayview-Aurora. This will change when these routes will implement tolls in 2027. 

Legislators wrote the ferry tolls language into the $34 billion budget bill that was passed July 2, 2026, and signed five days later by Gov. Josh Stein.

There are all sorts of contradictions at play here, and an editorial in the Carteret (N.C.) County News-Times on July 8 touched on a number of them.

Additionally, Gareth McGrath of the Wilmington (N.C.) Star-News, pointed out that the state ferries have traditionally been regarded as an extension of the state’s transportation network – “maritime highways that play the same role for local residents and the coastal economy as traditional asphalt roads and bridges do in the rest of the state.”

Coastal residents and officials assert that the ferries are “vital to small, isolated communities where waterborne transport is the only way to get around,” McGrath said.

They say the ferries are “an extension of the state-run road system that happens to travel over water instead of land, and the ferries should be supported by the state gas tax and registration fees just like other parts of North Carolina’s highway network,” he added.

 

Strong objections were raised by coastal legislators Sen. Bobby Hanig of Currituck County (show above) and Sen. Norman Sanderson of Pamlico County (shown below), but their voices fell on deaf ears.

 

The News-Times editorial pointed out that Sen. Vicki Sawyer of Iredell County argues that the ferry system serves only a small percentage of the state’s population.

 

The editorialist said that Sen. Sawyer lives in the Piedmont, in a “county that is surrounded by major metro markets, predominantly Charlotte-Mecklenburg, where the state has been investing tax dollars to incentivize large multi-national companies to locate in that region.”

“So, her complaint that the state is using taxpayer funds to underwrite the operations of the state’s ferry division is hypocritical – ‘taxpayer support for me but not for thee.’”

Sen. Hanig said the tolling requirement was adopted with “no plan” for implementation, and it’s going to “a bunch of hiccups,” in getting it done.