CJ Day
Staff Writer
A bill that would have empowered the Wyoming Department of Transportation (WYDOT) to study the effects of placing tolls on Wyoming’s section of Interstate 80 died in the Senate on Wednesday after only narrowly passing the House of Representatives.
However, advocates for the measure say action will need to be taken soon to increase WYDOT’s operating budget, so sections of I-80 that have already started to decay do not fall into further disrepair.
“You can feel it when you cross the border,” said Taylor Enfield, a student who drives on I-80 throughout the semester to her hometown of Sidney, Nebraska. “The road gets massively worse. It feels like you’re driving on the moon sometimes.”
Enfield is one of the estimated 4.7 million people who drive on Wyoming’s stretch of the interstate, according to a WYDOT study in 2008. In this study, which was the last time the state government looked at tolling I-80, WYDOT reported the cost of maintaining I-80 would rise to $6.4 billion over the next 30 years.
WYDOT has made an effort to find other revenue sources to pay for I-80’s maintenance, but their budget continues to fall short. Last year, WYDOT spent about $60 million on the interstate, but they estimate they need about $40 million more to properly maintain it, according to their most recent budget.
This budget shortfall led to the current state of the highway, and many drivers like Enfield have expressed concerns over its rapid decline. Some, like Rep. Mike Von Flatern from Gillette, have once again put forward the idea of a toll, so that drivers from outside Wyoming could help pay for its upkeep.
The BI reached out to Flatern for comment and he directed the BI to his statement in an interview with Wyoming Public Radio.
“The 580,000 people that are in the state pay for the maintenance of I-80, that 407 miles that runs across our state,” Flatern said. “We probably don’t have enough people to be paying for that.”
This argument seems compelling to some Wyoming drivers who frequent I-80. WYDOT data suggests that about 10,000 semi-trucks use the interstate daily and accounts for around half of the traffic on the highway.
However, tolling semi-trucks might lead to them leaving the state altogether. The Wyoming Trucking Association, in a recent statement on the issue, said tolling I-80 would lead to larger trucking companies rerouting around Wyoming entirely to avoid the toll.
Others, like Enfield, are against the toll for a simple reason- they do not want to pay money to use Wyoming’s roads.
“I live here, I pay taxes here,” said Enfield. “It might be a good idea to charge people from out of state, or those big semis, but people who live here shouldn’t have to pay to get around.”
Nearby states that toll, like Kansas and Oklahoma, offer a discount to citizens of the state who use the route for local transit, but no state exempts their residents from the toll completely.
There is no way of telling what Wyoming’s toll system might look like, if a toll system is ever implemented. Even if the bill had passed the state legislature, it would have only funded a feasibility survey like the one done in 2008, and the earliest a toll could have been implemented is 2029.
With this bill’s failure, it seems less likely that WYDOT will be able to find a way to balance their budget and pay to maintain and improve I-80, though Wyoming residents can rest easy knowing they will not have to worry about paying anything to use the highway.
