Pennsylvania Turnpike Toll Rates to Rise Again
A year after raising its toll rates 5%, Pennsylvania’s Turnpike Commission announced on July 20 a 6% increase for 2017.
Commission Chairman Sean Logan blamed the rate hike on the debt service needed to meet the commission’s funding obligations: rebuilding and widening the turnpike system and providing funding for public transportation in Pennsylvania.
“Parts of our [75-year-old] system have outlived their design life and are in dire need of replacement,” Logan said in a press release. “Revenues from this increase will fund a …10-year spending plan, which invests more than $5.77 billion in our system in the coming decade — a large part of which will support ongoing total reconstruction and widening projects.”
Turnpike CEO Mark Compton said annual rate increases are likely for decades.
“While we will continue to mitigate toll increases through boosted efficiencies, we have no option but to increase tolls annually,” he said in the same release. “Traffic and revenue predictions estimate increases of up to 6% per year will be necessary until 2044.”
That was hardly welcome news to Kevin Stewart, the new president of the Pennsylvania Motor Truck Association.
“We appreciate the Turnpike’s continuous quality improvements to their roadways,” Stewart told Transport Topics. “However, ever-increasing toll costs will force drivers onto secondary roadways, increasing congestion and maintenance costs on those roadways as well as creating safety concerns with increased traffic.”
