Toll increase adds to pain for travelers

Anyone who has been paying attention to Pennsylvania Turnpike toll rates should be quite used to the annual announcement of price hikes by now.

Every year since 2009 the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission has increased tolls, making an announcement in the summer that higher rates will take effect the following January. Barring a significant change in state policy, annual rate hikes will continue for decades, into the 2050s.

But this year’s announcement of a 5% increase is particularly tough to take as we endure a summer of astronomical travel costs. The price of gas hovered around $5 a gallon for much of the season. The cost has gone down from its heights, but it’s still considerably higher than it was a year ago. Traveling any kind of substantial distance likely means spending hundreds of dollars on fuel alone. The prospect of higher tolls just adds insult to injury.

Turnpike CEO Mark Compton said the commission has been forced to increase tolls annually to meet its financial obligations under the state’s Act 44 plan.

That legislation was enacted in 2007 and required the turnpike to transfer $450 to $900 million annually to the state to support transportation projects. The law was supposed to go with a plan to establish tolls on Interstate 80. That idea went nowhere, but the required payments already were law, and we’ve been stuck with annual toll hikes ever since.

Effective Jan. 8, the mostcommon toll for a passenger vehicle next year will increase from $1.70 to $1.80 for E-ZPass customers and from $4.10 to $4.40 for toll-by-plate customers. The most-common toll for a Class-5 tractor-trailer will increase from $13.70 to $14.40 for E-ZPass and from $28 to $29.40 for toll-by-plate.

Rates for E-ZPass drivers are nearly 60% less than tollby-plate rates.

Based on current traffic and revenue projections, the commission’s plan calls for future toll increases of 5% through 2025, 4% in 2026, 3.5% in 2027, then 3% annually from 2028 to 2050.

Taken on their own, each increase won’t have much of an impact on those who only use the turnpike occasionally, but for regular turnpike commuters, even small numbers add up over the course of a year. And the cost of a long trip on the turnpike is astronomical. Right now it costs about $49 for E-ZPass users to cross the state from the Delaware River bridge to the Ohio connector. For everyone else the price tag is a whopping $95. And that’s for a conventional vehicle. Imagine the impact on truckers who take such trips routinely. Those costs get passed down to all of us, even those who never drive on the turnpike.

As usual, turnpike officials are doing the best they can to find silver linings among the bad news. Compton said the state’s E-ZPass rates rank 24th out of 47 U.S. tolling agencies, and its 13.8 centper-mile electronic tolling rate is 20% lower than the national average of 17.8 centsper-mile. We commend any efforts to try to keep the turnpike’s operations as efficient as possible. The toll increases are required by law, so it’s crucial that the people running the highway do the best they can to manage the costs they can control.

We also applaud efforts to expand payment options. The turnpike now allows customers to use cash to pay Toll By Plate invoices and add funds to E-ZPass accounts at stores in Pennsylvania and across the country. A list can be found at www.paturnpike.com/pay-abill/cash-payments

We look forward to the day when toll increases won’t be an annual rite, and when Pennsylvania finally comes up with a more fair, sustainable way to fund its transportation infrastructure and state police (some transportation funding is siphoned off to law enforcement).

As we elect new leadership in Pennsylvania, let’s push candidates to offer comprehensive solutions to the financial problems facing the turnpike, PennDOT and the rest of the state government. Right now too much of the burden is falling on people who depend on the turnpike and have to use it, no matter how high the tolls get.