Ask not for whom the bridge tolls -- it tolls for he.

• Author: Gray, Tim
• Position: Brief Article

No tax can operate so fair and so easy as that of paying a turnpike toll since every person is taxed in proportion to the benefit he derives from a good road - What can be more just?"

Elkanah Watson, Albany Register, 1796

Jim Allen wants to bridge the Catawba River, which divides Mecklenburg and Gaston counties. And soon enough, people traveling from Gastonia to Charlotte and back are going to need that bridge. Two existing spans -- one on Interstate 85, the other on U.S. 29/74 -- carry 21,000 commuters a day. By 2020, they will likely be gridlocked. But the N.C. Department of Transportation says it'll probably be 15 to 20 years before it would be able to add a third bridge.

You would think North Carolina lawmakers would welcome anybody willing to do it sooner. But in this year's legislative session, they nearly sent Allen home to Alabama empty-handed. That's because he wants to own the bridge, run it and collect a 75-cent toll -- his standard fee and "less than the price of a Coke," he says. That trio of quarters led lawmakers to chop away at a bill that allowed Allen, or any developer, to build a private toll road in North Carolina until they nearly killed it.

That's understandable. Plenty of lawmakers recall inhaling fumes while queued up at the now-gone toll booths along I-95 in Virginia on the way to Richmond. What's more, governors, from Cameron Morrison to Kerr Scott, beat the populist drum to make North Carolina "The Good Roads State." And make no mistake, those were free roads -- at least inasmuch as no toll booth barred a Tar Heel's way. (The state chose instead to waylay motorists at the pump, with the highest gas tax in the Southeast.) Now North Carolina finds itself in the breakdown lane: Without raising taxes or shifting money from elsewhere, it'll take 26 years just to finish the projects already on the Transportation Department's priority list.

Enter Allen. He builds and manages toll bridges. He's built three in Alabama -- two in Montgomery and one is Tuscaloosa -- sells hardware and software for managing toll roads and is a consultant on public toll roads. He has flown his Beechcraft Baron over Charlotte to survey the traffic and development patterns and believes a third Catawba River bridge would draw enough vehicles to turn a profit.

He started out as the owner of a Wetumpka, Ala., cabinet company called Amende, which he sold to Virginia-based American Woodmark Inc. in 1988. He rolled the proceeds into Emerald Mountain, a...