Toll fees to pay for airport road in Mississippi

Butch Brown

The Associated Press

4/24/2008

JACKSON, Miss. — Tolls will pay off the construction costs of a new road from downtown Jackson to the local airport in neighboring Rankin County.

The Mississippi Department of Transportation is looking for a private company to build the airport parkway and operate it for 50 years as a toll road.

After 50 years, the parkway would be turned over to the state.

MDOT executive director Butch Brown said construction is set to begin in February 2010. He said the toll would likely be $1 or $1.25 each way.

The parkway has been estimated to cost around $400 million.

Travelers now have to take busy Lakeland Drive or hit I-20 to get to the airport. The parkway is expected to alleviate traffic on Lakeland and provide direct access from downtown.

The project has been slowed because the parkway commission expected to receive additional federal funding. The commission has gotten about $35 million from the federal government.

About half of that amount has been spent on engineering, and the other half is expected to be spent on right-of-way acquisitions, Brown said. Nine miles of property must be acquired, and some homeowners may be displaced.

MDOT has matched 20 percent of the federal funds, Brown said.

The project also had been stalled because the commission sued MDOT over concerns the agency wanted to reopen the environmental impact study. MDOT did not reopen the study, and the lawsuit was dropped in March.

Brown said the lawsuit was based on a misunderstanding because of wording MDOT used in its plans to consider alternative locations for the bridge into downtown Jackson.

With that cleared up, parkway commission member Eddie Maloney earlier this week briefed Jackson City Council members on other agreements reached in recent weeks.

"Everything has been set aside," Maloney said. "Litigation was finalized, and they are ready to proceed."