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County Examines Toll Road Option

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By RICH SHOPES, The Tampa Tribune

Published: August 17, 2007

TAMPA - After the laughter died down, Hillsborough County Commissioner Ken Hagan said he was serious about putting a toll booth on Bruce B. Downs Boulevard because Pasco County won't offer $28 million to widen the highway.

Now the county's legal staff is looking into the matter.

Hillsborough commissioners chuckled at first when they heard the idea Wednesday but then authorized county attorneys to find out whether any laws stand in the way of charging tolls on Bruce B. Downs, part of which is a county road and part a state road.

It sets up an intriguing question.

Toll booths usually show up on bridges, causeways and limited-access highways such as the Veterans Expressway, and most are operated by toll authorities or Florida's Turnpike Enterprise.

'Nobody has asked the Turnpike about this,' Enterprise spokeswoman Joanne Hurley said.

The idea is so unusual she wasn't sure toll booths are possible, even if the legal questions get answered. The Florida Department of Transportation also was stumped.

Bruce B. Downs connects to dozens of subdivisions and other roads up and down its nine-mile length in Hillsborough. Booths might need to be added elsewhere on the road, not just at the county line, to catch drivers looking for a free ride.

'From our standpoint, tolls are used on limited-access high-speed facilities similar to the Suncoast Parkway,' said Hurley. 'It doesn't sound like that is the case here.'

Except at the Pasco County line, Hagan said, he's not sure where the booths would go, how much they would charge and who would operate them. First, he wants to find out whether it's legal to put up the booths.

County statutes allow for Hillsborough to operate toll facilities, and the county has a representative, Commissioner Kevin White, on the Tampa-Hillsborough County Expressway Authority. But it's not clear whether any road can be made into a toll road.

The Treasure Island Causeway in Pinellas was a local toll road from 1939 to 2006, when the city lost its authority to collect tolls by accepting federal money for renovation costs. The rest of the region's toll roads are operated by the state or a toll authority.

'Using a toll to try to recoup impacts from across jurisdictional lines is really outside the model of what tolls are used for to build and maintain specific, limited-access facilities,' said Stephen Reich, interim executive director at the Tampa-Hillsborough County Expressway Authority, which operates the Lee Roy Selmon Expressway.

Hagan said he spoke out of frustration because Pasco refuses to connect to Kinnan Street from Hillsborough and now it won't contribute to Bruce B. Downs' widening in New Tampa. The road is supposed to be expanded to eight lanes by 2011 at a cost of tens of millions of dollars.

He says the road's problems will worsen after Pasco County's approval of the Wiregrass Ranch development, which is expected to add 35,000 residents by 2016.

Traffic counts indicate 60,000 vehicles travel Bruce B. Downs each day. Hagan says studies show that half of those drivers come from Pasco, and that percentage will grow to 60 percent.

'I really want to find out if we can do it. Is it legal and what the process is for doing it if we wanted to do it,' he said.

He's not sure when the county attorney's office will give its opinion.

'There's no deadline. I would think it will be a couple months,' he said.

Reporter Rich Shopes can be reached at (813) 259-7633 or rshopes@tampatrib.com.

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