Virginia Officials Propose Single Toll Site on I-95,to Collect $12 Per Truck Going Each Way
This story appears in the July 2 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today.
Virginia transportation officials have recommended that their tolling plan for Interstate 95 include just one toll-collection location and that trucks pay $12 going each way.
The details are contained in an outline that state officials presented to the Commonwealth Transportation Board on June 20 and are presenting at meetings with various county officials around the state.
“The one that we would recommend to the [Federal Highway Administration] . . . would be the location that’s in Sussex County,” said Tamara Rollison, director of communications for the Virginia Department of Transportation.
That site is between mileposts 20 and 24, about 20 miles north of the North Carolina state line and just north of the town of Emporia, Va.
Officials did not say why the state is proposing just one tolling site, but Rollison insisted that the state’s plan for I-95 is not final and that other tolling locations along the 178-mile corridor could still be considered.
Cars would pay a $4 toll each way at the Emporia site.
Virginia Trucking Association President Dale Bennett said two tolling locations were being considered as late as May but that, when the plan was presented to the transportation board, suddenly, only one site was included.
Bennett told Transport Topics that with only one tolling site, the plan is close to what Gov. Bob McDonnell once proposed — a toll booth at the state line with North Carolina.
“That’s basically what it is, a border tax,” Bennett said of the one-site tolling plan.
According to VDOT, about 36,000 vehicles pass through the proposed tolling site each day and about 15% of that traffic is trucks.
Federal law prohibits tolling existing interstate highways. However, under a pilot program created more than a decade ago, Congress said three states would be allowed to apply to toll interstates but, thus far, no state has submitted a complete application to toll.
In September, FHWA gave Virginia permission to submit an application to toll I-95 (9-26, p. 1). North Carolina followed suit within weeks, winning FHWA permission to apply, also to toll its segment of I-95 (10-3, p. 5).
Missouri received permission to toll Interstate 70 several years ago but has never followed through with an application. Lawmakers there rejected an attempt by state transportation planners earlier this year to design a tolling plan for
the highway.
Rollison said Virginia expects to submit its application to FHWA by late summer.
Bennett spoke at the transportation board’s June 20 meeting, reiterating the trucking industry’s objections to tolling existing interstates.
“It is inevitable that tolling I-95 will cause a major diversion of cars and trucks to less suitable roads,” Bennett told the board. In addition, tolls are the most inefficient way to collect revenue, he said.
“In the first six years of VDOT’s plan, 38% of the revenue generated will go towards building and operating the toll collection system and, in subsequent years, about 11% of revenue generated will go towards toll collection maintenance and operating costs,” Bennett said.
“I just don’t understand how conservatives can support such an inefficient, wasteful means of generating revenue for transportation,” Bennett told TT.
He also said that the tolling plan will be submitted to FHWA without first holding public hearings on it.
Under Virginia law, the state Legislature does not have to approve the I-95 tolling plan because several years ago lawmakers gave the governor and VDOT the authority to build toll roads in the state.
However, Bennett said it may be time for Virginia lawmakers to revisit the tolling issue.
“I don’t know that the legislature intended or had in mind that that would involve the collection of tolls on existing infrastructure,” Bennett said.
