������ý

September 26, 2011 4:00 AM, EDT

By Michele Fuetsch, Staff Reporter

This story appears in the Sept. 26 print edition of Transport Topics.

The Federal Highway Administration has given Virginia approval to begin the process of imposing tolls on Interstate 95, the busiest north-south corridor on the East Coast.

Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) made the announcement on Sept. 19, calling the decision “a major step toward funding critical capacity and infrastructure improvements needed in this corridor.” FHWA gave Virginia “conditional provisional approval” on Sept. 14, under an FHWA pilot program.

Trucking and business leaders criticized the plan, which McDonnell said would generate $50 million a year to pay for I-95 improvements. The move to toll I-95 comes a few years after trucking helped shoot down a Virginia plan to toll another federal highway, Interstate 81.

Grayson Mitchell, founder of Grayson Mitchell Inc., a flatbed carrier in Emporia, Va., called the toll plan “just more nails in our coffin.”

It is already difficult in the current economy for truckers to pass along costs, and it is going to be like that “for years to come,” Mitchell said.

The application to toll I-95 re-places a proposal FHWA tentatively approved in 2003 to allow Virginia to toll I-81. The earlier effort collapsed, partly because the trucking industry demonstrated how much it would hurt the economy.

VDOT officials said it would take about 18 months to conduct a preliminary traffic and economic analysis of the plan. Other officials predicted the entire process would take at least three years.

American Trucking Associations President Bill Graves said the group opposes the proposal.

“While it is true that I-95 is one of the ‘most important and heavily traveled highway corridors in the country,’ as Gov. McDonnell says, there are far more expeditious and efficient ways of raising revenue for its upkeep than tolls,” Graves said. “Study after study shows that tolls carry astronomically higher capital and overhead expenditures compared to the fuel tax.”

ATA, which helped lead the fight against tolling I-81, supports raising fuel taxes to increase revenue for highway projects.

Dale Bennett, president of the Virginia Trucking Association, said the group would organize opposition to Virginia’s plan.

State officials said they have yet to determine tolling locations, rates and whether tolls would be in one or both directions. They said they will probably focus on the 130-mile stretch of highway between Fredericksburg and the North Carolina border.

Federal law prevents tolling on existing interstate highways, but in 1998 Congress created a pilot program allowing as many as three states to impose tolls.

To date, only Virginia and Missouri have received permission to do so.

About 9,100 to 13,000 trucks a day travel I-95 between Fredericksburg and Richmond, according to Virginia Department of Transportation data. VDOT said one of the state’s busiest weigh stations is in Dumfries on I-95; it weighs an average of 300,000 trucks per month.

Running from Florida to the Canadian border, I-95 is already tolled in Maryland and Delaware, along the New Jersey Turnpike, Maine, New Hampshire and some parts of New York. There are currently no tolls south of Baltimore.

Rob Estes, president of less-than-truckload fleet Estes Express Lines in Richmond, said tolls are an inefficient way to generate the money needed to maintain roads.

“There is a much higher cost for collecting and enforcing tolls, as compared to a straightforward fuel tax,” Estes said. “In addition, tolls on interstates will force traffic onto smaller roads that aren’t designed to handle the increased numbers of vehicles, causing congestion and creating significant safety hazards.”

Ted Lepski, president of Greensville Transport Co., a tank carrier that hauls out of the ports in the Hampton Roads area, said tolls could put Virginia at a disadvantage.

Importers and exporters “move [such large] quantities . . . they’re looking for every price break that they can get,” Lepski said.

“Sometimes, over a matter of just a few bucks here or there, they’ll make a choice to go to a different state — South Carolina or up into Baltimore or New York,” he said. Lepski said that to avoid Virginia’s tolls, a shipper could leave cargo onboard longer to reach a northern port or take it off earlier at a port south of Virginia.

Jerry Hatchett, president of Hatchett Transportation Inc., Bassett, Va., said if I-95 is tolled, it would hurt more than just truckers.

“Anytime you’ve got extra costs, you’re figuring them into your rate charges,” Hatchett said. “Everybody’s going to pay in the end.”

For the White brothers, Robert and Jim, I-95 tolls would make nearly every mile their fleet runs a tolled trip.

“We haul paper out of a paper mill . . . which is right on the Virginia-North Carolina line, so we’ll run the full length of it,” said Robert White, vice president of Lee M. White Inc., Franklin, Va.

He said tolls would “add another cost, and we’ll have to try to pass it on.”

LaDonna Webber, sales and marketing director for Regional Enterprises, a tank truck carrier in Hopewell, Va., said her firm is a small shorthaul and regional carrier with 20 to 30 trucks on the road.

She said tolling I-95 would have “a big impact . . . we’d be through [the tolls] multiple times a day.”