SOUTHERN INDIANA — Terri Hughes, an assistant manger at Armstrong Farm Apartments, has heard a few of her tenants cite tolls as their reason for moving to or from her Jeffersonville complex.
Tolls, which started Dec. 30, mean each crossing from Indiana to Kentucky, where many Southern Indiana residents work each day, costs $4 each time ($2 if they own a RiverLink or E-ZPass transponder).
The money is collected to pay for the $2.3 billion Ohio River Bridges Project that built the Abraham Lincoln and Lewis and Clark bridges and updated the Kennedy Bridge.
But while tolls can add a daily expense to commuters’ budgets, most Indiana and Kentucky residents aren’t going to move across the river to combat the cost of tolls, said Uric Dufrene, executive vice chancellor for academic affairs and finance professor for Indiana University Southeast.
That’s despite the fact that 35,000 Southern Indiana residents commuted to work in Kentucky in 2010, compared to about 12,500 Kentucky residents who commuted to Southern Indiana, according to a 2012 study prepared for the Ogle Foundation.
One reason residents opt to stay in Indiana rather than move to where they work is because housing prices are lower in Indiana, Dufrene said.
That’s consistent with what local real estate agents, such as Greg Taylor, have seen. Taylor is a RE/MAX agent who works in Kentucky and Indiana.
Southern Indiana residents can get “more house” for the same amount of money, Taylor said.
Sara White, who works in a New Albany office for Semonin Realty, echoed the same thought.
But that isn’t the only reason why people aren’t moving because of tolls, according to Dufrene.
People consider a few factors when deciding where to live, he said: location, home prices, amenities, quality of life and quality of schools.
Those considerations will continue to rule, Dufrene predicts.
Job availability, however, could have more of an impact on where people in Kentuckiana decide to move in the coming years, Dufrene said. And thanks to the Lewis and Clark bridge, Southern Indiana is gaining them.
The bridge added infrastructure near River Ridge Commerce Center, a 6,000 acre business and industrial park with land to spare and intentions to sell.
But the bridge will also make it easier for Kentucky residents to live where they already are and reach Indiana jobs at River Ridge, Dufrene said.
It all goes back to the traditional factors people primarily consider when moving.
So yes, Hughes has tenants who have moved to her complex because of tolls, and Taylor had a client whose biggest moving consideration was being able to easily travel across the Clark Memorial Bridge for work.
But — “all in all, in my opinion, tolls are going to have a nominal impact on the final locational decision of residents,” Dufrene said.
He won’t truly know if he’s right for a couple of years, however. That’s when telling data, such as real estate sales or building permits, will begin to become available.