Toll roads gaining stature

Toll roads, maybe.

Trains, maybe not.

One morning 25 years from now, our kids will be grown-up commuters checking freeway traffic counts on the Road Worrier Channel. What options will they see for the trip to work? And how will they pay for it?

The possibilities shifted last week. A gloomy assessment from North Carolina's U.S. senators revealed that prospects were dim for the Triangle Transit Authority's commuter train line, a 28-mile track that was long planned as the backbone of a regional transit network.

At the same time, toll roads suddenly shone like glittering salvation for 29 miles of freeways in western and southern Wake County.

How bad can things get for toll roads to look good?

The state Department of Transportation said it might take until 2022 to extend the Interstate 540 Outer Loop south through western Wake from Research Triangle Park to Holly Springs.

Let us build it as a toll road, the N.C. Turnpike Authority said, and perhaps this western leg could be open for business by 2011. Extend it across southern Wake to the outskirts of Clayton, and toll funding could finish it before 2020.

Just a few weeks ago, a three-mile parkway for RTP workers was the only prospective toll road for the Triangle. Now we face the possibility of tolls on a new southern bypass around Raleigh that could be finished in 12 or 15 years.

For anybody traveling from RTP and points west to Clayton and points east, there would be a new option: Keep crawling along I-40 and the Raleigh Beltline, or pitch a few quarters on the southern-western Outer Loop.

Actually, those would be virtual quarters for most of us.

Whenever North Carolina gets its first toll roads up and running, most drivers probably will use high-tech, high-speed payment options. Instead of braking for a tollbooth, we keep the pedal to the metal and the coins in our pockets.

And did I mention the 2030 forecast for I-40 at RTP? About 200,000 cars a day. Take something to read, and don't forget your smog mask.

The Outer Loop toll option is just a financial study so far, with no commitments from Wake mayors. But no one is betting against it, because no one has come up with the money to build it another way.

And the TTA says it is still determined to win federal approval for its rail project.

At best, tolls and trains could meet only part of our needs. Triangle business and government leaders figure we are about $8 billion short of what's needed in transportation improvements to keep up with our relentless growth over the next 25 years.

Don't start hoping that the latest gas tax hike will make all this moot. A semiannual inflation adjustment will add 2.8 cents to the state gas tax in January, following increases this year of one-half cent in July and 2 cents last January.

Mark L. Foster, DOT's chief finance officer, says the 2005 tax rate increases generated about $120 million more revenue than in 2004 for highway maintenance and construction, and for local street funds. The rate is expected to be reduced again in July 2006, but the state will see another increase for the year of about $125 million, he says.

But construction cost increases are running about 20 percent a year. Even with this year's $120 million boost, Foster says, DOT will finish the year losing a net $96 million to inflation.

That's why toll roads, of all things, are finding new appeal.

"You take a state like Texas," Foster said Monday. "They won't accept any new construction project now without first looking at the tolling opportunity."

It's the same all over, he said.

"If you look out in the future at what is going to be required to meet transportation needs, it far exceeds the revenues that are identified today. We can't rely on the federal government or our traditional sources to bridge the gap," Foster said.

"We're going to have to look at other ways to do it. Or else settle for less."