PROVIDENCE — Members of Governor Carcieri’s Blue Ribbon Panel for Transportation Funding are having doubts about whether they can find a way to raise the $300 million per year that officials say they need to repair the state’s bridges and highways.

“Nobody will approve $300 million,” panel member Robert Weygand said at a meeting yesterday. “It’s just not possible.”

Michael Lewis, director of the state Department of Transportation and co-chairman of the panel, agreed, saying that getting approval for such a sum “is unlikely in these times.”

Transportation officials say that the situation is critical. Two of the state’s most important bridges, the Sakonnet River Bridge, from Portsmouth to Tiverton, and the Pawtucket River Bridge that carries Route 95, are posted with weight limits and need to be replaced. Dozens of other bridges have weight limits, disrupting bus and truck traffic and sometimes delaying fire equipment.

The DOT says that after years of neglect, it needs to spend roughly double the more than the $350 million it spends now per year to replace or repair failing bridges and catch up on road repairs.

There is no ready source for that amount of money, and the panel has been looking at revenue sources that would be radical departures from the past. Those probably controversial ways of raising money include highway tolls, a higher gasoline tax and a variety of new or increased fees for vehicle registrations and the like.

The panel had already gotten a hint from advisers from the University of Rhode Island’s Transportation Center that its financial goal isn’t realistic. URI Prof. Henry Schwarzbach said in August that even using relatively high revenue figures from highway tolls, a sharp increase in the state gasoline tax and millions of dollars in other new or higher fees, an economic model he has been building for the panel showed the results falling far below the target.

The panel is supposed to make recommendations to the governor next month, but it has not yet given any indication of what it may recommend. Lewis said yesterday that he has no new target figure.

Anything the panel produces would need the approval of the governor and General Assembly.

Members also said yesterday that they were disappointed that only a few people came to a series of public meetings where they had hoped to explain the need for huge sums of money and gain support. Panel members said they are afraid that the public won’t become interested until it makes recommendations, and that opponents of the various proposals will emerge then.

blandis@projo.com