AURORA| Cruise along E-470, and you won’t see much in terms of traffic or slow-moving motorists or gas stations.
Toll road officials are hoping to change that last one.
Last week, the E-470 Public Highway Authority asked developers to submit plans to build and operate a gas station and convenience store adjacent to the roadway — close enough that drivers don’t have to leave E-470 and pay another pesky toll if they need gas.
“Right now there is nothing right on the highway,” said E-470 Director of Finance Stan Koniz.
The closest gas station to the highway is a 7-Eleven near the East Quincy Avenue exit, but it’s about a mile off the road and requires drivers to exit.
“The thing about exiting the highway is that to get back on you have to pay another toll,” he said.
The plans unveiled last week call for a gas station with convenience store and a fast-food restaurant at the old toll plaza south of East Jewell Avenue. The location has 15 acres of developable land, as well as a 5,600-square-foot building that has sat empty since E-470 went to all license plate tolls in 2009 and rendered the five toll plazas largely obsolete.
The site is ideal, Koniz said, because it already has easy access from the toll road and won’t require the developer to cut new roads to get motorists from the highway to the gas pumps. And, he said, the developer can refurbish the existing building instead of having to build a new one.
The plazas, which were adjacent to toll booths were a sort of support facility for the toll booth workers, Koniz said. They included offices for the staff, locker rooms for the booth workers, vaults and counting rooms for the money.
Toll road officials have wanted gas stations near the road for years and looked into it before they went booth-less in 2009, Kuniz said. But those projects would have required so much new construction that they weren’t feasible.
“It was cost prohibitive,” he said.
In other states, convenience stores are often close enough to toll roads that drivers don’t have to exit if they need gas or a bite to eat. But Kuniz said the difference between E-470 and those roads is that E-470 is aimed at commuters, not long-haul drivers using the road to cross entire states.
Neil Gray, director of governmental affairs for the International Bridge, Tunnel, and Turnpike Association, said convenience stores are common sites along toll roads in Ohio, New Jersey, Maryland and other states. But he agreed that E-470 is likely the first of the commuter toll roads to boast a project like this.
E-470 was also the first toll road to go completely booth-less, Gray said. That means other toll roads around the country will be looking at how E-470 uses their old toll plazas.
“They are the first ones to have this situation,” he said.
Kuniz said E-470 officials hope to launch similar projects at their other toll plazas. If all goes well at the plaza near Jewell, they will likely look at redeveloping the plaza north of Interstate 70 next.