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.

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.

Turnpike Chief Reportedly Charged By Feds

It’s being tweeted that former Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission Chairman Mitchell Rubin has just been charged by feds with obstruction of justice stemming from the Vince Fumo investigation.

The Commission was ordered by federal investigators to retain documents last November.

UpdateRubin, 57, of Philadelphia has been charged with obstructing the grand jury investigation of ex-State former State Sen. Vincent J. Fumo.

Rubin is accused of withholding information relating to a Senate contract that Fumo arranged to award to a company Rubin co-owned, according to Acting United States Attorney Virginia Gibson.

Turnpike Chief Reportedly Charged By Feds

Turnpike Chief Reportedly Charged By Feds

Benefield’s Excellent Plan For Not Tolling I-80

The Big-Spenders-With-Our-Ransacked-Money (BSWORMs) who now run Pennsylvania are still scheming for  toll booths on I-80.

Nathan Benefield of the Commonwealth Foundation has come up with a list of alternatives  for finding the desperately needed dollars that the BSWORMs say must come from new government-caused traffic snarls.

Benefield’s suggestions are:

  • Repeal prevailing wage laws which mandate wages for government projects 40 percent higher, on average, than the private sector pays for the same work; and would free up hundred of millions, if not billions, for highway construction and repair.

  • Stop redirecting highway and bridge money to other purposes. 
  • Enable public-private partnerships, especially for new construction like express lanes, high occupancy lanes, new highways, new bridges etc.
  • Eliminate the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission (PTC) –rolling the Turnpike Commission into PennDOT, would eliminate an unnecessary bureaucracy and offer substantial saving in transportation spending.

  • Privatize rest stops.




Excellent ideas all; and I would also point out that forbidding all government workers from striking — which would include SEPTA employees and public school teachers — would free up a lot of state money for highway projects since the state would not have to subsidize public schools and transportation to the degree it now does.

I would also point out that making the Pennsylvania Turnpike a freeway and replacing the revenue by hiking the gasoline tax (or by spending less) would be a net tax cut since we would no longer have to pay the people to snarl the traffic.

Rate Hike For Pa.’s Self-Inflicted Traffic Snarls

Pennsylvania’s self-inflicted traffic snarls become more expensive, Jan. 3, when the Turnpike Commission raises the rate by 3 percent.

The PTC raised the rate by 25 percent last January.

Toll booths are always devices funded by taxpayers to snarl traffic,waste gas and produce smog and are an extraordinarily inefficient meansof raising revenue.

Kudos to the Commonwealth Foundation for the tip.

Thornburgh Say End ‘Top Heavy’ Turnkpike Commission

Former Pa. Gov. Dick Thornburgh is the latest to call for ending the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission.

He notes that the ” top-heavy”  PTC, with more than 2,000 employees,  manages 537 miles of turnpike highways; compared to PennDOT which manages nearly40,000 highway miles along with tens of thousands more miles of localroads, railways and bridges.

“The Turnpike Commission is a haven for those who wish to gorgethemselves upon commonwealth tax dollars and load the payroll forpolitical purposes.”

Couldn’t say it any better, although It’s always nice to note that toll booths are always devices funded by taxpayers to snarl traffic, waste gas and produce smog and are an extraordinarily inefficient means of raising revenue.

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Retired Congressman Says Dump Pa. Turnpike Commission

John E. Peterson, who represented Pennsylvania’s 5th District in Congress from 1997 until his retirement in 2009, is saying dump the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission.

Before winning election to Congress, Peterson held the state Senate seat for the 25th District which  along the New York border in the center of the state.

“I served in the State Senate for 12 years and saw firsthand howthe Turnpike Commission is the Senate’s patronage pit.  It is a cauldron of corruption,” said Peterson.

Well said, Congressman. You can also point out to those concerned about energy conservation or greenhouse gas emissions that toll plaza traffic snarls don’t help things.

This morning, btw, five Republican state representatives filed a bill abolish the Turnpike Commission. HB 2134 would transfer the transfer its assets and functions to PennDOT.

And did you know that the Turnpike was designed so that the straightaways could be negotiated at 102 mph and the curves at 90?


Feds Order Turnpike Workers To Retain Documents.

Pennsylvania Turnpike employees have received an email ordering them to
retain a wide range of documents because of multiple corruption
investigations, according to TollRoadNews.Com. The email called a Revised Mandatory Preservation Order
gives an indication of the scope of the FBI and state’s attorney’s
probes.

Records must be frozen for 33 companies or persons doing business with the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission. Click on the link to see the list.