Impact of I-80 tolls wide

Trucking companies will not be the only ones hit in the pocketbook if Interstate 80 becomes a toll road.

Wilkes-Barre, Mountain Top and Hazleton residents commuting into New Jersey and New York to work may be forced to pay an additional $2,000 in tolls per year, per driver to get to the state border, depending on the placement of toll collecting gantries along I-80.

Stretching for 311 miles in the state, I-80 garners commuters from many surrounding local communities. Commuters from Wilkes-Barre often utilize the Interstate 81 interchange with I-80, located at mile marker 260.

A traffic study conducted by the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation shows that 306,060 workers from Northeast Pennsylvania commute to work , although it did not determine how many of those commuters from this area utilized I-80 on a daily basis.

Under Act 44, the state law allowing the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission to operate a 50-year lease on I-80, the price for a car, sport utility vehicle or small truck to drive on I-80 is set at 8 cents a mile – with an annual 3 percent increase in cost.

Depending on the placement of the gantries, a round trip to the New Jersey border and back could cost as much as $8.16 per day in tolls, or $40.80 each work week – adding up to $2,040 in tolls annually.

The earliest the tolls will go into effect is fall 2010 and the Turnpike Commission still needs the approval of the Federal Highway Administration to transform I-80 into a toll road. Some local trucking companies, however, are already preparing for the transition.

Edward Deets owns Northeast Transfer and Autobus in Mountain Top. The company owns a combined 57 trucks and buses – all of them use I-80 on every route. The company usually runs about 15 trips per day.

Everyone will pay

William Keil, general manager of Northeast Transfer and Autobus, said the tolling of I-80 is going to hurt businesses all around Pennsylvania.

“It’s an increase that rebounds right down the line and everybody is going to have to pay it,” Keil said. “If that goes toll, it’s going to affect everything you buy because the trucks that run the interstate are going to be handing down (excess prices) to the consumer.

Keil said he thinks the trucking industry is being unfairly singled out for the problems with the state’s roads and bridges. He noted his company has to pay a $1,400 registration fee for each truck tractor it owns every year.

The company also undergoes a yearly fuel tax audit. Depending on how many miles tractor-trailers travel in a particular state, the company has to pay a tax per mile or buy an equivalent amount of fuel to offset the tax.

“Pennsylvania is one of the highest states in the nation for fuel tax at 38 cents per gallon,” Keil said.

In addition, a $550 Federal Highway Road Use tax has to be paid for every tractor on a yearly basis – money that Keil said is supposed to go directly to road repair.

“The Federal Highway Road Use tax is supposed to be earmarked for road repair,” Keil said. “But only 35 percent of that goes to the road. The other 65 percent goes into mass transit and other uses.”

Keil said the company will not move out of the area. Rather the solution many truck drivers will take is to use more state routes and smaller roadways to avoid the I-80 tolls.

“Guys are going to start running other routes because they can’t afford to pay the tolls,” Keil said. “The drivers know the ways around I-80, and then it’s going to add travel time, add fuel cost and put a lot of traffic on small-town roads. They’re going to be running other routes through little towns. The traffic is coming back. It’s got to be done for survival.”

Revenue shortfall

The Transportation Funding and Reform Commission issued a report in November 2006 that identified a $1.6 billion annual deficit in the state’s transportation network. That led the state legislature to begin looking for sources of revenue to fill that gap.

The 50-year lease between the PennDOT and the Turnpike Commission to turn I-80 into a toll road was approved on July 18, when the state Legislature passed Act 44 and Gov. Ed Rendell signed it.

The lease of the interstate has yielded $292 million in payments from the Turnpike Commission this year and is estimated to generate $116 billion in revenue over the life of the lease, according to turnpike documentation. The Turnpike Commission will invest $2 billion over the next 10 years to operate, maintain and improve I-80.

U.S. Rep. Paul Kanjorski, D-Nanticoke, said the nation’s roads are near a crisis state.

“Both at the federal government and the state government, we’ve under-funded the maintenance of roads and bridges,” Kanjorski said. “We have a serious problem and we do not have enough revenue. Every state in the nation needs more highway funding. If we don’t have it, the infrastructure in this state is going to collapse.”