NCTA continues to look at tolling I-140/US 17 to pay for Cape Fear Skyway

The NCTA is looking at the possibility of tolling part of or all of the US 17/I-140 Wilmington Bypass as a way of generating additional funds for the Cape Fear Skyway.

Currently, the projected revenue from the 9.5 mile toll road would only pay for half the cost of the $1.0 - $1.5 billion project. As a result, that would require a minimum of $49.2 million per year gap funding paid for out of North Carolina's general budget for 40 years.

Tolling the entire bypass (when completed) could possibly reduce the gap funding at an $11 million per year rate. In fact, the NCTA estimates that in a 40 year period tolls on the Wilmington Bypass would generate more revenue than the Skyway. $2.4 billion over 40 years compared to $1.5 billion over 40 years for the Skyway.

Of course, because the Wilmington Bypass has been funded with federal tax dollars, it would need to get approval from not only the state legislature (which has to approve all toll projects) but from the federal government as well.

Story:
Tolls on the table for Skyway Project ---Wilmington Star-News

Commentary:
The NCTA has been hinting at this proposal for quite some time. In fact, nearly 18 months ago the Leland Town Council passed a resolution opposing any tolls on the Wilmington Bypass. The motion was passed unanimously.

As much as the Cape Fear Skyway is needed and as much as I applaud any suggestion to reduce overall costs to taxpayers, this idea isn't going to work. Tolling existing free roads to pay for future toll roads will not sit well with Wilmington residents, tourists, and citizens throughout North Carolina. The state is more likely to gain support for a transportation or road gasoline or even another increase in the sales tax than they would for tolling a previously 'free' highway just to build another toll road. That's not counting they would have to get approval from the FHWA and Congress.

My guess is that the NCTA will try to spin the Wilmington Bypass and Cape Fear Skyway as one total project - and looking at it on a map - yes you could. But the reality is, they aren't.

And hypothetically, if this proposal is allowed to happen - this just gives the NCTA the green light to toll other existing roads just to pay for the construction of another toll road.

Comments

Paper Highways: The Unbuilt New Orleans Bypass (Proposed I-410)

There are many examples around the United States of proposed freeway corridors in urban areas that never saw the light of day for one reason or another. They all fall somewhere in between the little-known and the infamous and from the mundane to the spectacular. One of the more obscure and interesting examples of such a project is the short-lived idea to construct a southern beltway for the New Orleans metropolitan area in the 1960s and 70s. Greater New Orleans and its surrounding area grew rapidly in the years after World War II, as suburban sprawl encroached on the historically rural downriver parishes around the city. In response to the development of the region’s Westbank and the emergence of communities in St. Charles and St. John the Baptist Parishes as viable suburban communities during this period, regional planners began to consider concepts for new infrastructure projects to serve this growing population. The idea for a circular freeway around the southern perimeter of t

Hernando de Soto Bridge (Memphis, TN)

The newest of the bridges that span the lower Mississippi River at Memphis, the Hernando de Soto Bridge was completed in 1973 and carries Interstate 40 between downtown Memphis and West Memphis, AR. The bridge’s signature M-shaped superstructure makes it an instantly recognizable landmark in the city and one of the most visually unique bridges on the Mississippi River. As early as 1953, Memphis city planners recommended the construction of a second highway bridge across the Mississippi River to connect the city with West Memphis, AR. The Memphis & Arkansas Bridge had been completed only four years earlier a couple miles downriver from downtown, however it was expected that long-term growth in the metro area would warrant the construction of an additional bridge, the fourth crossing of the Mississippi River to be built at Memphis, in the not-too-distant future. Unlike the previous three Mississippi River bridges to be built the city, the location chosen for this bridge was about two

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

Gribblenation

Search This Blog