Skip to main content

Broken Record Time: NC looks at tolling I-95 (again)

It seems like every year for the past decade, a story about NCDOT looking at the possibility of tolling Interstate 95 comes out. The local news outlets pick it up, and you have a reporter in an orange vest asking motorists what they feel about the idea. The story dies until it comes up again the following year.

And now that ground has been broken on the state's first toll road - guess what highway story is in the news again? Tolling I-95.

It's the trial balloon that never lands!

Some background (because we haven't covered this issue here at the blog, yet):

Interstate 95 is the backbone of the East Coast - and most of its traffic through the Tar Heel State is through traffic. The highway is four lanes throughout - and a significant stretch of highway dates to the early 1960s if not earlier.

NCDOT officials admit and have plans to widen the highway to a minimum of six lanes, but like many other states - they don't have the funding. So tolling the route has been considered since at least 2001.

There has been debate on how the road would be tolled. Since most of the traffic on I-95 are out-of-state drivers passing through (or to) North Carolina, some have suggested only having toll booths at the state lines. Obviously, many are concerned that folks not wanting to pay the toll will jump off I-95 onto two lane US 301 to avoid the toll. That would hurt revenue and most likely make US 301 a traffic mess.

Other options include electronic tolling, staggered toll barriers throughout the state, and just about every other toll possibility imaginable. Toll rates have varied from $5 - $15 to travel I-95.

As mentioned earlier, the state does have plans to widen I-95 to six lanes. Projects like the rebuild of the Four Oaks Interchange (Exit 87) were constructed to accommodate a six lane I-95. Within the NCDOT STIP, widening I-95 from Eastover to Kenly has been programmed with some projects possibly beginning in 2013 or 2015. This widening would be piecemeal and similar to widening projects of I-85 and I-40. However, funding concerns has continually pushed any efforts to widen I-95 back...sometimes indefinitely.

So where are we now?

State Secretary of Transportation Gene Conti has stated in a number of different forums that the state will start a study on tolling I-95 next year. The length of the study was not announced. Don't expect seeing tolls on I-95 soon though, that's years away.

Of course there is that whole issue of getting federal approval for tolling the highway, and just ask Pennsylvania how well the proposal to toll I-80 through that state is going.

Comments

Anonymous said…
That's stupid. to toll I-95 when our tax payers already paid them off... that is gonna make other drivers not happy and dump traffic on US 301.. or any nearby highways, thats for sure.
Anonymous said…
It's inevitable that Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina will put tolls on I-95. The road is basically unchanged from the 1950's design, but it carries three or four times more traffic than it was designed for. None of these states can pay for the upgrades, which will probably cost over a billion dollars for the whole 450 miles.
Anonymous said…
Virginia used to have tolls on I-95 from Petersburg to Richmond and tolls were already removed.. if SC and NC decided to put up tolls on the state lines.. i cant imagine how nightmare the traffic will be when drivers decide to dump traffic on local US routes..

Popular posts from this blog

Old River Lock & Control Structure (Lettsworth, LA)

  The Old River Control Structure (ORCS) and its connecting satellite facilities combine to form one of the most impressive flood control complexes in North America. Located along the west bank of the Mississippi River near the confluence with the Red River and Atchafalaya River nearby, this structure system was fundamentally made possible by the Flood Control Act of 1928 that was passed by the United States Congress in the aftermath of the Great Mississippi River Flood of 1927 however a second, less obvious motivation influenced the construction here. The Mississippi River’s channel has gradually elongated and meandered in the area over the centuries, creating new oxbows and sandbars that made navigation of the river challenging and time-consuming through the steamboat era of the 1800s. This treacherous area of the river known as “Turnbull’s Bend” was where the mouth of the Red River was located that the upriver end of the bend and the Atchafalaya River, then effectively an outflow

Memphis & Arkansas Bridge (Memphis, TN)

  Like the expansion of the railroads the previous century, the modernization of the country’s highway infrastructure in the early and mid 20th Century required the construction of new landmark bridges along the lower Mississippi River (and nation-wide for that matter) that would facilitate the expected growth in overall traffic demand in ensuing decades. While this new movement had been anticipated to some extent in the Memphis area with the design of the Harahan Bridge, neither it nor its neighbor the older Frisco Bridge were capable of accommodating the sharp rise in the popularity and demand of the automobile as a mode of cross-river transportation during the Great Depression. As was the case 30 years prior, the solution in the 1940s was to construct a new bridge in the same general location as its predecessors, only this time the bridge would be the first built exclusively for vehicle traffic. This bridge, the Memphis & Arkansas Bridge, was completed in 1949 and was the third

California State Route 203 the proposed Minaret Summit Highway

California State Route 203 is an approximately nine-mile State Highway located near Mammoth Lakes in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of Mono County.  California State Route 203 as presently configured begins at US Route 395, passes through Mammoth Lakes and terminates at the Madera County line at Minaret Summit.  What is now California State Route 203 was added to the State Highway System in 1933 as Legislative Route Number 112.  The original Mammoth Lakes State Highway ended at Lake Mary near the site of Old Mammoth and was renumbered to California State Route 203 in 1964.  The modern alignment of the highway to Minaret Summit was adopted during 1967.   The corridor of Minaret Summit and Mammoth Pass have been subject to numerous proposed Trans-Sierra Highways.  The first corridor was proposed over Mammoth Pass following a Southern Pacific Railroad survey in 1901.  In 1931 a corridor between the Minarets Wilderness and High Sierra Peaks Wilderness was reserved by the Forest Service for po