By Eric Boehm | PA Independent
Credit: Tom Sofield/LevittownNow.com
Another round of toll increases are coming down the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
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Followed by another. And another. And then about 25 more.
The Turnpike Commission announced Tuesday that tolls will increase next year by 6 percent for all drivers, regardless of whether payment is made with cash or via EZ-Pass. When the increases takes effect on Jan. 3, 2016, it will mark the eighth consecutive year in which tolls on the highway have increased.
But wait, things are just getting started.
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According to turnpike officials, annual increases of more than 3 percent will continue until 2044 — at least.
“We are confident that we can continue to moderate future increases through improved efficiencies, however we have no choice but to increase tolls as we move forward,” said Sean Logan, chairman of the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission, in a statement announcing the higher rates. “At the moment, traffic and revenue forecasts estimate annual increases of three to six percent will be required until 2044.”
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By then, according to our calculations, the cost of using the highway will more than triple.
The toll increases are largely the result of Act 44 of 2007, which effectively used the turnpike’s borrowing ability as a way to fund transportation projects across the state. Under the terms of the law, the turnpike has to transfer $500 million to the state Department of Transportation every year.
The turnpike has racked up billions of dollars of debt since 2007. The higher tolls are being used to pay off that debt.
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When the General Assembly passed a multi-billion-dollar transportation funding bill in 2013, it limited the turnpike’s future payments to PennDOT. Even so, the turnpike is on the hook for $5 billion in additional payments through 2057, Logan said.
The Turnpike Commission has asked state lawmakers for further cuts in those future payments to the state. In the meantime, the commission is focused on saving money in other ways and has cut its staffing by 7 percent over the past decade, largely due to the increased use of electronic toll-collecting.
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How much will it cost to keep driving on the Pennsylvania Turnpike? We crunched the numbers to gaze into the future.
Like any projection, there are a few caveats here. Logan said annual toll increases will be between 3 percent and 6 percent, so we used an estimate of 4.5 percent per year.
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The turnpike doesn’t provide per-mile toll costs, which we’re using as the basis of this projection, so we had to improvise a little.
According to Toll Roads News, the average per-mile fee for using the highway was 8.3 cents in 2014 — that was before a 5 percent hike that took effect in January — so we’re comfortable using that as the basis for our projections.
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With those basics out of the way, we’re able to look ahead to 2044.
By then it will cost more than 30 cents to drive a mile on the turnpike — more than three times the current cost, and a trip from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh (about 270 miles on the turnpike) will cost nearly $80, up from about $22 now.
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If you still plan on using cash in the distant future world of 2044, the prices will be even higher: 43 cents per mile and as much as $118 for a trip from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh.
That’s not quite as bad as a previous projection by state Auditor General Eugene DePasquale. In 2013, before the changes to the turnpike’s annual payments were approved by the Legislature, DePasquale said it could cost as much as $50 to drive across the state by 2021.
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Those reforms seem to have lowered the long-term toll increase, but only slightly. Now, a $50 toll for a Pittsburgh-to-Philadelphia trip won’t be a reality until the mid-2030s.
Our projections could be off a little bit one way or the other, since future toll hikes might be lower, or higher, than the 4.5 percent we used for this model, and the per-mile rate used here is not a precise measure of how much every driver pays for every trip.
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But if tolls continue to increase for the next three decades, as Logan predicts, the cost of driving a car down the Pennsylvania Turnpike will roughly triple.
