COLUMBIA - The state Department of Transportation is asking for the entire $1 billion in federal highway funding to build the proposed Interstate 73 to Myrtle Beach.

That doesn't mean the state will get all the money, but being on the priority list will make it easier to get the money, highway officials said.

It's also significant that the interstate is at the top of the list, the DOT Commission Chairman Morgan Martin said.

"It is targeted as a priority need for the state of South Carolina," Martin said.

At the Thursday meeting of the state DOT Commission, the agency staff released the list of requests for the new six-year federal highway bill that is expected to pass in Congress by Oct. 1.

"It's important to let them know our needs," said Bob Probst, the DOT deputy director.

U.S. Rep. Henry Brown, R-S.C., said I-73 has a chance for full funding.

By getting $3 million for I-73 studies in the budget that passed last week, "we've already served notice of our top priority," he said.

The state's congressional delegation is committed to working for the project in the House and Senate, Brown said.

"We're going to go for the billion. We're going to be plugging for the max," he said.

Brown is on the committee that will write the highway bill, and he has invited the chairman of the committee to come to Myrtle Beach to see the need for himself. That visit could come soon, he said.

Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce President Ashby Ward has served on the I-73 planning committees and promoted the road since it was designated, but not funded, in 1991.

"I think it's wonderful; it's wonderful that they would even consider going ahead with the whole project," he said.

State Rep. Alan Clemmons, R-Myrtle Beach, said "it sends a very strong message" that I-73 is at the top of the list and the state is asking for the money to build it.

Also on the list is making the remaining two-lane portion of U.S. 378 between Conway and Lake City into four lanes, which would improve another major tourism artery.

"That's superb," Ward said. He said the work was promised in the early 1970s, and "we're still waiting."

Probst said he knows many residents want S.C. 9, in the northern part of Horry County, to be four lanes to I-95, but that it is being considered as a possible route for I-73, so it is not on the list of requests.

The list also includes the proposed connector between the south end of the Carolina Bays Parkway and U.S. 701, money to finish the parkway and making U.S. 521 four lanes between Andrews and I-95.