turnpike

West Virginia senate majority leader Truman Chafin (Democrat) wanted to legislate for a special $1 toll at the state turnpike's three mainline toll plazas for residents of four counties (Kanawha, Fayette, Raleigh and Mercer) adjoining the Turnpike but he ran into a head-on conflict with the US Constitution.

North Carolina Turnpike Authority (NCTA) have slimmed down their planned Garden Parkway on the westside of the Charlotte NC metro area to reduce its costs and make it fly financially. What was a $1280m project early 2009 has a year later been cut by 27% to $928m. Construction cost is dropped 35% from $1021m to $662m and right of way cost 7% from $191m to $179m.

West Virginia Turnpike authority has taken delivery of four emergency median barrier gates. They will be installed in a mountainous stretch of the Turnpike where interchanges and access are distant. The purchase follows a furore over some hundreds of motorists trapped in their cars for up to 24 hours during the pre-Christmas blizzard and some 40 inches (1m) of snow in ten hours. Traffic was backed up for miles by tractor-trailers jack-knifing on ice and multiple rear-ender collisions.

North Carolina Turnpike Authority (NCTA) people say they have signed well priced contracts for all-electronic toll systems for the new Triangle Expressway. Overall cost of three of four toll procurements was $37.6m v $46.5 engineers' prior estimate - a 19% saving.

Mary Z Connaughton, former Massachusetts Turnpike Authority board member and an accountant by profession says folding the Turnpike into a new state department of transportation as "reform" is a flop. She notes in a column she has just written - published in MetroWest Daily News Dec 13 - that claims before the merger of a $6.5b saving over 20 years are now being downplayed by the Patrick administration.

The media have been calling her Tammy the Turnpike Turkey. She made the Jersey City/Liberty Park Exit 14B toll plaza of the New Jersey Turnpike her home for months through noon today, defying several attempts over a couple of weeks by Turnpike staff and state wildlife people to move her out.

The large US Department of Justice prosecution that put the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission's longtime state senate patron Vincent Fumo into jail for four and a half years for 137 counts of thievery and corruption was run by Patrick Meehan, the US Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

Former Pennsylvania Turnpike staffer and "consultant" S Michael Palermo, 69, pled guilty to fraud today in US District Court in Philadelphia. Charged with receiving $290k in state funds through phony work contracts arranged with Democrat Senate leader Vincent Fumo, Palermo admitted receiving the payoffs and agreed to repay the money to the state in return for 12 months house arrest and five years probation.

Turnpike pay scales and conditions often 50% higher than the state highway department are causing major problems in efforts to integrate the two into a new Massachusetts DOT. The incoming secretary and present Turnpike CEO Jeffrey Mullan said this week in the state legislature that reconciling the differences presented "significant challenges."

Ohio Turnpike Commission will fire up their first electronic toll system October 1, and the E-ZPass Inter Agency Group (IAG) will be able to boast a continuous interoperable toll system from Maine to southern Virginia and from Boston harbor and Rhode Island to west of Chicago.

Mass Turnpike CEO Jeffrey Mullan has written that the state Treasurer Timothy Cahill committed "several basic inaccuracies" in comments he made suggesting a settlement of the class action lawsuit led by Jan Schlichtmann. The suit claims use of Turnpike tolls to support the untolled Big Dig are illegal unconstitutional and unfair. It seeks refunds and an end to the practice of using tolls for untolled roads.

A lot of the campaigning for the next governor in New Jersey is about who will get the most windmills erected and taxes contained and jobs saved, but incumbent Gov Jon Corzine is making a major pitch for enhancing tollroad capacity, showing up at two big groundbreakings in recent days, playing for the cameras.

July 2 Corzine and leading officials were at Hightstown for ceremonies to celebrate a start on widening the NJ Turnpike Exits 6 to 9.

Smart, informed, curious, hardworking, fearless, a good speaker and a quick writer, Mary Z Connaughton is the kind of board member every public toll authority could use. An accounting teacher, she is also a partner in a business development firm. Here's her explanation of how the Massachusetts Turnpike got into a financial mess with "swaptions" - an edited version of a piece she did for a blog at the Boston Herald - full version here:

Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission will be issuing an RFP shortly for a planning study of the future of their Allegheny Mountain tunnels. Two 2-lane tubes 1850m long they date back to 1940 and 1965. A study of alternatives in the 1990s concluded the tunnels should be abandoned in favor of a 67m (220ft) deep cut to the north of the tunnels.

With a July 1 deadline for due bond payment of $11m looming, and insufficient cash to pay it the West Virginia state toll authority is finally moving to raise toll rates to avert a default. A 60% increase in cash toll rates is being proposed, mitigated by a 25% discount for West Virginia E-ZPass transponder customers. For WV E-ZPass users the increases will be 20% after the new 25% discount.

The state governor, house speaker and senate president today released a joint statement calling on the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority board of directors to defer the March 29 toll increase they voted at their last meeting. This is a U-turn by the Governor Deval Patrick.

Vincent Fumo, the Pennsylvasnia Turnpike's leading legislative patron while a Democrat state senator and Ruth Arnao, wife of the chairman of the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission have been found guilty on all 182 counts in the big corruption case against them tried in Philadelphia by the US Government.

Stimulus grants for highways have set off political fights over whether they should be used for tollroads. The biggest fight is in West Virginia where the Manchin administration is at odds with powerful legislators over whether stimulus-$s can be used for the West Virginia Turnpike. The administration says "No, the feds won't allow it." 

In the Senate the majority leader Truman Chafin (Dem) and the Minority Leader Don Caruth (Rep) are sponsoring legislation to require federal stimulus funds be used on the Turnpike.

Controversy continues in New England over whether government toll operations should be conducted within a state DOT or through a public toll authority. New Hampshire has represented the first model with toll operations part of the New Hampshire DOT while, at time of writing, Maine and Massachusetts have their toll authorities.

West Virginia Joe Manchin says he's committed to returning the state's parkway authority to what he calls "its core and original mission" of running the state Turnpike.

In the past year there has been mounting criticism of financial mess made by the authority's decade and a half long involvement in tourism and economic development - political euphemisms for putting money into marginal business projects most of which turn out to be lossmakers.