When Tim White and I were working on the I-95 tolls story yesterday, one of the questions we didn’t have time to answer before the broadcast was whether state lawmakers from Southern Rhode Island had been consulted by the leaders of their respective chambers before Speaker Fox and Senate President Paiva Weed signed a letter supporting the proposal.

Now we have our answer. Rep. Brian Kennedy, a Hopkinton Democrat, sent a blistering two-page letter to R.I. Transportation Director Michael Lewis on Thursday that said it was “shocking” and “quite disappointing” that he learned about the proposed tolls in his hometown from our WPRI 12 report rather than RIDOT.

Kennedy also took issue with RIDOT’s decision to only propose tolls near the Connecticut border, which the department argued is “the most feasible action to prevent toll avoidance and to gain public acceptance.” The lawmaker said drivers should be tolled near the Massachusetts border, too, if they’re going to be at all.

“The Department of Transportation has not been known for moving quickly on road projects in our state,” Kennedy added, “thus I am amazed by the lightning speed and stealth approach that you’ve demonstrated in your impulsive action of singling out the Town of Hopkinton to be the host location for toll booths to raise revenues for road repairs.”

The proposed tolls could raise roughly $40 million a year if the Pell bridge rates are used and the volume of traffic stays the same, Lewis said Thursday on “The WPRO Morning News with Tara Granahan & Andrew Gobeil.” That would be enough to let the state stop borrowing its matching funds for federal highway money.

One of the more interesting ideas in Governor Chafee’s first budget was RIDOT’s proposal to add tolls to I-95 – though it wasn’t necessarily a surprise, considering Rhode Island’s long-running struggle to find enough money to pay for transportation costs.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood was less than enthusiastic about the idea when we interviewed him last spring. But RIDOT’s Mike Lewis wasn’t dissuaded, saying Rhode Island might be able to get one of a small number of exemptions from the rules that don’t allow states to toll existing federally funded roads.

Now tolls on I-95 are one step closer to becoming a reality in Rhode Island, Tim White and I report in a new WPRI.com story:

The Chafee administration has asked for permission to start charging drivers a toll on Interstate 95 near the Connecticut border, the Target 12 Investigators have learned.

The R.I. Department of Transportation filed an application in June asking the federal government to approve the installation of tollbooths between Exits 1 and 2 on both sides of I-95 in Hopkinton. No tolls are proposed at the Massachusetts border.

“The proposed location is considered the most feasible location to prevent toll avoidance and to gain public acceptance,” RIDOT said in the application, which Target 12 obtained this week. The documents don’t say how much the toll would be.

RIDOT said money is needed to pay for two large projects – replacing the decaying Providence Viaduct bridge that carries I-95 next to Providence Place mall and rebuilding the I-95/Route 4 interchange near Quonset Business Park – as well as ongoing maintenance projects along the 67 miles of I-95 and I-295 in Rhode Island.

Gov. Lincoln Chafee, House Speaker Gordon Fox and Senate President M. Teresa Paiva Weed all signed a letter on June 15 supporting the proposal to put on toll plazas the state’s main roadway.

Click here for the full article, which has much more, including Governor Chafee’s take and details on the state’s case for allowing tolls. The map at right is part of in the application.

Also, props to national outlets Stateline and The Huffington Post for their informative coverage of the proposal.

(map: R.I. Department of Transportation)

Nesi’s Nightcap will return on Thursday.

When Tim White interviewed U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood last month, President Obama’s transit chief appeared to pour cold water on the Chafee administration’s proposal to put new tolls on I-95 to fund repairs.

“If a state or a governor or DOT wants to add capacity or two lanes on each side, we think that’s a good use of tolls and we have supported that kind of approach,” LaHood told Tim.

But Chafee’s transportation director, Mike Lewis, still sounded optimistic about the potential for tolls on “Newsmakers” last week, because he said adding capacity doesn’t necessarily require adding lanes – you could also change the engineering of on- and off-ramps, for example, on the I-95 bridge next to Providence Place.

Today Stateline’s Daniel Vock followed up on our stories with a closer look at the issue. After declaring that I-95 “is falling apart” in Rhode Island, Vock describes a way the state could get around the general ban on tolling roads paid for with federal tax dollars:

In 1998, Congress created a pilot program under which up to three states can start collecting tolls on existing interstates to fund improvements on those roads. So far, though, no states have used it.

Virginia and Missouri both have federal permission to move ahead with the idea, but neither has the tolls up and running. …

Pennsylvania also applied for the exception, in order to put tolls on Interstate 80 across the northern stretch of the state. The federal government rejected that plan, largely because it would have diverted some of the toll revenue from the highway to support public transit in Philadelphia. …

Rhode Island hopes to qualify for the spot left open when Pennsylvania’s application failed. Lewis, the transportation director, says Rhode Island officials learned from Pennsylvania’s experience. Under the plan they are now developing, tolls collected on I-95 would go only toward improvements to the interstate itself.

Even if everything went the way Lewis wants, Vick reports, the toll booths wouldn’t open for at least another two years. Interesting nonetheless. And thank you to the Nesi’s Notes reader who sent the article along.

(photo: RITBA)