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Consultants for the Southwest Florida Expressway Authority defended themselves this week against charges they’ve over-stated the expected growth and traffic demands to prop up the case for tolls on Interstate 75.

Adrin Share, of the firm of Wilbur Smith Associates, pointed to recent coverage of claims by the Naples political action committee Citizens Transportation Coalition.

“They’ve written and said much about the forecasting efforts, for want of a better word accusations if you will, that our firm and URS are both overstating the growth and demand,” he said to the authority board.

Share said challenging the assumption that tolls will be needed to widen the interstate beyond 6 lanes challenges the very reason the authority was created.

“When you consider the very basis of the expressway authority’s existence it’s that traffic demand exceeds the ability of traditional revenue sources to keep up,” he said.

The CTC met with media editorial boards and shared information with all 10 Lee and Collier commissioners and all 9 members of the authority board just before the board's Nov. 16 meeting. Gary Eidson, president of CTC, said the members had hoped to respond to Share's comments but the public comment period was shunted to the end of the lengthy agenda and some authority members had already left.

“They said they’d do it at the end, but it never ended,” Eidson said.

Share said the growth projections on which traffic-demand estimates are based are not those of the company but of local governments. He acknowledged that the firm’s own numbers are different from the projections done for Florida Turnpike Enterprise, the state’s tolling authority, but said a more detailed investor-grade revenue study will be necessary before any project goes forward.

He also said any risk of toll revenue not covering the cost would be assumed by investors, not taxpayers or toll-payers.

“The risk is for the investors,” he said.

Eidson said that’s no way to run a battleship.

“Look around the country and find out what happened to people who kept that attitude,” he admonished. “And even if there are tolls there’s going to be state and federal assistance. That money could be spent on other roads needed in other parts of the county.”

A hefty package of information CTC is circulating includes newspaper accounts from other areas where toll road have met with mixed success.

“What I think dawned on me is they’ve taken numbers they created and said therefore there’s a problem. Therefore we have to have more lanes and we have to have tolls,” Eidson said. “It just makes no sense to me at all.”

Eidson said he also questions the assumption that without tolls there will be no money to widen the interstate past six lanes. He said he wants to meet with U.S. Rep. Connie Mack, who has also questioned that assumption.

“Ten years ago we would have never thought we’d have the money to do what we’re doing now,” Eidson said.

Eidson said the group is convinced tolls are a bad idea, and will continue the fight.

“We’re going full bore here,” he said.

The Expressway Authority isn’t going away either.

“The ‘If we don’t build it they won’t come’ premise just doesn’t work,” Share said.