Drivers could be paying tolls on Interstate 95 in two years

In two years, drivers on Interstate 95 could be paying tolls to use the state's most heavily traveled road.

The Federal Highway Administration has given the state tentative approval to place tolls on portions of I-95 under a federal pilot program, Gov. Bob McDonnell said Monday.

Based on tolls of $1 to $2 per axle — or $2 to $4 per car and $10 or more for tractor-trailers — early VDOT estimates indicate the tolls could generate $30 million to $60 million a year during the first five years and larger annual amounts later.

The tolls would be on for at least 10 years, and perhaps indefinitely, officials said. Tolls ended on I-95 from Richmond to Petersburg in 1992 after 34 years.

Virginia officials had been considering a toll-collection point at the North Carolina border. But now they will look at other locations because federal officials want tolls to be collected in the areas where the money will be spent.

The revenue from the proposed tolls would have to be used for projects in the I-95 corridor. It would focus on projects — initially the ones to improve safety — from the North Carolina line to milepost 126 at Massaponax in Spotsylvania County.

The state wants to use the money to pay for expanding the road capacity, operational and safety improvements, and pavement and structure rehabilitation, the governor's office said. Building those projects would run into the hundreds of millions of dollars, the Virginia Department of Transportation told the Federal Highway Administration.

Having a dedicated source of money for work on I-95 would in turn free up transportation funds for improvement projects on other highways across the state, officials said.

"Limited funds and growing capital and maintenance needs have led to deficient pavements and structures, congestion, higher crash density and safety concern," McDonnell said in a statement, calling the federal approval "a major step toward funding critical capacity and infrastructure improvements needed in this corridor."

Examples of specific projects that could be funded through toll revenues include widening I-95 between Interstate 295 and the North Carolina border, upgrading electronic message board and road weather information systems, installing over-height detectors on bridges, widening shoulders and repaving within the corridor.

Road-user groups were not pleased with the tolling proposal.

"We are opposed to any proposal that would allow tolling of existing highways," said P. Dale Bennett, president and CEO of the Virginia Trucking Association, which represents about 350 trucking companies.

"Although we understand the dire need for transportation funding in the commonwealth, AAA does not believe the tolling should be imposed on existing capacity, especially on the interstate highway system," said Windy VanCuren with the AAA Mid-Atlantic travel organization. AAA has nearly 850,000 members in Virginia.

Others backed the toll initiative.

"We support the tolling of new highways and the tolling of existing highways as well," said Jeffrey C. Southard, executive vice president of the Virginia Transportation Construction Alliance, representing the state's road-building industry.

And, said University of Richmond transportation economist George E. Hoffer, "it is a great way to control congestion on I-95," by encouraging drivers reluctant to pay the toll to use other roads.

Virginia's I-95 toll plan will have to go through the federal environmental review process before it can receive full U.S. approval, Federal Highway Administration chief Victor M. Mendez told the state.

The state also will have to detail to the federal government the improvements it will make with the money, why those projects were selected, how the tolls will help I-95 carry more traffic, and where the tolls will be collected and why VDOT picked particular toll-collection locations.

The federal Interstate System Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Pilot Program allows the conversion of free interstate highways into toll facilities in conjunction with reconstruction or rehabilitation work that is possible only using tolls, the Federal Highway Administration said.

The state's toll collection must be for a specified term of at least 10 years, the federal highway agency said.

Because the federal interstate tolling program allows for only one pilot project, the agency rescinded its earlier approval for a proposed toll on Interstate 81.

Traffic volumes on I-95 run from about 40,000 vehicles a day at the North Carolina line, to about 145,000 vehicles a day in Fredericksburg, and to about 215,000 vehicles a day at the Springfield interchange in Northern Virginia.

Having tolls on I-95 in Virginia would not be new. The Richmond-Petersburg Turnpike, designated as part of Interstate 95, was a toll road from its opening in 1958 until the fee was removed in 1992.

Some interstate-designated highways have tolls, such as the New Jersey Turnpike, which carries I-95, but those highways generally were constructed as independent toll roads.

Virginia's pilot tolling project could be a harbinger of a larger shift in federal transportation funding policy, officials said.

"This would represent a major change in how we finance interstate highways, and it is part of a national trend of increasingly looking to tolls to fund transportation given increasing aversion to raising the gas tax and other trends affecting funding," said Trip Pollard with the Southern Environmental Law Center.

"The devil is in the details," Pollard said. "This proposal needs careful study."