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.