Pa. Turnpike to Eliminate Toll Plazas and Cash Payments
Plans are in the works to make the Pennsylvania Turnpike all electronic and get rid of toll plazas
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Officials are planning a dramatic conversion of the Pennsylvania Turnpike to all electronic tolling with no more toll plazas or cash payments in about five years.
Turnpike Commission officials told state lawmakers that the project is the most ambitious of its kind in the nation.
Instead of driving through toll plazas, vehicles will pass beneath sensors that will automatically deduct tolls from E-Z Pass accounts or photograph license plates so a bill can be sent to the owner.
In July, the commission hired a contractor -- HNTB Corp., a Missouri company with five offices including one in Harrisburg -- to move forward with the plans to convert to an all-electronic tolling system that would eliminate the use of cash along the 545-mile route, according to a Pennlive.com report.
It costs more than $67 million a year to staff toll plazas and that cost is projected to rise to $77 million by 2014.
Meanwhile, turnpike tolls will increase in January.
John Fox
8:46 am on Sunday, November 18, 2012
I just went to South Carolina, I hope that every state does this, traffic backed up at every toll plaza, even in the ez pass only lanes. Yank out the toll booths and go full electronic like the ez pass express lane at the northeast extension!
Harry Piels
10:05 am on Sunday, November 18, 2012
But where will the policiticans find jobs for their buddies?
tracystough
12:38 pm on Sunday, November 18, 2012
that's funny:)
Andrew Wilt
10:56 am on Sunday, November 18, 2012
Would it not make more sense to fund the Turnpike a different way and do without tolls altogether? (Why are Route 78 and Route 81 and many other roads free?) Talk about saving money! No equipment to maintain, no personnel to process all the tolls, no postage, no trees to cut down for the bills and the envelopes, no Big Brother spying on our every move, no overly paid members of the Turnpike Commission, etc..
Bernardo
3:16 pm on Sunday, November 18, 2012
Sounds good to me. I had the same thought as I was reading the article. How about funding our current toll roads with a soda tax? Or maybe a tax on the upper 1%? Or maybe a tax on cat owners? Or maybe a tax on ________?
Barbara Scherer
3:18 pm on Sunday, November 18, 2012
More jobs lost in PA!
Tanya Bryant
7:51 pm on Sunday, November 18, 2012
Barbara I know! I heard some people lost their jobs at the buggy whip factory too. Really? More over paid state workers with bloated pensions and benefits will have to find real jobs.
Ben Miller
7:25 pm on Monday, November 19, 2012
That's pretty harsh, Tanya. It's the holiday season and a lot of good people just learned they will soon be out of jobs. You judgmentally lump them all into a category, which you call, "Over paid state workers with bloated pensions and benefits," yet I would venture to guess you have never met one of these folks.
How about you try something new here and show a little bit of compassion. Technology is constantly evolving and altering our society. Who knows, maybe one day you too, will find yourself made obsolete. Should that happen, I hope that you are treated with more dignity than you have shown these workers.
Barbara Scherer
2:45 pm on Sunday, January 6, 2013
I'm not saying they're not overpaid; they may or may not be. I'm saying that there will be more in the unemployment lines which we taxpayers will have to pay for! Personally I wouldn't want the job sitting in a toll booth and inhaling all those fumes from the traffic!
James Walter
11:26 pm on Monday, November 19, 2012
Not surprising coming from Ms. Bryant....just look at all her posts and she's bashing someone somewhere. And, well put Ben.
Don
8:44 am on Sunday, January 6, 2013
If it takes PennDot as long to implement electronic tolling as it does for them to fix the roads as they are now, the toll collectors will have their jobs for a long time to come.....
By the way -- I know Tanya - she has "problems", so cut her some slack.....
Tim
1:45 pm on Sunday, January 6, 2013
Going electronic is the way to go, Pa should have been implementing this long ago. 77mil a year just to staff is ridiculous, the salaries / benefits of these types of low skilled jobs is not warranted, high school grads or GED equivalency making this much money, true union mentality here with a touch of political "who you know" and nepatism. Going electronic will require less laborers, middle management and bloated benefit costs. But it should provide better paying jobs for people in fields of electronics, variuos engineering.
We can't keep setting ourselves back due to "this is the way we always do things" mentality, or feel obligated to keep very low skilled, higher paid jobs in place because of past history of mis-management, union greed and political corruption.