The legislative mandate is also having another impact: The turnpike is reducing planned spending on maintenance, improvements and expansion. An ambitious rebuilding plan that includes expansion of the turnpike to six lanes in many areas has already been reduced by $1 billion over the next 10 years. As a result the turnpike has been saddled with making annual payments to PennDOT and no source to fund those transfers except annual fare hikes. State officials appealed to both the Bush and Obama administrations for approval of the scheme, but were rejected. That revenue would offset the mandated subsidy to PennDOT. Since the passage of Act 44, $5.2 billion in fare revenue has been diverted from turnpike operations to PennDOT.Īct 44 was passed with the unrealistic expectation that Interstate 80 would be converted to a toll road operated by the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission. PennDOT then spends the money on highway maintenance and on subsidizing mass transit operations. But, in this case the problem has been caused by the state Legislature, not by turnpike administration.Īct 44 of 2007 requires the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission to make payments of $450 million per year to the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation. It would be easy to blame mismanagement and the turnpike commission’s often criticized hiring and contracting practices for these annual rate hikes. Thus, we can expect the past decade's "relatively flat" traffic volumes to either remain so, or perhaps even decline as such significant toll hikes continue to be implemented. These two projections are inherently contradictory as basic economics dictates that consumers use less of a product as prices rise - especially if prices rise at a much faster rate than the income of the purchaser.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |