Pennsylvania I-80 tollers increasingly desperate - thumbs down from Feds feared

Whether the Feds will go along with the state plan to toll PA/I-80 is one of the hottest political issues in the state right now with dire predictions being made about the retrenchments that will be needed at state agencies if the US Secretary Transportation says no. At stake is an annual half a billion dollars the Pennsylvania Turnpike is due to pay the state with I-80 tolled that will be lost from another No.

The intensity of the political battle over tolling PA/I-80 is seen in a report this weekend in the Philadelphia Inquirer (20100214).

The Philadelphia area rail transit agency SEPTA plus labor union bosses "are demanding" - says the Inquirer report - that the state's US senator Arlen Specter "push (US) transportation secretary Ray LaHood to approve the tolls."

Another Philly heavy wants the US senator to intervene with no less than President Obama.

Patrick Eiding, president of the Philadelphia branch of the AFLCIO union is quoted: "I would like to see Specter go see the president and get this done. It's that important. And he's in a position where he can do that."

Pasquale Deon chairman of the SEPTA transit agency and a Turnpike commissioner is quoted: "Arlen (Specter) needs to be pushing for it and not dancing around it. He's like a ballerina."

(You can't help noticing the demeaning language these guys use about their US Senator!)

Specter: tolling "a state matter"

As for the senator his office is responding to this talk with a rote quote: "I believe that tolling I-80 is a state matter."

That is plain silly. Maybe tolling should be a state matter but it isn't.

Glossed over entirely by both the senator and the arm-twisting tough talk of his would-be puppeteers is the existence of federal law laying out detailed conditions under which the administration may, or may not, approve new tolling of interstates.  

Fitting a pilot program

Under present US law tolling, though a method of finance that goes back to antiquity, is treated as a dangerous new innovation that must be warily confined within several "pilot programs" of limited number and closely defined character.

PA/I-80 only conceivably fits within the  Interstate System Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Pilot Program (ISRRPP) under which the secretary of transportation "may permit a State to collect tolls on a highway, bridge, or tunnel on the  Interstate System for the purpose of reconstructing and       rehabilitating Interstate highway corridors that could not otherwise be adequately maintained or functionally improved  without the collection of tolls."

Third try

The Penn Pike has been knocked back twice on this proposal to toll I-80 which is heavily constrained by a law (Act 44) of the Pennsylvania legislature and contractual agreements and borrowings made by the Turnpike on behalf of the state DOT.

The state government's intention as laid down in Act 44 is not to toll I-80 principally for the purpose of reconstructing the road but to generate a new income stream for facilities outside the corridor - in clear contradiction of the law's objective.

All the hullabaloo and lamentations about the dire consequences of not tolling PA/I-80 are coming from transit interests in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. There's not a peep coming from people in the I-80 corridor about lack of tolls torpedoing plans for reconstructing or rehabbing their road.

The law states:

"Before the Secretary may permit a State to participate in the pilot program, the State must enter into an agreement  with the Secretary that provides that--
(A) all toll revenues received from operation of the toll facility will be used only for--  
(i) debt service;  
(ii) reasonable return on investment of any private person financing the project; and  
(iii) any costs necessary for the improvement of and the proper operation and maintenance of the toll facility, including reconstruction, resurfacing, restoration, and rehabilitation of the toll facility..."

That's all.

The plan to use northern Pennsylvania's I-80 as a money machine for sustaining loss-bleeding transit systems in the metro areas of the southwest and the southeast of the state just doesn't fit US law as it stands.

Even if secretary LaHood were to OK the PA/I-80 deal opponents would seem to have a good chance of getting the courts to overturn it afterward.

Detail on federal law:

http://www.ops.fhwa.dot.gov/tolling_pricing/index.htm

http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/tea21/h240subb.htm#1216

on Turnpike plans for I-80:

http://www.paturnpike.com/I80/

COMMENT: PA/I-80 should be tolled. Tolling I-80 would level the competition with the Turnpike to the south (I-76/I-70) and with the New York State Thruway (I-90) to the north, levy proper charges on trucks, and generate a revenue stream for maintenance and rehab of an important interstate trucking route.

Trouble is the plan being advanced by the Pennsylvania government under its Act 44 is designed to divert revenues to undeserving and unrelated facilities quite outside the corridor, and doesn't comply with federal law.

TOLLROADSnews 2010-03-15