LITTLE ROCK — The Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department has the go-ahead to hire a consultant to study the feasibility of making Interstate 40 from North Little Rock to Memphis a toll road.
The department wants to have the study in place in case a spot opens up under an existing federal pilot program that lets a limited number of states make improvements to interstates and recover the costs through tolls, or if pending federal highway legislation expands the program, said Scott Bennett, the department director.
The Arkansas Highway Commission approved the study at its meeting Tuesday in El Dorado.
“We have a lack of funding,” commission member Tom Schueck of Little Rock said regarding road-work money. “We’re looking at all avenues of funding.”
The approval came the same day the commission issued a statement expressing its disappointment at the General Assembly’s failure to repeal a sales-tax exemption for large trucks and trailers in the recently completed fiscal session. That resulted in a loss of $4 million annually that would have been used for improvements to state highways, county roads and city streets.
The department now is reviewing its proposed statewide transportation improvement plan for the years 2013-2016 to see where cuts in projects will be made.
“We must now determine where to cut $12 million from those proposed projects,” said Madison Murphy of El Dorado, the commission chairman.
The sales-tax exemption is to take effect July 1. It was approved by the Legislature in 2011 in exchange for the trucking industry seeking voter approval for a 5-cent increase in the tax on every gallon of diesel fuel. But the industry withdrew its campaign for the tax after public opinion surveys showed scant support. Efforts to repeal the exemption failed.
The section between North Little Rock and Memphis is a heavily traveled trucking corridor. The trucking industry believes that the commission, in pursuing the tolling of I-40, is lashing out at the industry.
Lane Kidd, president of the Arkansas Trucking Association, called the commission action “nothing more than a retaliatory slam at the trucking industry.”
The industry bitterly opposes tolls on existing interstates. In the late 1990s, when the same commission proposed placing tolls on several bridges on Arkansas interstates to finance improvements, the national trucking association called Arkansas “ground zero” in its fight against tolling existing interstates. The commission eventually dropped the idea in favor of a $575 million bond issue and an increase in the diesel tax that eventually helped finance $1 billion worth of improvements to Arkansas interstates.
“I can assure the Highway Department that the 60,000 employees of the trucking industry in Arkansas will oppose any attempt to toll interstates just like the industry did in 1999,” Kidd said.
The federal Interstate Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Pilot Program allows interstates in up to three states “to be tolled to fund needed reconstruction or rehabilitation on Interstate highway corridors that could not otherwise be adequately maintained or functionally improved without the collection of tolls,” according to the Federal Highway Administration.
The federal agency’s website listed two projects receiving approval or conditional approval under the program, which dates from 1998: Interstate 95 in Virginia, which was approved in September 2011, and Interstate 70 in Missouri, which was approved in July 2005.
South Carolina received approval in 2007 under a separate federal program, according to the highway administration: the Interstate System Construction Toll Pilot Program, which allows up to three interstates to be tolled to pay for the construction of new interstates.
Bennett, the Arkansas Highway Department director, said he expects that a consultant will be selected within two months. The feasibility study, which would assess whether tolls could pay for the improvements, could take up to a year, he said.
Bennett said that if the improvement involved adding a lane in either direction, it would be impractical to tolljust the additional lane.
“Everybody that’s driving benefits from the new capacity,” Bennett said.
If the study shows the department can recover costs of improvements to the route through tolls, the next step would be to submit a notice of intent to apply to participate in the pilot program, assuming a spot is available, he said. That might require more detailed studies, including an environmental assessment, preliminary design and investmentgrade study of the tolls and the revenue they would produce.
Kidd said that for a department that prides itself on efficiency, tolling is an inefficient way to collect revenue. Administrative costs can approach 30 percent of revenue comparedwith the 3 percent administrative costs associated with collecting fuel taxes, he said.
The tolling idea comes as the commission has cast about for other revenue to prop up flat fuel-tax collections as a result of increased fuel efficiency in cars and trucks.
Last fall, voters approved renewal of the existing $575 million bond program to pay for repairs on nearly 300 miles of interstates. In November, voters will be asked to approvea temporary half-percent sales tax that would be in place for 10 years and finance a $1.3 billion bond program targeting construction of four-lane highways or adding capacity to existing four-lane highways.
Neither one of those proposals, state highway officials noted, add capacity to I-40.
“You’ve driven it,” Bennett said. “You know what it’s like. I-40 between here and Memphis is not one of the most comfortable drives.”
Front Section, Pages 1 on 03/22/2012