COLUMBUS - Since the first car rolled through the gate 54 years ago, the Ohio Turnpike has had a monopoly on toll roads in this state.

That may be about to change.

Gov. Ted Strickland has asked lawmakers to give the Ohio Department of Transportation authority to impose tolls on roads under its authority.

And new regional authorities created around the goal of getting single projects built may be allowed to do the same.

The efforts are a continuation of a trend in states including Florida, Texas, and Virginia as well as in a number of European countries to move away from traditional turnpikes toward stand-alone toll roads and bridges.

"I don't believe that existing roads should become toll roads, but I do think we should at least consider, when additional infrastructure is built, whether or not there is a place for tolls," Mr. Strickland said.

The governor included the toll proposals in his $54.7 billion, two-year budget now under consideration in the Ohio House.

"For instance, an interstate where there is heavy truck traffic," he said.

"Were we to be build lanes that would be for truck driving only so that trucks could move more safely, more expeditiously, and perhaps at an even higher speed than is now possible on the regular interstate, it seems to me we could look at whether or not that new building could be supported through a tolling mechanism."

But he insisted he has no specific project in mind.

Mr. Strickland's budget proposes the creation of so-called transportation innovation authorities, regional bodies consisting of cities, counties, and townships all focused on completion of a single new project.

The projects would be subject to approval of the transportation department, which would play a role in their operation.

A proposed project would have to go through the Transportation Review Advisory Council, the panel that sets the state's major new road and bridge construction priorities.

Tolls on the project, along with special assessment fees or a share of property taxes collected in a specific area, would be among options to help raise money. The tolls, however, would be administered through, and collected by, the transportation department.

"There are 26 states that use tolling as a tool," Jolene Molitoris, department director, said. "There are seven others in development. We just see it as a tool in the toolbox."

The tool is often used to reduce urban congestion in areas where commuters may be willing to pay more to avoid traffic jams, said Robert Poole, director of transportation studies for the Reason Foundation, a nonprofit economic think tank in Los Angeles.

"Building new urban freeways is the most expensive you can build, especially when the gas tax provides only enough to maintain what's there," he said.

"My personal view from working in transportation policy for over 20 years is that toll roads in general have a lot of advantages."

"There's much more of a direct nexus with who pays and who benefits," he said.

"The other advantage is you don't have to wait 10 or 20 years to pull together enough money to do a big project."

Mr. Strickland has proposed infusing the State Infrastructure Bank, a revolving loan fund, with an extra $170 million that could be lent to transportation innovation authorities as seed money for projects.

The money would be repaid with tolls or some other financing structure the authority sets up.

The move toward tolls contrasts sharply with the debate that occurred three years ago.

Republican Ken Blackwell, who was running for governor, called for leasing the 241-mile Ohio Turnpike to a private company for 99 years to raise an estimated $4 billion to $6 billion, much as Indiana did with its toll road. The proposal died with Mr. Blackwell's campaign.

Some lawmakers have long sought to convert the Ohio Turnpike into a free highway.

State Rep. Matthew Dolan (R., Novelty), a member of the House Finance Committee, questioned last week whether the transportation innovation authorities are really aimed at shifting onto local taxpayers' backs the cost of what otherwise might have been an ODOT project using state and federal funds.

Ms. Molitoris said she hoped the authorities might bring her department projects that might not otherwise have been considered. "It is not in any way of ODOT getting greedy and trying to get into someone else's pocket," she said.

Warren Henry, vice president for transportation for the Toledo Metropolitan Area Council of Governments, said the possibility of tolls was discussed early on for the Veterans' Glass City Skyway carrying I-280 over the Maumee River.

That was ruled out on the grounds that drivers had too many options for avoiding the bridge and tolls.

He could not think of a local project priority that might be good fit for tolls.

"The projects down in Texas and Florida are large corridors that were developed to relieve major congestion in metropolitan areas," he said.

"We have planned ahead and made improvements to meet that need. Some areas like Atlanta and Dallas that are rapidly growing can't keep up with the increase in population."

He noted the idea would be more practical for projects in central Ohio and the Cleveland area, where major proposals have been offered for reducing traffic congestion.

"It's a matter of what public expectations are and what legislator response would be in terms of policy," Mr. Henry said.

"It's a matter of whether there's great enough demand and the public is willing to pay for it.''

The Miami-Dade Expressway Authority in Florida was created in 1994 to administer five congestion-relieving highways.

Four are toll roads and the fifth eventually will become one.

Since then, similar regional authorities have been created to operate projects around Orlando, Tampa, and Jacksonville.

"Previously, the tolls people paid on the roadways that we currently operate were going to [the state capital,] Tallahassee, and then those funds were being redistributed," authority spokesman Cindy Polo-Serantes said.

"Not all of the funds were coming back to the area. Our customers on our roadways were paying tolls on the Dolphin Expressway and Don Shula Expressway, but that money was going to Jacksonville and Tampa."

Now the tolls go back into the Miami-Dade system, allowing for upgrades and completion of connectors. The money has not been used to build entirely new highways.

"One of the advantages is we don't have to wait for allocations from the state,'' Ms. Polo-Serantes said. "We can think of, design, and implement a project much more quickly. We're a government agency, but we're run like a business."

Although Ohio and Indiana have only one toll road each, traversing the northern parts of the states, toll roads and bridges are more common in other parts of the country, especially in the Northeast, and are run by a variety of government-sanctioned agencies.

In metropolitan New York alone, four agencies operate toll facilities: the New York Thruway Authority, which operates long-distance toll roads in the state; the New York State Bridge Authority, which has five toll bridges over the Hudson River; MTA Bridges and Tunnels, which operates toll bridges and tunnels throughout the city, and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates toll bridges and tunnels linking those two states.

Additional agencies operate toll bridges crossing the Niagara and St. Lawrence rivers between upstate New York and Canada.

In New Jersey, the Garden State Parkway and the New Jersey Turnpike are operated by that state's turnpike authority. The 47-mile Atlantic City Expressway belongs to the South Jersey Transportation Authority, and three toll-bridge authorities oversee Delaware River crossings into Pennsylvania.

I-95 along the East Coast is a patchwork of toll and free highways from Washington on north, starting with the Woodrow Wilson Bridge across the Potomac River and ending with a portion of the Maine Turnpike. I-95 also has tolls in Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, and New Hampshire.

Tolls on the Connecticut Turnpike portion were removed during the mid-1980s after a horrific truck crash at a toll plaza.

Most of the Chicago area's expressway system is operated by Illinois Tollways. The Chicago Skyway Bridge on I-90 belongs to the city of Chicago, which recently leased it to a private Australian-Spanish joint venture that also leased the Indiana Toll Road.

Pennsylvania has been a notable exception to recent trends, pursuing its major toll road expansions largely as extensions of its east-to-west turnpike.

The Beaver Valley Expressway, Toll 60, cuts south from the turnpike west of Pittsburgh toward Pittsburgh International Airport.

The Mon-Fayette Expressway, Toll 43, portions of which remain uncompleted, is designed to be a southbound alternative through struggling steel towns and impoverished rural counties on the way to the West Virginia line.

Blade Staff Writer David Patch contributed to this article.

Contact Jim Provance at:

provance@theblade.com

or 614-221-0496.

First Published February 15, 2009, 3:07 p.m.