In one week, toll roads in two different parts of the country will begin charging truckers more for traveling over their pavement.
The Pennsylvania Turnpike and the Kansas Turnpike will increase their rates Sunday, Aug. 1. However, the two increases could not be more different.
Pennsylvania will increase the toll for an 80,000-pound, class 8 truck from $105.55 to $150.75 for traveling the entire length of the turnpike’s 359-mile main line. That’s an increase of just under 13 cents per mile.
Kansas, on the other hand, will increase tolls from $24.40 to $25.75 for the same truck traveling the full 236-mile length of its toll road. That increase amounts to just over a half cent per mile. In fact, after the increase the entire toll for a truck crossing Kansas will be roughly 11 cents per mile – 2 cents per mile less than the Pennsylvania increase.
Carl DeFebo, a public information manager with the Pennsylvania Turnpike Authority, told Land Line in January, when the increase was approved, that travelers would pay on average 42.5 percent more for the ticketed section of the turnpike.
Pennsylvania Turnpike CEO Joseph G. Brimmeier said in a statement that the toll hikes would finance a number of infrastructure improvements along the aging east-west “Main Line” and Northeast Extension, doubling the rate of capital spending over the next 10 years. The commission has pledged that all revenue from the increase will be used for repairs and improvements to the road.
In Kansas, that state’s Turnpike Commission said its increase was necessary to “maintain sound financial condition while preparing for future capital needs.”
Those “capital needs” include an extra lane in each direction between the Kansas City metropolitan area, which the commission estimates will cost $92 million, and a group of projects around Lawrence, KS, which sits along that stretch of the highway. The Lawrence projects, which are estimated at $125 million, include new bridges over the Kansas River and two new interchanges. It is scheduled for completion in 2012.
Lisa Callahan, a Kansas Turnpike spokeswoman, said the increase, which will be the seventh in the 50-year history of that toll road, was being kept low to lessen the impact on drivers.
“It’s a small, 5 percent increase,” she said. “We purposely kept it small to make it easier to take.”
Considering the reaction in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, that may turn out to be wise.
When the Pennsylvania increase was announced, calls and letters flooded into the offices of Land Line and OOIDA from truckers who said they planned to avoid the road after the increase.
Turnpike officials told The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette they had forecast a 5 percent drop in truck traffic after Aug. 1, adding that they thought any reduction in truck traffic would be temporary.
"It's safe to say that initially an increase is going to drive people off the system," Carl DeFebo, a public information manager with the Pennsylvania Turnpike Authority, told the Pittsburgh newspaper. "But it's also safe to say that over time, people will come back."
However, Todd Spencer, executive vice president of OOIDA, said not only did he think the 5 percent estimate was low; he predicted that few drivers would return to the toll road later on.
“When you’re talking about that much, people alter their driving habits permanently based on that kind of crap,” he said.
Spencer recalled Pennsylvania’s last toll increase in 1991 – about 30 percent, far lower than the current proposal. Despite being lower, that increase resulted in a 13 percent drop in truck traffic and other commercial vehicles using the road, and a 15 percent reduction in the amount of toll revenue collected.
“I think it’ll be more than that (the state’s estimated drop) if it was 15 percent previously,” Spencer said.
An example of just that can be found just across Pennsylvania’s western border in Ohio. That state’s turnpike experienced significant drops in revenue after that state raised tolls there.
The increase in Ohio, 82 percent, went into effect in 1995. But, according to figures published by The Associated Press, the negative effect of that continues to the present: in 2002, commercial trucks made up 56 percent of the highway’s revenue; in 1994, it made up 62 percent.
The Ohio toll road has other strikes against it. For example, the state’s split speed limits not only limit trucks to 55 mph on smaller, non-toll highways, it also limits them to that speed, 10 mph lower than other traffic, on the Turnpike.
As a result, truckers instead are using alternate, non-toll routes, and many cities along those routes are complaining because of increased traffic. The problem has been in the news in Ohio on and off for the past year, including a report in a recent issue of The Cleveland Plain Dealer.
The drop in revenue along the toll road has been significant enough that the state at one point asked the federal government for $250,000 to pay for a study to determine how to bring truckers back to the toll road. Among the options being considered – lowering tolls.
“We don’t need to spend $250,000 of taxpayer’s money to tell us the obvious,” state Rep. Bob Gibbs, R-Lakeville, said. “Why would any business pay to use a service when they can receive practically the same service at lower cost?”
--by Mark H. Reddig, associate editor
Mark Reddig can be reached at mark_reddig@landlinemag.com.
