BUTLER CO OHIO: First county toll road a go

Aug 17 the 18-person board of the Butler Co Transp Improvement District (BCTID) voted unanimously to proceed with tolling on the Butler Regional Highway in southwest Ohio. It approved spending up to $300k on Wilbur Smith proposals for toll design. This will be the first toll project in southern Ohio, indeed the first outside the Ohio Turnpike — which goes across the far north of the state and carries a high proportion of out-of-state traffic.

The Butler pike will be the first purely intrastate toll road in the state and the first in the Cincinnati metro area. 17km (11mi) long and costing $93m to build it will have 4 interchanges and constitutes a motorway spur running due west off I-75 to the industrial city of Hamilton which has long lamented the fact that it is the largest town in the country without an Interstate standard highway on its doorstep. On either side of the pike’s right of way residential and commercial developments are under way in this the northern fringe of the Cincinnati metro area. The road goes through the middle of a county with 300k pop, growing rapidly. Extensions east and west are possible in the future.

It is being financed under a convoluted arrangement whereby the state has contracted to lease the highway back from the BCTID for a contractually fixed annual sum, while the BCTID uses the prospective state lease payments as security for selling bonds. The BCTID however has the right to toll the road and will use the proceeds to fund ongoing improvements to distributors and to fund new surface arterials in the county.

5.3% loans

Smith Barney raised $158m for BCTID the toll road and other works early this year at an interest rate of 5.3%. The project was also a recipient of $10m from the OH state infrastructure bank. Construction of the road began mid-May and completion is due end-99 or early 2000. Staff at BCTID visited 407-ETR in Toronto and have expressed enthusiasm at the possibility of operating a modern low-staff toll road and are receptive to variable toll rates, but they will make no decisions on their toll system until they receive recommendations from Wilbur Smith. They expect to make requests for proposals for toll systems this fall.

Says an official: “Critical initial decisions like the placement of the toll facilities and the level of the toll are to be determined in the coming weeks. We are still considering value pricing. We are not considering an 100% electronic toll road. It will be electronic with coin/cash option at some locations. Other methods to enforce electronic tolling are under investigation.”

Darrell Barger who formed BCTID and got the pike project under way has left his CEO position and handed over to the new Exec Dir Gregory J Wilkens. (See TRnl#25 Mar 98 Contact Gregory Wilkens or Karen Lane DeRosa, BCTID 513 942 4700 www.bctid.org)