Tolls alone won't be enough to build the Mountain View Corridor connecting Salt Lake and Utah counties, according to a study released Friday by the Utah Department of Transportation.

State residents would need to pay for about one-third of the cost of the proposed freeway, either through a gas-tax increase, sales-tax hike, higher vehicle-registration fees or other funding options, the study said. UDOT and state Transportation Commission officials met Friday in Vernal to discuss the study and other transportation-funding issues.

But some state officials, local mayors and county residents said the need for more public money makes the option of a toll road unappealing.

"How ridiculous is that?" said Clay Christensen, a South Jordan resident. "You let me be the developer on that thing, we'll get the money and I'll build that thing."

Sen. Sheldon Killpack, R-Syracuse, put it this way: "If it's a matter of putting tax dollars into it, at this point in my life, I'm not a fan."

During the 2006 general legislative session, Killpack sponsored a bill that allows the state to enter into a public-private partnership to build toll roads. Under such a deal, the state would be allowed to lease a road to a private company that would build, operate and maintain the road and impose tolls.

The new UDOT study showed that leasing the road would still leave a funding gap of about $502 million that would need to be funded through tax increases or other options.

If the state were to rely solely on imposing tolls to finance the road, there would be a funding gap of about $641 million. The overall cost of building the 40-mile freeway would be about $1.7 billion.

Teri Newell, UDOT project manager over the proposed Mountain View Corridor, said Friday that the agency had thought it could raise more money for construction and operations costs by leasing the road to a private company.

"That's one of the big takeaways from this," Newell said. "I think we all thought that going into the detailed analysis."

As an example, she said, UDOT had considered Chicago's sale earlier this year of the city's Skyway tollway to a Spanish firm for $1.83 billion. But the Chicago deal involved an existing highway that had a history to show that it could make money from toll collection. Because Mountain View would be a new road, without that history, the risk to investors would be greater and they would likely invest less, Newell said.

Now that the toll study has been released, the state Transportation Commission will probably take the next year to review the details and make a decision about whether to impose tolls on Mountain View, said Transportation Commission chairman Glen Brown. Much of the decision will be based on public input and political will in the Legislature.