By: Kathie Durbin
Columbian
March 7, 2008
Original article
OLYMPIA – Both the House and the Senate have passed a bill that sets broad rules for imposing tolls on major state highway and bridge projects, including the Columbia River Crossing in Vancouver.
The broad policy bill gives the Legislature exclusive authority to approve tolls on state projects and specifies how toll revenue may be used. Tolling an individual project would require its own bill.
Local authorities would be prohibited from imposing tolls on state projects without permission from the Legislature.
The Washington Department of Transportation hopes to have a funding plan for the new Interstate 5 bridge over the Columbia River ready for the 2009 Legislature to consider. Cost estimates for the project range as high as $4.2 billion, and there’s wide agreement that tolls will provide a major piece of the funding – perhaps as much as half – as gas tax revenue continues to decline.
How much depends in part on the level of federal funding that will be available to replace a key piece of the interstate highway system. Interstate 5 is designated as a national defense corridor.
The target date for completion of the new bridge is 2016.
House Bill 1773, which passed the Senate Wednesday and the House in February, leaves open the option that the state could “pre-toll” projects in advance of construction. The measure specifically allows continuing tolls to pay for ongoing maintenance long after construction is completed.
The bill allows for “variable tolls,” which would change constantly throughout the day to reflect traffic conditions, as well as scheduled toll rates that would be higher during peak traffic periods but would not change from day to day.
As an example of the latter, state transportation officials are considering a toll for the new Columbia River bridge that would vary from $1 during non-peak periods to $1.50 during “shoulder” hours to a high of $2 during rush hour.
A pilot project allowing motorists to pay a toll to use a designated “hot lane,” an example of a variable toll, will be tried on busy state Highway 167 between Renton and Puyallup beginning this spring.
Under the measure, the State Transportation Commission would be the state tolling authority and would have the power to set toll rates and exemptions, review toll collections and operations, and set variable tolls to encourage the most efficient flow of traffic.
Revenue from the tolls would be available not only to fund design and construction costs but to pay for light rail, bus rapid transit, or any other system that is designed to “provide for the operations of conveyances of people or goods.”
House and Senate Republicans, including Sen. Don Benton of Vancouver, tried unsuccessfully to amend the bill to prohibit the use of toll revenue for mass transit. Other amendments to ban variable tolls and early imposition of tolls also failed.
Doug Ficco, the Vancouver-based Department of Transportation official who is in charge of the Columbia River Crossing, said a clear state policy is needed as the region moves toward tolling as a way to pay for transportation infrastructure.
“We need to be consistent with what we’re doing in this state,” he said. “All tolling facilities have to have the same basic groundwork. We all need to be using the same transponders. Whether we are going through Vancouver, Olympia or Seattle, everything has to be coordinated.”
Ficco said the department had not considered pre-tolling the Columbia River Crossing but added, “It’s a possibility. It’s on the table.”
Because the bridge is part of a federal highway, state policy alone won’t determine how tolling is applied, Ficco said. “We have to make sure we are doing what our federal law says as well as what our state law says.”
The first “megaproject” to be covered by the tolling bill will be the replacement of Seattle’s aging Highway 520 bridge over Lake Washington, also known as the Evergreen Point Floating Bridge. The 44-year-old bridge is at risk of sinking in an earthquake or major windstorm, and the state regards its replacement as an urgent safety issue.
State transportation officials are wrestling with whether imposing high tolls on the existing bridge would simply divert traffic to the Interstate 90 crossing of Lake Washington, and whether they might have to toll I-90 as well to reduce traffic pressure.
Ficco said the state will learn important lessons from the 520 bridge project that will help inform its decision about tolling on the Columbia River Crossing. Specifically, will tolls on I-5 shift traffic to Interstate 205?
“We’re analyzing tolling both,” he said. “Right now, the plan is to toll I-5 only.”
Kathie Durbin can be reached in The Columbian’s Olympia bureau at kathie.durbin@columbian.com or 360-586-2437.
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