RALEIGH, N.C. -- North Carolina residents are closer than ever to paying a toll to drive on I-95. 
And it’s not just on the section of the Interstate in the Tar Heel state.

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NBC-17 has learned the federal government has given the OK to a five-state compact to study tolling the highways. Besides North Carolina, the states involved are Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida. The money would be used to make repairs and add lanes to the highway.

At the I-95 rest stop in Selma, it wasn’t the summer traffic drivers were talking about -- it was the possibility of driving through toll booths on future vacations.

“I just don’t like tolls,” said Budd Henry, who was driving from Baltimore to Myrtle Beach. “I think we’re taxed enough and there’s enough money to fix the road up without another tax, and that’s really what a toll is.”

North Carolina transportation officials estimate I-95 improvements in North Carolina will cost $4 billion. It would cost roughly $6 million per mile to add a lane to the highway.

State officials say they don’t have that kind of money. Drivers say they don’t have it, either.

“There are spots where it needs work, but I think they seem to keep it up pretty well, “ said Thomas Pettit, who drives the highway from New York to Florida several times a year to visit family. “I really think they could find the money somewhere else besides a toll.”

More states are adding toll roads as road construction costs rise and gas tax revenue shrinks.
See a list of U.S. Toll Roads