Wednesday, October 14, 2026
By Kip Tabb | Outer Banks Voice on September 9, 2026
As the North Carolina Ferry Division prepares to implement tolls on all the state’s ferries on Jan. 1, the fourth of five scheduled NCDOT community listening meetings was held at the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum in Hatteras Village on Tuesday, Sept. 8.
The final listening session will be held on the evening of Wednesday, Sept. 9 on Ocracoke.
The Hatteras session was lightly attended with about a dozen people coming to speak with Ferry Division personnel about the tolls.
Tolls are currently collected on the Cedar Island-Ocracoke, Swan Quarter-Ocracoke and Southport-Fort Fisher vehicle ferry routes and riders pay a fee on the Hatteras-Ocracoke passenger ferry. Under the new law, tolls will be required on the Currituck-Knotts Island, Bayview-Aurora, Hatteras-Ocracoke and Cherry Branch-Minnesott Beach vehicle ferry routes.
Despite pushback and protests from coastal communities, the law does not allow for any exceptions to the tolling, Jed Dixon, director of the NC Ferry Division, told the Voice. He added that Division staff are working “to implement tolling on four routes that historically had not been tolled. We’re following the law and implementing tolling January 1.”
Dixon did note that “what we do have a decision on is how we [communicate] how it impacts the public directly…and really just be able to listen to what the ferries mean to [the public].”
Aside from the community listening sessions, there is also the option of providing comment online. According to Ferry Division officials at the Hatteras session, more than 20,000 comments have been recorded. Public comment will end on Sept. 14.
The comments, Dixon said, vary among locations, with each one having “a little different concern.” However, he stated that “there’s been an overall consensus that we don’t want to see the tolls, especially on the routes that have not been tolled.”
The Ferry Division’s fleet is aging and the language in “the law mandates we use that toll revenue for vessel construction. It can’t be used for anything else,” Dixon said.
The oldest ship in the fleet is the Silver Lake ferry. Built in 1965, it is now well past the expected 40-year lifespan of a ferry. According to Dixon, repairs are becoming more expensive and frequent.
“When your car gets older, you have more trouble keeping it running. So, it’s the same for ferries,” he said.
The current NCDOT State Transportation Improvement Plan (STIP) does include replacing the Silver Lake Ferry. The estimated replacement cost is $26.8 million and Dixon said that “we’re hoping to start construction in 2028.”
Although the law does not allow for leeway about whether the tolls will be implemented on Jan. 1, Tess Judge NCDOT District 1 Representative on the Transportation Board, emphasized that public input is needed.
“These meetings are very important to get information, and for everybody to fill out these surveys, and put their comments in to send them in, so that we can get more information to go to the legislature to see if there are some things that need to be considered,” she said.
For Ocracoke residents who can only access the mainland via ferries, the tolling is particularly troubling since as Judge noted, “our waterways are highways when you’re considering Ocracoke.”
Dare County Commissioner for Hatteras Island Mary Ellon Ballance told the Voice that “I don’t think you should have to pay to go home.” But she also made it clear that tolling the ferries may be necessary.
“I’m not a hard no on tolls,” she said. “I think that is a reasonable request if you use a ferry to go across body of water.”
Aida Havel, a candidate for Dare County Commissioner at Large who lives on Hatteras Island, pointed out that the law prohibits “discrimination on the basis of income.”
“Well, they’re discriminating on the basis of income,” she said. “If low-income people on Ocracoke can’t afford to pay the toll, what are they going to do?”
