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With Virginia already moving to toll Interstate 95, neighboring North Carolina has also launched an effort to obtain federal permission to toll its stretch of the highway.

North Carolina transportation of-ficials said they filed documents with the Federal Highway Administration on Sept. 22 asking to be accepted into a pilot program that would allow three states to toll existing interstates running through them.

“We are going to keep our options open,” said Greer Beaty, director of communications for the North Carolina Department of Transportation.

Consultants hired by the state currently are completing an in-depth, two-year study on the future of the 182 miles of I-95 that run through North Carolina, and tolling is one of the options being explored, Beaty said.

“We are not going to make firm decisions without the support of the people and the data,” she said.

On Sept. 19, (9-26, p. 1).

Virginia transportation officials said it would take about 18 months to prepare the detailed application, which the federal government said must address such issues as the environmental, economic and traffic effects of tolling I-95.

North Carolina trucking industry leaders have been expecting for months that their state would try to gain acceptance into the federal pilot program, said Crystal Collins, who heads the North Carolina Trucking Association.

“We’re going to get organized and prepared for opposing it,” Collins said.

Trade groups around the state have been talking to one another and to trucking leaders and watching the I-95 study unfold, Collins said.

“Now they’re all calling, wanting to get organized now that the application has been submitted,” she said.

Collins reiterated the position of American Trucking Associations against tolling existing interstates. The highways, ATA asserts, have been paid for already and tolling would represent double taxation.

ATA supports higher fuel taxes as the more efficient way to pay for the transportation system.

The federal government does not allow states to toll existing interstate highways, but in 1998 Congress created a pilot program that would allow three states to toll.

States argued for the pilot, saying they need money with which to maintain interstates.

Thirteen years later, however, no interstate has been tolled under the pilot. Indeed, until last month no state had moved beyond the stage where the FHWA accepted them as participants.

Only Missouri, which wanted to toll Interstate 70, and Virginia, which originally wanted to toll Interstate 81, have been accepted into the pilot program.

Acceptance meant the two had the right to move to the next step, which was to submit tolling applications to the FHWA laying out why it should grant permission.

Missouri did not move forward to the application stage. And Virginia, facing strong opposition from trucking and weak interest from private investors, abandoned its plan to charge trucks tolls on I-81.

Then, last year, McDonnell said he would ask the FHWA to allow Virginia to substitute I-95 for I-81, which the FHWA agreed to in September.