Pennsylvania to toll I-80, despite opposition

As rural residents and lawmakers continue their opposition to plans to the tolling Interstate 80, state officials are inching closer to that first tollbooth.
The Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission (PTC) expects to sign a lease within days allowing it to manage – and toll – the massive highway stretching across Pennsylvania, according to a commission spokesman.

“We are at the point right now where we expect to have an executed lease this week,” PTC spokesman Carl DeFebo said.

A current draft lease agreement, which lawyers for both PennDOT and the commission have discussed for weeks, stipulates no revenue from tolling I-80 may be used for mass transit in the state, a sticking point for rural constituents unhappy at the prospect of subsidizing city transit they don’t use. The first tollbooth wouldn’t hit the ground before 2011.

Instituting the tolls is part of the state transportation funding package that passed in Harrisburg in June. The legislation called for about $965 million in additional yearly funding for roads, bridges and mass transit throughout the state, money that would come from sales taxes, tolling I-80 and, later, toll increases on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. The dedicated funding SEPTA secured through the same legislation is dependent on the extra revenue.

Almost immediately after the bill, Act 44, passed in June, area residents and government leaders, uneasy at subsidizing SEPTA with local taxes lashed out against the plan to toll I-80. They have insisted it would devastate local economies while maintaining that rural residents should not have to pay for city transit.

Two northeastern Pennsylvania GOP congressmen, Reps. Phil English and John Peterson, this summer tucked an amendment into a large federal appropriations bill attempting to block the tolling plan. While that appropriations bill passed the house, the amendment was removed in the Senate.

Simultaneous efforts have been made to completely repeal Act 44, but the chairman of the state House Appropriations Committee last week said a repeal was out of the question.

“It’ll never get out of my committee – put it that way,” Rep. Dwight Evans, D-Philadelphia, said.

Such opposition also led Gov. Ed Rendell to reopen the idea of leasing the Pennsylvania Turnpike to increase revenue, and 34 companies submitted letters of interest to PennDOT last month.

Meanwhile, PTC CEO Joseph Brimmeir has taken considerable steps in recent weeks to blunt criticisms of the tolling plan, promising that no money from tolls on I-80 will fund SEPTA. Rather, he has said, toll revenue will fund only projects in the region.

Toll revenue would fund, among other things, $2 billion worth of capital improvements on I-80 during the first decade of tolling, Mr. DeFebo said.
Though neither Mr. English nor Mr. Peterson could be reached for comment over the weekend, they and their allies remain on the offensive.

“While we recognize this is going to be a fight. I know that Congressman English and Congressman Peterson are committed to keeping a toll-free I-80,” Julia Wanzco, a spokeswoman for English, said in August.

Local politicians have fiercely criticized the opposition for blocking the tolling efforts. State Sen. Vincent Fumo has gone so far as to call Mr. Peterson and Mr. English hypocrites. But for the commission, instituting the plan is a matter of law.

“We have a responsibility to move ahead with the implementation of Act 44,” Mr. DeFebo said. “It’s a law, and we’ve got to move ahead implementing.”