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A sheriff's deputy passes through the toll booth on the Cross Island Parkway on Hilton Head Island, one of two toll roads operating in South Carolina. (Photo/Paula Illingworth)
By Molly Parker
Staff Writer
Gather up your spare change.
Cash-strapped states across the nation are turning to pay-as-you-go toll roads to fund the upgrade and expansion of aging and overtaxed interstates and highways.
“Tolling is the trend du jour,” said Rick Todd, president of the South Carolina Trucking Association, representing 800 trucking companies across the Southeast.
South Carolina over the years traditionally has constructed freeways — emphasis on the free. Truckers would like to keep it that way, Todd said, but they, perhaps more than anyone, understand the reality facing highway officials and are willing to bend on this point.
The bottom line is that road funds have all but dried up while the pavement crisscrossing this 273-mile wide state continues to wear and tear under the weight of increasing traffic.
Among members of the General Assembly, there has been little appetite for increasing the state’s gas tax, the traditional funding source for road improvements.
The state siphons 16 cents a gallon from the pump, a stagnant figure since 1989. The U.S. average is about 18 cents a gallon.
It doesn’t appear an attitudinal sea change regarding taxes is on the horizon, either. The legislative leaders are not supportive, and this is an election year, during which time strange things are bound to happen, a tax increase not likely to count among them.
“I think with the state of our national economy and what’s going on with oil prices, we need to look at other options besides raising taxes,” said Greg Foster, spokesman for House Speaker Bobby Harrell.
Tolling, it seems, will be one of those options.
Paving the way for toll roads
Currently, only two tollways exist in South Carolina, one on the bridge overstretching Hilton Head Island and another in Greenville. No interstate highways in the state have tolls, and adding them requires the approval of the Federal Highway Administration.
The S.C. Department of Transportation, in a joint application with Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia and, later, Florida, pitched to the feds its Interstate 95 “Corridor of the Future” proposal in October 2006. This multifaceted pilot program would, among other things, open the door to tolling I-95.
In the fall of last year, the highway administration issued a conditional approval of the plan. The S.C. General Assembly also would have to approve the implementation of any new tolls.
Secretary of Transportation Buck Limehouse Jr. is scheduled to meet with representatives from the other four states sometime in February.
Soon after, he may present lawmakers with a proposal for consideration, department officials said, though there are no specific details at this point on where tollbooths would be placed or how much would be charged.
Limehouse could not be reached for this story, but the secretary has said that he would only support tolling on new lanes, not existing lanes.
That leaves the option of implementing high-occupancy toll lanes, also called HOT lanes, in which lone drivers pay a fee to access lanes traditionally set aside for carpoolers. They are common in big cities such as Washington, D.C.
That’s the only way the trucking industry would agree to the deal.
Tolling on existing lanes would amount to highway robbery, said Todd, whose members routinely truck goods up and down South Carolina’s roadways.
“What you will initiate is a crescendo of tolling by other states along the corridor as well,” he said. “I just don’t think that’s good for anybody.”
Tolls hit the pavement
Money collected from the tolls would go to upgrade a 672-mile section of I-95 that runs through the Southeast and includes 660 bridges. The stretch through the Palmetto State includes 162 bridges, many of which are structurally deficient or functionally obsolete, according to the application submitted by the S.C. Department of Transportation.
Already stopped up like a bad cold in certain high-traffic areas, the volume of vehicles on I-95 — the “Main Street of the Eastern Seaboard” — is projected to grow significantly by 2030, the application says. Between 1995 and 2005, the traffic volume in South Carolina ballooned 26%, from about 27,800 cars daily to more than 35,000.
There are currently no plans to toll other interstates, but the application was written in such a way that the fees could be used for road construction within 50 miles of Interstate 95 to facilitate the movement of people and freight connecting to seaports, freight transfer stations, airports and other intermodal facilities.
That would allow the money to go toward upgrade projects on certain sections of I-26 and I-20, the department said, as well as the proposed I-73 that would run from Michigan to Myrtle Beach.
It could also be used to build supporting arterial roads, such as the proposed port access road, slated to cost upward of $300 million, which would serve the S.C. State Ports Authority’s new terminal on the old Charleston Naval Base.
Do they work?
Commuters pay $2 — a buck at the front and back end — for access to the “Southern Connector” on I-185 in Greenville that runs between I-385 and I-85, and $1 to access the Cross Island Parkway on Hilton Head Island that connects the northern and southern ends of the shoe-shaped island.
A few years back, tolling was floated as an option to fund the $644 million Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge that connects Charleston to Mount Pleasant, but that idea was quickly buried deeper than the Cooper River it stretches across.
In both Greenville and Hilton Head, there was some initial resistance among commuters, but business associations rallied behind the toll plans.
Charlie Clark, vice president of communications for the Hilton Head Island-Bluffton Chamber of Commerce, said the toll bridge, which opened in the late 1990s, has helped to alleviate congestion in southern Beaufort County, the fastest-growing region in the state.
“We have not heard complaints from the 2.5 million visitors that come each year, and residents as well have benefited from it,” she said. “One toll is relative for a visitor coming from Chicago, New York or New Jersey.”
Still, both tollways are struggling financially. The state will increase the toll to access the Cross Island Parkway to $1.25 starting March 31. (Locals with a transponder pay half that cost.) That is expected to make ends meet.
But the Southern Connector is digging deeper into debt.
The Connector 2000 Association that owns the Greenville toll operation owes the S.C. DOT more than $5 million in maintenance and license fees as part of its public-private partnership agreement with the state, DOT spokesman Pete Poore said.
Because debt service obligations must be met first, the organization is not in a position to make good on those payments at this time, said Pete Femia, the association’s general manager.
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