UDOT mulls feasibility of toll road

TOOELE — State transportation officials said Friday they should know by the end of the year whether it would be feasible to build the planned Mountain View Corridor highway as a toll road.

They also estimated the cost of building the eight-lane, north-south highway — through the west side of Salt Lake County and into Utah County — at between $2 billon and $3 billion, depending on which of several proposed routes and alternatives are chosen.

TeriAnne Newell, Mountain View Corridor project manager for the Utah Department of Transportation, told the Utah Transportation Commission a preferred alignment should be recommended and ready for presentation at public hearings by this time next year. The design team also hopes a federal record of decision, allowing the highway to be built, can be obtained within about two years.

The alignment and design alternatives are being considered as part of the environmental impact statement (EIS) process. That process also includes a look at the feasibility of turning the roadway into a toll road, even though the commission has not officially considered that option for use in the corridor.

"It's a financial issue, but the reason why we're looking at it in the EIS is that it does change some of our impacts. And ultimately, if you wanted to do a toll facility, you need to disclose those impacts," Newell told the commission, which held its monthly meeting in the Tooele City Council chambers.

"The impacts that could be different are traffic impacts. We're going to have a certain number of people that don't want to use a toll facility, so they will be using other roadways, and that's something we need to disclose in the EIS for comparative purposes. It also has a socio-economic impact. You have people who don't necessarily have credit cards and may not be able to use a toll facility for that reason."

Technology, however, is available to make the process of paying tolls fairly seamless.

For purposes of analysis, UDOT is assuming electronic collection would be used if the Mountain View Corridor were a toll road, and "that allows us to have the same right-of-way footprint for a toll or a non-toll facility," Newell said.

A small sticker could be placed on the dash of each car that has paid for highway use. Or a system Newell said has become popular in the Eastern United States could be used — a transponder with a built-in radio antenna that would allow vehicles to continue traveling at highway speeds while the driver was automatically charged.

"The technology is changing rapidly, and even in the next five or 10 years they expect it to change more," Newell said.