Category: Traffic

Pa. Toll Hike To Hit Commercial Haulers Hard

If you haven’t heard yet, Pennsylvania Turnpike tolls will rise 10 percent for cash customers in 2012.

The decision was made July 19 by the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission and announced two days later.

Those using E-ZPass will not see an increase.

Except for  commercial haulers. They will see a 15 percent increase as they will lose their 15 percent volume discount.

Exempted from the hike will be I-576 in the Pittsburgh area.

The money will be used to pay off bonds that were used for improvements to highways and mass transit systems.

OK, what does the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission have to do with mass transit systems?

Nevermind.

This will be the fourth straight year the Commission has raised rates. The hike is expected to transfer $23 million from citizens to the state.

Gov. Corbett had promised not to raise taxes. He is deluding himself that increasing the transportation costs by 15 percent for those who use the state’s turnpike system to haul our food, manufactured items and consumer goods is not a tax hike, and one that will ultimately be borne by the consumer.

What’s really pathetic is that if revenue is needed highway tolls are an extraordinarily inefficient means of getting it.

This study of the system in Washington State showed that collection costs were $22 for every $100 raised, which was 25 times greater than those of a gasoline tax.

Of course, raising tolls means less screaming from us pheasants than, say, raising the gas tax. The pain is much less immediate and the source of it much less obvious. This is something well understood to those who earn their well-buttered bread by plucking us.

And also ignored by toll-road phanboys are  the hidden costs. Aside from the smog-producing, gas-wasting slowdowns and snarls at the toll booths,  turnpikes are extraordinarily inefficient means of providing transportation.

Consider that in the 20-miles of the free part of I-476 between I-95 and the first toll booth at Plymouth Meeting there are 10 exits.  In the next 37 miles after the Plymouth Meeting interchanges there are three.

This means that there are a whole lot of drivers unnecessarily wasting time and gas on stop-light dotted roads than would be otherwise if our transportation planners were not strapped in considering the burden of  toll collection.

18th Century Taverns, Traffic Snarls And Global Warming

After decades of trying to figure out what to do with the building, Delaware County, Pa. is almost ready to move its tourist department into the 18th Century Rose Tree Tavern in the county-owned Rose Tree Park in Upper Providence Township.

The county, in a typical display of its insecurity, calls the department the Brandywine Conference  and Visitors Bureau. It should be noted that the Brandywine River will now be 12 miles away from the new HQ  and the Brandywine Valley is an exceedingly small portion of the historically influential county.

Regardless, the historic building is now about to be put into use and we can now address the real issue. For 200-plus years, the building  had stood about 200 feet to the southwest which meant it was almost directly at the corner of Rose Tree  and Providence roads, the latter of which would become at that particular stretch the heavily traveled State Route 252.

Plans to install  desperately needed turn lanes were always squashed due to the complexities relating to the historic structure. This meant  long exhaust-emitting, gasoline-wasting traffic jams.

So it was moved back on Aug. 10, 2004 with PennDOT bearing the entire $1.25 million bill and fixing the jams became a simple thing.

So where are the turn lanes?

We have solar panels on the Springfield Library, we have brand new rails for the Route 101 trolley but we don’t have turn lanes at a infamous problem intersection the placement of which would have done far more to alleviate pollution — and achieve energy independence — than a hundred  feel-good  projects.

The refusal of “man-made global warming” activists to get involved in the mundane and practical solutions  — like unsnarling traffic — to their various complaints is just one more reason to doubt their sincerity.

When they get around to demanding the end of toll roads and bridges is when you can get around to considering buying a Chevy Volt.

Corbett’s Gang Muscles In On DRPA

Gov. Tom Corbett has cleaned the rodent-droppings from Pennsylvania’s vermin-infested  contribution to  Delaware River Port Authority (DRPA) appointing himself as chairman and replacing five board members.

But will it be the case of “meet the new rat, same as the old rat”?

Corbett’s appointments — William Sasso, Joanna Cruz, Joann Bell, Walter D’Alessio and David Simon — are all heavy political contributors to the governor each donating at least $1,500, personally or institutionally, to his attorney general and gubernatorial campaigns with Simon and Sasso kicking in $29,500 and $22,000 respectively as individuals.

DRPA is a Congressionally-approved arrangement between Pennsylvania and New Jersey charged with overseeing the maintenance and development of the Philadelphia-Camden port district and much of the Delaware River crossings including the four big toll bridges. The 16-member board is split evenly between the states. All  New Jersey members are appointed to set terms by its governor. In Pennsylvania, six members are at-will gubernatorial appointments with the state’s treasurer and auditor general being automatically given seats.

Are Corbett’s picks going to be exterminators or just more bald-tailed looters looking for their cheese? One sign will be if crossing the Delaware gets cheaper and more convenient. Look to see what happens with the 20 percent toll hike schedule for July.

Hat tip Chris Freind.

Pa. Turnpike Bean Counters Cave On Tixs

Outrage from customers and state officials forced Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission bureaucrats to consider commonsense and change a policy of not placing rates on toll tickets.

The commission removed the exit prices  to save  bucks on ticket-printing for future rate hikes.

It cost $280,000 to print a year’s worth of tickets and not listing fares was expected to save $100,000 since all tickets would be able to be used regardless of rate changes.

Of course, it would also slow traffic as motorists tried to figure out  fares and, more disconcertingly, it would make it easier to boil the frog by making fare hikes less transparent.

Among those instrumental in getting the bean counters to see that a penny saved could be a dollar lost was Auditor General Jack Wagner.

Still, turnpike users are stuck with the guess-the-fare tickets until new ones can be printed. This may take up to six-months.

Drivers, in the meantime, can ask toll collectors the price or call  call 866-976-8747or visit www.paturnpike.com .

The unpriced tickets start Jan. 2  when the 10-percent increase for cash customers takes effect. This means that driving the length of the road from Ohio to Philadelphia will cost a cash-payer $32.30.

The rate for E-ZPass users is rising 3 percent. Driving the length from Ohio will cost an E-ZPass user $30.17 in ten days.

Turnpike More Expensive, Less Convenient

Reader Tom C points out more bureaucratic stupidity with the removal of exit prices from Pennsylvania Turnpike toll tickets. It’s a cost saving move just in case the noble and dedicated public servants who staff the Turnpike Commission decide to jack up prices again.

What this means is that more people are going to be waiting for change at toll booths as they will be far less likely to have it the exact fare ready.

Pa.’s toll prices are rising 10 percent for ticket users and 3 percent for E-ZPass users this Jan. 1.

To really save overhead how about we just turn the roads into freeways? Traffic flow will improve, energy will be saved, transportation will become cheaper and the Port of Philadelphia will become more competitive which will mean more jobs and foreign revenue.

Well, more productive jobs anyway. I guess one has to say that paying people to sit and booths and snarl traffic is a job, and of course they will no longer be there.

Open Road Tolling To Be Studied In Pa.

The Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission voted this morning to advertise for bids for a study of open road tolling which is collecting tolls without toll booths.

If it should be implemented — and a spokesman emphasized it was just a study — the 615-toll collectors employed by the Commission would become superfluous. The collectors make between $18 and $22 per hour or between $37,000 and $46,000 per year not counting benefits or overtime, which according to a Commission spokesman is not a major factor. The commission also uses seasonal workers the number of which, according to the spokesman, was fewer than 100.

New Jersey is replacing toll collectors on the Atlantic City Expressway with open road tolling. Collectors there expect to make $60,000 per year with toll plaza supervisors pulling in $85,000.

In the Pennsylvania fight between man and machine, I’m taking John Henry’s side. Pa.’s collectors — unlike New Jersey’s–are not overpaid and E-ZPass always struck me as being a tad elitist and big brotherish.

Still, my first choice is to forget trying to raise revenue via the roads and turn them into freeways. Toll roads might make sense in New Jersey and especially Delaware where a disproportionate amount of non-residents use the roads, but in Pennsylvania it’s a way to inefficiently snare revenue from its residents via self-imposed traffic jams.

Further, it’s bad for transportation. Consider this: on the 20-mile free section of I-476 i.e. the Blue Route there are 12 interchanges. In the next 24 miles after it becomes a toll road in Plymouth Meeting there are two.

Making the turnpikes into freeways would end the rationale of funneling captive customers into select cattle-shuts and allow for the construction of more interchanges. This would save a lot of gas and commuter time, unless of course the new freedom results in an economic boom which would then see snarls by all the workers going to the new jobs. But that strikes one as being a win, win.

High Speed Trains And Stupid Solutions

The feds, since 1991, have had a plan  of creating high speed rail corridors throughout the nation including one between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia and since Obama took office $8 billion has been shoved into this opium-pipe dream with billions more expected although that hope may change come November.

Texas and the Sourth outside Florida haven’t gotten much of this loot for some strange reason albeit Pennsylvania’s not much ahead nabbing a paltry $25.6 million for the Keystone Corridor project.

Grand schemes like this would be great if resources were infinite and the simple building of it was the hardest and most expensive part. The real problems, however, start after the tracks are laid and the shiny new stations open, namely getting people to use it. Remember these things are being built not with the jaundiced eye of someone weighing the risks to his own time and money against the benefits of possible future rewards, but in accordance with starry visions of bureaucrats and trained academic parrots who have literally nothing to lose in the construction.

So the only way people are going to use this thing is by discouraging them — them not including the bureaucrats and parrots — from using alternatives namely the planes and automobile parts of the story.

Hmmmm, you think that might happen?

A much better way of improving transportation efficiency would be to use that money for our highways. That $8 billion could turn a whole lot of  turnpikes into freeways eliminating artificial traffic bottlenecks and general headaches. Or if construction is what one desires, there are plenty of places where the money could be used to improve traffic flow cutting commuter time and saving gasoline. 

Consider Route 322 in Delaware County, Pa. Coming north from I-95 it hits Route 1 in Concord, follows that road south for a couple of miles until it reaches Route 202 at a massive bottleneck of an intersection where it then follows 202 north into Chester County before getting exclusive use of  blacktop.

What if the some of the money Obama wants to use on choo choos was spent sending Route 322 directly into Route 202 with a cloverleaf at Route 1. If the money was properly used those whose land would be needed for the project would have big smiles on their faces after negotiations for it, and dollars to donuts say more time and gas would be saved than a bullet train to Pittsburgh.

And situations like this can be found throughout the nation. But cars mean freedom whereas trains mean control.

And this does not mean that trains are bad or that passenger trains don’t have their purpose. Something else to ponder — America’s freight railroads are owned and operated by private companies. In Europe, they are owned and operated by government. In the 1950s, the percent of freight shipped was about the same. Today, about 38 percent of freight is shipped on railroads in the U.S. compared to 8 percent in the European Union.  

Maybe to make passenger trains viable again, we should get the government out of Amtrak.

Rendell I-80 Toll Plan Wasted $24 Million

Ed Rendell’s failed plan to increase traffic snarls cost Pennsylvania taxpayers more than $24 million, according to Pennsylvania Independent.

The spending was done by the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission between the passage of Act 44 in 2007 and April 6, 2010 when the plan to toll
Interstate 80 finally killed by the federal Department of Transportation.

Most of the money went to McCormick
Taylor, an engineering  firm based in Harrisburg, which billed $22 million for engineering work, traffic studies, and environmental impact assessments.

Back North

I’m back from the land of fireworks, toll-free roads and 70 mph speed limits. The most jarring reminder might have been the I-95 rest stop in Lower Chichester, where the faucets and flushers were not hands free and the wooden picnic tables were chained to cement pads.

Granted, a year-long $5.9 million renovation project for the station  is supposed to start May 1 which hopefully takes them to where the Southern stops have been for at least a decade.

Maybe it will even have free wi-fi like the Florida Welcome Center. And, no, I’m not suggesting Pennsylvania give out free orange juice.

And GOP lieutenant governor candidate Russ Diamond has reported from the campaign trail that it is snowing outside of Scranton.

Feds Foil Fast Eddie’s Plot To Toll I-80

The U.S. Department of Transportation, yesterday, kiboshed Gov. Rendell’s plan to turn I-80 into a toll road saying that the law only allows
tolls on an interstate highway to be used for maintenance of that highway.

Rendell said he wanted to use the money for SEPTA projects and maintenance of other roads although forgive me if I suspect that he saw it as a fungible stash to be used for pension fund bailouts, raises for state workers and rewarding connected types with jobs.

Today’s Philadelphia Inquirer is whining on the front page about the fed action and describing all the wonderful things that will now not happen such as new smart-card fare system for SEPTA and the reconstruction of the City
Hall station.

Poor babies.

You think maybe they could have pointed out that travel time up north won’t be unnecessarily extended and the cost of delivery of things like food to supermarkets wouldn’t be artificially inflated.

Or you think that maybe they might have pointed out that some money for things it thinks are so wonderful could be found by simply ending prevailing wage requirements for municipal projects or  the right to strike for all government workers like those at SEPTA.