HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) - July 14, 2008 The commission's plan is part of a revised application for
permission to toll I-80 that is expected to be submitted to federal
regulators next month. If approved, the commission expects tolls to
be in place in late summer 2010.
The $250 million annual figure is about four times what the
Pennsylvania Department of Transportation currently spends on
capital improvements to the 311-mile highway that stretches across
Pennsylvania between Ohio and New Jersey, turnpike officials said.
An assessment of the interstate showed that more than half its
length has not been repaved since it was built some 40 years ago.
Also, the assessment revealed that 16 bridges are structurally
deficient and 69 are functionally obsolete.
Over the first decade, the commission plans to rebuild or
rehabilitate 105 miles of I-80, replace 62 of its bridges,
including all four with less than 15 feet of clearance, and
complete a $179 million connection to Interstate 99 outside State
College.
Project manager Barry J. Schoch said it will cost about $60
million to build a cashless "open road" tolling system in which a
driver without E-ZPass will have his or her license plate
photographed, generating a mailed-out bill for the vehicle owner.
That technology is not currently used on any U.S. highway, he said.
Drivers with E-ZPass, the electronic toll-payment system in use
across the Northeast, will see tolls automatically deducted from
their accounts. The proposed locations of toll collection sites, a
topic of keen interest to the people who live along the highway,
are expected to be disclosed next month, Schoch said.
Planners have toyed with various scenarios of where to put as
many as 10 tolling locations, and estimate that about a third of
local automobile traffic will get on and off the interstate without
having to pay a toll. The projections exclude trucks and through
traffic.
"This might be a prototype of the way interstates are tolled in
the future," Schoch said.
Schoch said planners are considering whether to add truck
climbing lanes on portions of the interstate, and to widen the
shoulder in places to allow roadwork to be performed without having
to narrow traffic to a single lane.
Under a state transportation law passed last summer, the
turnpike would lease I-80 from PennDOT for 50 years. The tolls are
projected to bring the state about $1 billion a year in the first
decade, rising to about $2.6 billion annually in the deal's final
years.
The money would be spent on transportation needs around the
state, including highway maintenance and repair, bridge replacement
and mass transit subsidies.
A rival plan to lease the Pennsylvania Turnpike to a private
consortium attracted a high bid of $12.8 billion in upfront cash,
but that deal has been slow to attract legislative approval. If the
General Assembly were to opt for the turnpike lease, the I-80
tolling plan would be abandoned.
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On the Net:
Turnpike commission's I-80 plan: http://www.paturnpike.com/i80/
AP-NY-07-14-08 1509EDT
