By Michele Fuetsch, Staff Reporter This story appears in the Oct. 29 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today.
Both of North Carolina’s major-party gubernatorial candidates said they oppose the state’s effort to toll its portion of Interstate 95, one of the nation’s major freight corridors.
In a debate Oct. 16 in Research Triangle Park, Republican Pat McCrory and Democrat Walter Dalton, the lieutenant governor, declared they do not support the state’s plan to toll the interstate.
“To try to put tolling in a road that’s been there for years is a mistake, and there are already examples of new roads being considered which even residents don’t want and that money could surely [be] transferred to [the] I-95 corridor,” said McCrory, former mayor of Charlotte.
Dalton said tolls should be a last resort. “And if [the state] ever implement[s] them, you have to have an alternative route that’s not tolled,” he said. “You have to give consideration to the people in the area, the working people. Tolling is “less offensive, if . . . you’re constructing a new road,” he said.
Under federal law, states cannot toll existing interstate highways, but more than a decade ago, Congress created a pilot program under which three states would be allowed to toll an interstate running through them.
Last fall, North Carolina and Virginia each obtained permission from the federal government to submit applications to toll their portions of I-95 (10-3-11, p. 5).
The state’s trucking industry was delighted to hear the candidates declare their opposition to the tolling plan, said Crystal Collins, president of the North Carolina Trucking Association.
If the interstate is tolled, “all businesses located along the corridor would be put at a competitive disadvantage to those businesses located elsewhere,” Collins said.
“Tolls cause significant truck traffic diversion to non-tolled highways that are ill-equipped to handle such traffic volumes, jeopardizing safety,” she said.
Collins said the debate was the first time truckers heard the candidates come out squarely against tolling.
At the state trucking association’s conference in July, Dalton and McCrory said they “understood where we were coming from, but they did not take a position,” Collins said.
Greer Beaty, director of communications for the state’s Department of Transportation, said North Carolina already has completed a study that identifies the needed improvements along I-95 that could be paid for with tolling and has held public hearings on the findings.
“We’re going to add nearly 500 miles of new capacity,” she said, at an estimated cost of $4.4 billion.
The state has not yet made a final decision on whether it will toll the interstate to pay for the new capacity, she said.
In June, the legislature directed NCDOT to do a second study, this one to assess economic effects of tolling on communities along the I-95 corridor. That study will be completed in the spring, Beaty said.
