I-75 toll lanes 8 years down the road

Typical project scheduling would make it impossible for the Southwest Florida Expressway Authority to add four toll lanes to Interstate 75 at the same time the state widens the highway to six lanes, meaning the interstate would be under construction from 2007 through at least 2015.

Members of the fledgling Expressway Authority board also heard Turnpike Enterprise, the state’s toll road agency, predict tolls would pay only around 40 percent of the cost of expanding the interstate to 10 lanes. The state agency pegged the probable project cost, adjusted for inflation, at almost $1.8 billion.

Board members, however, were undeterred.

“We heard what’s unlikely,” said Collier County commissioner and board member Jim Coletta. “Just about every avenue we have to have happen for a reasonable time frame is out the window.”

The rules that make the process work are manmade, Coletta said, and they can be changed.

“I think we need an approach with a positive outlook rather than a negative one on what we can’t do,” he said.

The appointed board is heavy with corporate CEOs not used to taking no for an answer.

“Staff’s identified the obstructions,” said chairman Bill Barton, retired CEO of the Wilson-Miller engineering firm. “Now we need to step back, think outside the box on how the obstructions are overcome and how we get it accomplished.”

Barton said even outrageous options such as delaying the state project to mesh with the authority’s should be considered.

“I recognize there are a number of reasons to not want to delay, but I don’t think we want to take it off the table yet,” he said. “If we don’t think outside the box on this project, it’s not going to happen.”

Board members said they see the 10-lane widening happening through a public-private partnership, dropping broad hints that a firm interested in the state job could offer an unsolicited proposal to tackle the toll lanes as well.

“We’ve talked about it a great deal,” said Mike Rippe, the Florida Department of Transportation’s director of planning for Southwest Florida and a nonvoting board member. “In my mind, the most viable option is to receive an unsolicited proposal.”

Barton said the two groups that have expressed interest in the state job, estimated at $469 million to widen 35 miles of the road to six lanes, should be aware the authority wants their proposals.

The long-awaited feasibility study from Turnpike Enterprise, delayed in part as county governments updated their own long-range road plans, said traffic on the interstate would increase by 2030 from around 70,000 cars per day to more than 170,000 north of Immokalee Road. More than 30,000 of those cars would pay 20 cents a mile to take the express lanes instead.

Randy Fox, planning manager for the agency, said the project was split into phases for the assessment. The first would be from Immokalee Road to Alico Road, costing around $500 million. Projected toll revenues could be bonded to generate around $200 million, leaving a $300 million shortfall.

The assessment put the stretches to Pine Ridge Road in the south and to State Road 82 in the north in 2030. That portion would drive the project cost to almost $1.8 billion, with a toll-funding shortfall of more than $900 million.

Fox said the agency recently has tackled three projects in which it bore as much as 60 percent of the cost, and the project would require a partnership between the authority and the agency and, perhaps, a private entity.

“It’s clearly a partnership project,” he said. “I don’t think the tolls in any way will pay the entire cost of the project.”

The board expects to approach Lee and Collier county commissioners soon to request startup funding. Hiring an executive director and paying to run the authority for a year will cost around $2 million, according to estimates.

Members said they’ll make the request and will apply for state loans, but will hesitate to spend the money until they’re assured the project can go forward.

“This is to apply,” said Bob Taylor, chairman of the board for the Mariner Group and Robb & Stucky, and a board member. “I’m not used to blowing through half a million dollars before we know if we have a viable project.”