I-80 Tolling Request Under Review

I-80 Tolling Request Under Review

The Federal Highway Administration said Friday it will take two months or more to reply to the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission’s resubmitted application to toll Interstate 80 across the state.

Federal Highways, as the U.S. Department of Transportation agency is known, spent six weeks reviewing the turnpike commission’s initial application last year before replying in a December memo that it needed more information to decide whether to permit tolling.

The commission returned the ball to Federal Highways’ court two weeks ago when it submitted a highly detailed application asserting it would use toll revenues to invest $2.5 billion in the next decade on the 311-mile I-80, four times the current rate of capital spending on the highway.
The projects the commission would get to in the first three years include two I-80 interchanges in Marion Township: one with Jacksonville Road and the other with Interstate 99. Those two projects will cost more than $170 million and have been dropped from long-term plans because there’s no money from PennDOT in sight.

The commission’s plans, rolled out in a statewide online news conference last week, include installing an open-road tolling system on I-80 in which vehicles
don’t have to slow down or stop to pay tolls at nine tolling gantries, or one every 35 miles or so.

Motorists instead would pay through an E-ZPass transponder system or by mail after high-resolution overhead cameras snap a photo of their license plate and trace billing addresses through information from state transportation departments.

The commission identified 20 possible locations on Wednesday, and said Friday it would narrow the list to nine “preferred” locations this fall but is otherwise waiting for Federal Highways to approve or reject the resubmitted application or ask for still more information. “It’s a fluid process, and we have no expectations about the outcome,” commission spokesman Carl DeFebo said Friday.

Federal Highways spokeswoman Nancy Singer said Friday the administration has formed a team of experts to review Pennsylvania’s application to toll I-80. The review team includes Federal Highway officials from Pennsylvania; the Office of Program Administration, which oversees the interstate reconstruction and rehabilitation toll pilot program; the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act program office; and the chief counsel. U.S. DOT Secretary Mary Peters will make the final decision.

The two possible toll locations in Centre County would amount to east and west gateways. One possible location lies between I-80’s Lamar and Bellefonte interchanges and the other between I-80’s Kylertown- Philipsburg and Snow Shoe interchanges.

Because car drivers with E-ZPass accounts would pass free through the first toll of their trip, commission project manager Barry Schoch said, commuters to the State College area from Lock Haven and DuBois probably would not pay a toll.

The commission has already sent an addendum to Federal Highways on its resubmitted application. The addendum summarizes comments from local transportation planners on the possible toll locations.

Planners for the Centre County Metropolitan Planning Organization raised concerns in a closed meeting with Schoch last month that tolls would divert traffic from I-80 to state Route 64, an old two-lane road that parallels the interstate east of State College.

The commission is also awaiting a report from GSP Consulting Corp., of Pittsburgh, on the projected economic impact of tolling I-80. The commission hired the economic development consulting firm to do the study after leading toll opponents, including U.S. Rep. John Peterson, RPleasantville, argued that tolls would devastate the economy along the I-80 corridor.
DeFebo said GSP is in the process of gathering information from businesses along the corridor.
At least one local planning organization — the Lewisburgbased SEDA-COG, the Susquehanna Economic Development Authority–Council of Governments — has discussed the possibility of local officials commissioning an economic impact study of their own.