Posted on 12/31/2019 4:45:29 PM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Pennsylvania Turnpike users can expect 6% toll increases in 2020 and 2021 but then — if the state Legislature follows through with plans to change how the state funds public transit — the rate of annual increases gradually will go down to 3% in 2028.
Nikolaus Grieshaber, the turnpike’s chief financial officer, outlined the agency’s financial future recently in an interview with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette about the 6% toll hike that begins Jan. 5. The increase marks the 12th year in a row that rates have gone up and will increase the fee for a car traveling the length of the state to $61.80 from the current $58.30 for cash customers, and to $44.20 from $41.70 for E-ZPass users who several times had smaller increases to boost the use of the prepaid cards.
Mr. Grieshaber said the agency needs the rate hikes the next two years to cover the cost of debt service, which is about $750 million a year. That’s more than half of the turnpike’s annual revenue of about $1.4 billion.
“More than half of our revenue is going into debt service,” he said. “We have a lot of debt to pay down.
A major reason for the growing debt has been the turnpike’s obligation to pay $450 million a year to the state Department of Transportation to help pay for public transit. It borrows most of that money every year because it doesn’t have the cash on hand to pay it.
(Excerpt) Read more at post-gazette.com ...
PING.
That’s the nice thing about paying via RFID, toll increases become stealth
I’m about 200 miles from the nearest toll rod and plan to keep it that way.
Dog-bites-man story. Now, tolls going down, that would be news.
This is the states way of taxing the PA Turnpike users without calling it a tax.
The cheezy pols don't have the guts to raise the gas tax since it is one of the highest in the nation, so they put a levy on the turnpike and the commission just keep raising the usage rate, and only the turnpike users get screwed, while city users of public transportation get the benefit.
Holy moley.
$62 from the Ohio Gateway across to Philadelphia?
It’s enough to make you look for an alternate route.
Still paying for Slick Eddie Rendell
Public Transit??......Give everybody a free “Obama Car”...problem solved....../s
You need to take out a second mortgage to drive on the PA turnpike. Find an alternate route.
Yeah well Corbett was almost as bad.. useless inept wimp Gop governors have screwed us.
When was the last bus fare increase? I guess it wasn’t enough of an increase.
...and if you believe that...
...your tax should go up 50%...
I don’t like toll rods either....
I seem to remember something about the turnpike that it opened ahead of schedule and below budget, and was supposed to be paid off in the 1970s. Forty years after that plan expired it’s 10 billion dollars in debt and nearly everyone who works there or has worked there in the last forty years has a connection with a PA politician: nephew, mistress, idiot son of a donor, etc...
If you want the corruption to end in PA, at least one halfway noncorrupt political party has to be available to vote for.
When they say “public transit” they are really talking about SEPTA and the corrupt state unions.
When “Fast” Eddie Rendell was the governor of Philadelphia, he pushed this crap through, along with the casino tax. The idiot Corbet was suckered into raising the gasoline tax, to also pay for mass transit. It is a bottomless pit of corruption.
Toll roads that pay for mass transit—brilliant! ;-)
Corbitt was worse. He framed Joe Paterno.
Corbett’s job before becoming Gov was “in-house legal counsel “ for the garbage hauling Waste Management Inc.
As AG he started the Paterno fiasco and as Gov sitting on Penn State Board of Trustees he became judge and jury. Joe was one of the few people with pure integrity. I didn’t care for him as a coach, but I’ll never challenge his goodness. I taught at Penn State in State College and observed Joe long enough to trust him.
I had several lunch meetings with Rendell. He oozed corruption.
I observed first hand how he rigged the approval of the casino gambling license for DeNaples, the organized crime boss in the Scranton area.
Wolfe is equally corrupt.
They need to investigate his agreement with the Massachusetts firm that is fraudulently squeezing Pennsylvania taxpayers through Wolfe’s agreement with them through the PA Dept. Of Revenue.
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