By Mark Wineka
Salisbury Post
The chief financial officer for the N.C. Turnpike Authority says making a new Yadkin River bridge section of Interstate 85 a toll road would work monetarily.
The revenues a cashless toll facility would generate from the daily traffic volume would pay for the 6.8-mile, $391 million project that otherwise has no funding, Grady Rankin said.
If local and state officials moved quickly with the needed approvals this year, the project could be up and running by 2013.
“Financially, it’s a very good project,” Rankin told those who attended the Rowan County Transportation Summit Wednesday.
Because of the annual revenues it would generate, the project would be close to 100 percent bondable and require no “gap funding” from the state, according to the Turnpike Authority’s study.
But Rankin said the traffic and financial analysis raises questions about the thousands of vehicles which may choose to bypass the toll and go through the middle of Spencer instead.
“I used it this morning,” Rankin said of the alternate U.S. 29 route through Spencer.
The Turnpike Authority estimates that some 11,000 cars and light trucks a day might decide to avoid the toll at first. That doesn’t count an additional 3,600 heavy-duty trucks such as tractor-trailers that also would avoid the toll, Rankin said.
Summit participants generally agreed that Spencer would be in gridlock, if not meltdown, though some DOT officials challenged as too high the estimates of the cars that would choose to divert through the town.
“I know diversion is an issue,” Rankin said.
One reason vehicles might decide to avoid a new toll bridge would be the cost.
The Turnpike Authority’s study calls for a cashless facility that would rely on vehicles equipped with transponders and/or video documentation and registration. A cashless or open-road tolling would not require vehicles to stop because there would be no toll plaza.
The cash toll option would require a huge toll plaza with six or seven lanes in each direction. It’s not a good option, Rankin said, from the standpoint of safety and capital and operating costs.
Under the cashless option, if a car were outfitted with a transponder, its owner would pay $1 to cross the bridge. His account with the Turnpike Authority would be debited.
A car or light truck’s toll would be $2 if video had to be used to identify the vehicle and the owner already had a registered account for toll purposes.
A $4 toll would be charged to an unregistered vehicle that had to be identified by video, then sent a bill in the mail.
The toll costs for heavy-duty trucks would be $3, $6 or $12, depending on the billing method described above.
The Rowan County Board of Commissioners was host for Wednesday’s summit, which attracted N.C. Transportation Secretary Lyndo Tippett, other state and regional Department of Transportation officials, legislators from three counties and local leaders.
Rankin said some negatives to the toll proposal would be the potential for public resistance, the lack of a real time advantage vs. what’s already in place and the fact that the road has always been free.
As for a timeline, Rankin said local and state authorities would have to decide whether they want to go with a toll road by the middle of this year. From an environmental standpoint, the Turnpike Authority needs a decision that soon to avoid dealing with 2010 air quality requirements, which could delay construction considerably.
Besides local officials deciding that a toll road is what they want, Rankin said, the General Assembly would have to OK a toll road on an existing interstate and officially assign the project to the Turnpike Authority. Right now it continues to be an unfunded DOT project.
If the decision were made this year to proceed, all the environmental work could be done by June 2009. A contract could be let in September 2009, with construction starting in 2010. Theoretically, the expanded I-85 segment with a new Yadkin River bridge could be ready by the 2012-2013 fiscal year, Rankin said.
The project would include widening the 6.8-mile segment from four to eight lanes, building two parallel bridge structures (northbound and southbound) south of the existing I-85 bridge, rebuilding the southbound U.S. 29 bridge into Spencer and making the northbound bridge (Wil-Cox Bridge) a pedestrian walkway.
The current I-85 Yadkin River bridge would be taken down once the new structures are in place.
Local officials repeatedly asked the state DOT representatives where the funding for a bridge replacement would come from if not from a toll road. They didn’t find an answer.
Pat Ivey, engineer for Division 9, which includes Rowan and Davidson counties, said his entire five-county division has only $319 million allocated for road projects over the next seven years. It would not even cover the cost of the I-85 project and “doesn’t come close to covering the needs we have,” he said.
“Are we going to have to have somebody fall in this river before we build a bridge?” N.C Rep. Lorene Coates asked. “The life of the bridge is running out. What are we going to do about this bridge?”
Ivey assured the summit participants that the 50-year-old bridge is structurally sound and the DOT performs annual maintenance. But the bridge in both directions is narrow and accidents are occurring regularly, Ivey acknowledged.
“That project absolutely has to be done ó hopefully sooner than later,” he said.
The local decision could be left in the hands of the 16-member Cabarrus-Rowan Metropolitan Planning Organization and a Regional Planning Organization counterpart that includes Davidson County.
Salisbury City Councilman Mark Lewis said if he came away with anything from Wednesday’s summit it was that if the local leaders want a toll road, they have to move quickly.
County Commissioner Arnold Chamberlain said he philosophically is opposed to toll roads, but if the local officials keep the project with the DOT, it won’t get done.
Tippett, the state transportation secretary, said that although the funding has yet to be identified for the I-85 Yadkin River bridge, “we think there is a solution out there.”
Contact Mark Wineka at 704-797-4263 or mwineka@salisburypost.com.