The General Assembly was asked Tuesday to approve startup money for the proposed 18-mile Triangle Expressway toll project and to let Triangle voters tax themselves to pay for transit projects.

A statewide advisory group also said the legislature should stop diverting $172 million from the Highway Trust Fund each year to spend on nontransportation needs.

Some of that money should be used instead to leverage plans by the N.C. Turnpike Authority for new expressways that would be financed mostly with tolls, the 21st Century Transportation Committee said. The rest of the $172 million could be spent on other roads and bridges or used to underwrite a statewide transportation bond issue of about $1 billion this fall.

The 21st Century panel is a group of state and local officials and business people asked last year to help the General Assembly improve transportation across the state. The group was told not to recommend tax increases for the legislative session that started Tuesday, but its chairman, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina executive Brad Wilson of Raleigh, said new taxes probably would be proposed for next year.

The panel proposed legislation to let metropolitan counties help pay for transit projects with a half-penny local sales tax and with a small increase in car registration fees. Any local tax increases would require approval by voters and county commissioners.

In the Triangle, where a proposed rail-and-bus network would cost $8.2 billion over the next 27 years, a half-cent sales tax would cover an estimated 53 percent of the cost. The Triangle proposal assumes a percent share from the state.

The panel said the state should set up a special fund for congestion relief and public transit to provide about $160 million a year for urban bus and rail projects.

But the group did not call for new taxes to pay for it. Members disagreed about whether the legislature should provide more money for transit this year.

Nina Szlosberg of Raleigh, a member of the state Board of Transportation, voted against the 21st Century proposal because it did not guarantee money for transit projects.

The turnpike authority wants a state pledge of $22 million a year to close an expected gap between toll collections and the $900 million cost of building and operating the Triangle Expressway, an 18-mile road for commuters in western Wake County and Research Triangle Park.

If the legislature approves that money this spring, it would allow construction to start this fall, with completion expected in 2010 or 2011.

The 21st Century panel recommended $75 million in gap funding to leverage the Triangle turnpike and three others across the state. The money would be paid out of the $172 million yearly transfer that was proposed to be restored to the Highway Trust Fund. If legislators also agreed with a committee proposal for a transportation bond issue, they could tap the remaining $97 million a year, committee members said -- enough to cover debt retirement for $800 million in bonds.

Though panel members recommended a bond referendum, they said legislators should not ask voters to approve a bond issue that is too small to be effective.

"Going to the public with a bond of any less than $1 billion, as a first step to address the transportation needs in North Carolina, may not be worth doing," Wilson said.

David Farren, a lawyer for the Southern Environmental Law Center, criticized the bond proposal as a "piecemeal, stopgap" measure: "Basically, this is more money for the old beltway projects before looking at the big-picture, long-term issues of what kind of transportation policy we want to have."