The McDonnell administration’s plan to place tolls on Interstate 95 at the North Carolina border would divert truck traffic onto local roads and pass increased shipping costs on to businesses, the head of the state’s trucking association said Wednesday.
P. Dale Bennett, president and chief executive officer of the Virginia Trucking Association, said truck drivers are already mapping out how to skirt the proposal tolls, which still need federal approval. One idea: briefly leaving the interstate to cross the border on Route 301.
“People have already started thinking how they’re going to get around it,” Bennett said.
The McDonnell administration said this week that placing a toll of $1 or $2 per axle in both directions of I-95 could raise as much as $60 million a year to maintain the busy north-south artery. An 18-wheeler would have to pay as much as $10 to cross the border each way.
Bennett said his group is meeting with Virginia Transportation Secretary Sean Connaughton in the next two weeks to convey its concerns. He also plans to lobby the federal government to oppose the new tolls.
Revenues from tolls initially would go to road maintenance outside the D.C. suburbs, according to the McDonnell administration’s pitch to federal officials.
In a letter last month to the Federal Highway Administration asking for permission to install tolls at the North Carolina border, Connaughton said the commonwealth would first use the proceeds on projects between that border and Spotsylvania County.
That stretch of the I-95 corridor contains 514 lane miles in need of $156 million worth of maintenance, Connaughton wrote. Of those, 238 miles are “in need of structural improvement.”
The funding would exclude Northern Virginia at first because the state already has federal approval for tolls on I-95/395 through the high-occupancy toll lanes project, according to the transportation secretary. That northern stretch of the interstate was left out to prevent overlap that may have complicated the application for border tolls, Connaughton told The Examiner. Eventually, “it’s our intention to potentially use the money for the entire corridor,” he said. McDonnell predicted the approval process will take months. Part of that lag stems from the requirement to complete a lengthy environmental study.
“It is agonizing how slow our government works,” the governor said.
