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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- If it's a choice between a toll road built within the next years, and a regular highway built in 20 years, most Utahns responding to a survey would take the toll road.
The survey by Dan Jones & Associates for the Deseret Morning News and KSL-TV found 55 percent of those surveyed supported construct of toll roads over roads build in a couple of decades, the newspaper reported in a copyright story Monday.
Almost 40 percent of the 415 people surveyed said they would oppose toll roads, regardless of when a new road were to be built. The survey had a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percent.
State officials and the sponsor of a toll-road bill said the numbers were not surprising.
"Hello reality. That's what we're looking at here," said Sen. Sheldon Killpack, R-Syracuse. "If you understand the concept that a road isn't going to build itself, that it is going to take financing and the corridor could potentially not exist by the time financing becomes available, it brings a completely different perspective."
Killpack is sponsoring Senate Bill 80, which would allow the Utah Department of Transportation to enter into public-private partnership to build toll roads. Under such a partnership, a private company would pay for the right to build, maintain and collect tolls on a road.
Killpack's bill has already received approval in the Senate.
Lawmakers from western Salt Lake County fear the bill is a way to quickly turn the billion-dollar Mountain View Corridor into a toll road. The state is currently studying whether the highway, proposed to stretch from Salt Lake City to Lehi, should be a toll road.
"I would be irresponsible in my action if I didn't take into consideration the opinions of the people on the west side of Salt Lake County," said Sen. Ed Mayne, D-West Valley. "And it's not just my constituents but those from I-80 westbound to Lehi. There are other legislators, other representatives and senators and city councils and mayors that are concerned about the road that's being considered as the toll road."
Mayne said it also is troubling that the state would be willing to sell its roads to a private company and perhaps a foreign firm. Of the handful of states that have entered into public-private partnerships, most have dealt with foreign companies.
"There really are inherent risks," said Dave Creer, executive director of the Utah Truckers Association. "We don't think the public has enough information in answering the question of whether they would support toll roads or not. I don't think the public understands public-private partnerships and that the private part has to get a return on investment."
Carlos Braceras, UDOT deputy director, said recently that financing the Mountain View Corridor with private dollars was one of the only ways he could see the billion-dollar road being built within the next few years.
"How can we come up with billions for a corridor when we don't have enough money to take care of what we have?" UDOT executive director John Njord said Friday. "No one likes taxes. I don't like taxes. But when it comes down to it, if we want infrastructure, we've got to pay, and this is one way it could happen."
No private company has yet to contact the state about the Mountain View Corridor. However, Njord said investors -- both American and foreign -- are interested in the concept of public-private partnerships.
(Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
