Tolling Signpost

Does I-73 bill point way to financing other roads?

In signing a bill Monday that allows tolls on Interstate 73, Gov. Mark Sanford also erected a signpost of sorts for financing other badly needed S.C. road projects. The bill, of course, speaks only to I-73. It guarantees that the state, via tolls, will pay a share of the $2 billion cost of the 90-mile road between Myrtle Beach and the N.C. line in Marlboro County.

This project is far larger and much more expensive than the state's other two toll roads (both short), yet legislators and Sanford needed less than a month to complete the tolling legislation. That suggests the time may be ripe for financing other must-have projects - such as upgrading U.S. 521 as Georgetown County's high-speed link to Interstate 95 - with tolls. The S.C. populist taboo against roads that aren't "free" might be shattered at last.

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