Local business and political leaders are preparing to ask the N.C. Turnpike Authority to consider completing the western and southern portions of the Outer Loop by building them as toll roads.

Otherwise, they say, Wake County might not have the western expressway until 2022 or the southern expressway before 2032.

Facing forecasts of steady growth in population and traffic, they want to know whether tolls could help make up for a growing shortfall in state and federal money.

A toll road, while a possible answer, doesn't elicit great enthusiasm from elected officials. Cary Mayor Ernie McAlister calls it a "distasteful alternative," and other Wake leaders express qualms about the idea, which has not been aired publicly. They say it should be considered only if it would speed freeway construction by a decade or more, and only if residents wanted it.

Turnpike Authority officials, who will decide the issue, are more enthusiastic. As they awaited a formal request for a financial feasibility study, they declared that I-540 could be a great success as possibly the first of nine toll freeways and bridges the authority hopes to build across the state. No toll amount has been proposed.

"Great News!" David W. Joyner Jr., the authority's executive director, gushed in the subject line of an e-mail message Tuesday to authority members. He said construction could begin in 18 months on this high-volume, high-profile freeway.

"It offers one of the best chances we could have asked for to make sure our first plate appearance is a 'home run,' " Joyner wrote. "In short, it'll make Thursday's turkey taste just a little bit better."

This year the legislature expanded the Turnpike Authority's duties, empowering it to plan and build up to nine freeways or bridges that would be financed partly with toll booths. One potential project is the proposed 3.5-mile Triangle Parkway through Research Triangle Park.

Also this year, the state Department of Transportation pushed back the start of construction on the next 12.5-mile leg of Interstate 540 -- the Western Wake Expressway, from RTP to Holly Springs -- to 2012.

The Western Wake Expressway is one of the Triangle's top-priority road projects, planned as a major route into RTP for commuters from Cary, Holly Springs, Fuquay-Varina and Johnston and Harnett counties.

No start date has been set for the Southern Wake Expressway, which would extend I-540 an additional 16.5 miles to I-40, and no date has been set for the final eastern link from I-40 north to U.S. 64 east of Raleigh.

"No one is happy that we would even have to consider tolls in order to get this road built on a reasonable time schedule," McAlister said Wednesday. "And making it a toll road does not address the root of the problem: DOT does not put the road money where the cars and the people and the jobs are."

Triangle leaders are still steaming about the DOT's decision in January to trim $300 million in road-building money for Wake, Durham and five other area counties. Citing the legislature's equity formula for distributing transportation money among all 100 counties, the DOT said the Triangle had spent more than its share.

Joe Bryan of Knightdale, chairman of the Wake County commissioners, said Wake should evaluate tolls and other possible revenue sources while it also presses for more state money.

Bryan, McAlister and Holly Springs Mayor Dick Sears cited a handful of concerns that could easily sink the toll-road idea. They said they would want guarantees that all toll receipts would be used for that road only and that tollbooths would go away in the future after enough money had been collected.

Wake would have to resolve its own "equity" problem if drivers paid tolls on the southern arc of the Outer Loop while driving free on the northern section, Bryan said. But if tolls could speed up I-540 construction, he said, they should not be ruled out.

"We at least need to have a discussion and not automatically say 'no,' " Bryan said.

Robert D. Teer of Durham, one of two Triangle representatives on the Turnpike Authority, is ready to say "yes" to building the western and southern expressways as toll roads. Heavy traffic on an I-540 turnpike would generate enough in toll receipts to cover as much as 95 percent of the project cost, he said.

"I think it's a good idea," Teer said. "The research that we've done indicates that it can be built and opened 11 or 12 years earlier -- and maybe even better than that -- than if it waits to be funded in the state Transportation Improvement Program. So we'd probably get it open by 2010."

Joyner said DOT engineers estimated that the I-540 western expressway would not be completed before 2022, and the southern expressway would not be completed before 2032, if they depended on traditional funding.

"Nobody wants to pay a toll," Joyner said. "But if you can deliver something that much sooner to the public, the question is: Do you really want to wait another 10 or 20 years?"

The toll-road idea was floated by leaders of the Regional Transportation Alliance, a Triangle transportation advocacy group of business executives. Joseph A. Freddoso of Raleigh, a Cisco Systems executive who is chairman of the alliance, said Triangle traffic and air quality problems could worsen if I-540 were delayed.

"I think we'd be irresponsible, given that, if we didn't explore options to get it done quicker," Freddoso said.