The state’s first toll road will cost as little as 15 cents per mile and as much as 24 cents per mile to drive, state Turnpike Authority officials said Thursday. When it’s complete, the Triangle Expressway will run 18.8 miles from Morrisville to Holly Springs, and the Turnpike Authority has designed it so that all tolls will be handled electronically so drivers never have to stop at a booth to fish for change. For drivers with a transponder and paying with a prepaid account, it will cost 15 to 16 cents a mile. For vehicles without a transponder, roadside cameras will snap pictures of their license plates as they pass, and the Turnpike Authority will send them a bill in the mail at a rate of 23 to 24 cents a mile. People who ignore the bill will have a hold placed on their annual vehicle registration.
“The fact of the matter is this is the only way we can pay for these tremendously expensive roads,” said David Joyner, executive director of the Turnpike Authority. The Turnpike Authority expects rates to increase about 5 percent a year through 2015. Money collected from the tolls will pay off about 70 percent of the construction costs on the road. “We owe the bank $1 billion, and we’ve got to repay it,” Joyner said. Tolls will initially be charged on a 3.4-mile stretch called the Triangle Parkway that is expected to open late this year between N.C. Highway 147 in Durham and N.C. Highway 540 in Morrisville. The 12.6-mile Western Wake Freeway should open in 2012 between N.C. Highway 55 in Cary and N.C. 55 in Holly Springs. When that section opens, tolls will also be collected on N.C. 540 between N.C. Highway 54 and N.C. 55, which has been toll-free since it opened in 2008.(Bruce Mildwurf, WRAL NEWS, 3/03/11).
