Toll roads apparently divert traffic and increase accidents.
The researchers analyzed decades of data from the Ohio Turnpike and nearby alternate routes in Ohio, comparing both to national data to determine the effects the toll rates had on nearby free roads. Ohio raised toll rates in the 1990s and subsequently lowered them, allowing an easier calculation of the effect of different rate levels. The study showed that as the Turnpike toll increased, truck traffic increased on alternate, free routes as truckers balanced the monetary savings with the cost of the extra time needed to take an indirect route.
I doubt Rendell will care. The sections of Pennsylvania that I-80 goes through are the parts that didn’t vote for him. If their costs go up, so what? As long as everyone else can keep paying more for Philadelphia dysfunctional mass transit system, I’m sure that’s fine by him.
Of course it makes perfect sense to toll people in the poorer parts of the state to prop up the woefully incompetent SEPTA system in the most wealthy part of the state. At least it probably does to someone who thinks that my carrying a handgun is responsible for Philadelphia crime.
I like toll roads, in principle. The problem I have is when roads become toll roads to “pay for road maintenance” when I already have a road tax, a wheel tax, and a gas tax, which are all also supposed to be for “road maintenance”.
On the flip side, when I lived in Herndon, I used to drive on the Dulles Toll Road every day, and that thing was freakin’ great. 4-5 lanes, big exits, fantastic. I loved the DTR.
I like toll roads if their construction was not funded with taxpayer money. But once I paid for the construction of a road, it is wrong to charge me for the use of it so that people in a different region can ride a flawed transit system.
I;m not comfortable with any road receiving federal highway funds being a toll-road, to be honest. Because of the fungibility of money, if I-80 is tolled, it means that not only will the folks around I-80 be subsidising SEPTA (they at least can vote in PA and have a small chance of changing things – the proverbial Snowflake’s changes, perhaps); but that myself and everyone else across the nation will be subsidizing SEPTA…
But I suppose once I have to subsidize the WMATA (DC Metro), which I’ve at least USED; the rest follows. But At least the money is being spent via the federal government’s responsibility for the Federal District.
(Of the various mass transit systems I’ve used, Metro and it’s affiliates seem to be the best; but rather higher in cost).
Drive 80. road surface sucks
Drive the turnpike road surface sucks, but at least the on ramps are horrible and the road is narrow.
Pa turnpike commission has to be as crooked as a do;s hind leg, or the roads would be worth a damn. It ain’t.
That foul POS Rendell is the worst thing to come along since the Klinton whitehouse .
Puck Filadelphia lawyers.
Peterson’s retiring, so the crusader against raising I-80 tolls won’t be with us much longer, but plenty of other politicians lined up with him. I don’t think Eddie’s toll raises are going to happen.