Opposition puts brakes on 35E toll lanes

As cash-strapped Minnesota turns to toll lanes to ease traffic congestion, a key project in that strategy is stalled.

A plan to add pay lanes to Interstate 35E in the northeast metro and spend that revenue on transportation elsewhere in the Twin Cities ran afoul of a veteran legislator at the end of the session.

"I don't support toll roads in general," said Sen. Ray Vandeveer, R-Forest Lake, a few miles north of I-35E. "Diverting the tolls to uses other than the road -- maintaining and expanding it -- is even more offensive."

The 35E plan was part of a larger transportation bill that gained bipartisan strength before fading in the face of opposition.

The pay lanes on 35E are envisioned as the first element of an expanded Twin Cities MnPASS system, where single drivers can pay tolls to use lanes otherwise dedicated to carpools and buses. The Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) is considering adding MnPASS lanes to eight other expressways in the Twin Cities.

The agency wants to move first on 35E because it hopes to take advantage of upcoming reconstruction of the road to build new lanes for MnPASS rather than convert existing ones. The project is expected to begin next year with bridge construction and be finished in 2015.

"You hate to pass up that opportunity," said Michael Sobolewski, a program administrator for MnDOT.

But the 35E proposal illustrates how much controversy over tolling persists even after the establishment of MnPASS lanes years ago on I-394 and more recently on I-35W.

"The politics of this are difficult," said Sen. Scott Dibble, DFL-Minneapolis, who supports expanding MnPASS and is the lead Democrat on the Transportation Committee.

The opposition to the 35E provision in the transportation bill "really speaks to the importance of engaging in a larger public discussion of the benefits and costs," Dibble said.

Like MnDOT, Dibble sees MnPASS as more economical than building general-purpose lanes to manage increasing traffic.

Vandeveer views it differently. Elected to the Senate in 2006 after serving in the House since 1999, he tried to amend the transportation bill to prohibit MnDOT from establishing any new toll lanes. The amendment failed last week 38-28, but the vote underscored the complicated politics of tollways because 11 DFLers joined Republicans supporting the prohibition.

While acknowledging that the MnPASS lanes on 35E would go "right down my district," Marty said he objected to the plan for a philosophical reason.

"Most of the people won't be using the toll part of the road, they'll be crammed together while a few people with a little more money can zoom by," he said.

Pros and cons

Vandeveer says his general objection to toll roads or lanes stems from his belief that they add another tax on drivers.

"People are paying substantial road use tax, the gas tax," he said. Motorists also pay registration fees and sales taxes on the vehicles they buy.

Vandeveer's specific objection to the 35E plan is that the transportation bill would have dropped existing requirements that MnPASS revenue be spent on the highway corridor that produced it. "The money that comes out of 35E tolls can be spent metrowide for additional tolling and maintenance of toll facilities," Vandeveer said.

Revenue would be spent first on operating the Twin Cities MnPASS system, with any remaining money going toward metro transportation improvements that include expansion of bus rapid transit.

The MnPASS expansion wasn't the only controversy over the transportation bill before it foundered in the waning hours of the legislative session. An amendment late in the session would have repealed an earlier Legislature's approval to spend $5 million to study a mileage tax, an idea to tax vehicles by the miles traveled rather than the gas burned.

MnDOT says such a tax could provide a way to shore up transportation funding as vehicles become more fuel efficient and gasoline-tax revenues shrink, but GOP critics feared it would enable the government to track vehicles.