CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- An angry Mayor Pat McCrory is crying foul over proposed delays in the completion of Interstate 485.

The delays could mean the section from Old Statesville road to I-85 won't be completed until 2018 or later. Also, the widening from I-77 to Johnston Road on the south side would be pushed back at least two years.

Drivers agree with the mayor -- more delays on finishing the road are unacceptable. Stephanie Kirkland takes the outer loop every day and described it as, “Terrible. Very, very bad. Traffic is really bad. Traffic is back to back, you never get through traffic like you need to. You never can get where you need to go on time.”

Now the road notorious for untimely back-ups is facing another major back-up, and Charlotte's mayor is mad -- so mad, he wrote a harsh letter to the governor. He did so after the state Department of Transportation released its plans for the next few years. Those plans delay work on almost all of North Carolina’s outer loops.

“It’s extremely disappointing,” McCrory said. “Our road dollars are directed not by where the cars are but by where the powerful politicians live.”

The mayor believes projects in Fayetteville and Wilmington are on faster tracks because of the state officials who live there.

“The major equation of where roads go in North Carolina is pure politics,” he said.

State Department of Transportation spokesman Ernie Seneca told us, “There are more needs than the state can meet, that there simply is not enough money to go around.”

But until there's a road going around Charlotte, most folks we talked to don't seem to want to hear that.

Megan Clark avoids I-485 at rush hour and told us, “I think it’s pathetic because it encircles our city.”

Right now the DOT plan is just that – a plan. There will be public hearings and a vote next summer. The mayor also told WCNC he thinks toll roads in Charlotte should be a possibility, though it’s likely too late to do that with 485.