PITTSBURGH (TNS) — The Pennsylvania Turnpike will install overhead tolling gantries on nine bridges that the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation is considering for tolls.
The work will be part of the turnpike’s $125 million project to install open-road tolling to replace the former toll booths along its 450-mile system.
The possibility of PennDOT adding tolls to bridges to raise money for their replacement is still under consideration, but the agency is finalizing an agreement with the turnpike to collect tolls. Among the bridges eyed for tolls are Interstate 80 bridges over Canoe Creek in Clarion County and North Fork in Jefferson County.
The turnpike is an obvious choice to operate the collection system — something PennDOT hasn’t done. The gantries are expected to record payments from motorists of $1 to $2 each time they use the bridges if they have an E-ZPass transponder or take a license plate photo and send the owner a bill by mail if they don’t have a transponder.
The turnpike will turn the receipts over to PennDOT. Turnpike spokesman Carl DeFebo said PennDOT will reimburse the turnpike for the cost of the gantries, collection equipment, customer service and any other staff cost, but the agency won’t make any money on the deal.
PennDOT is in the process of making its case with federal officials to allow tolling on the bridges. Spokeswoman Alexis Campbell said the agency has completed the public comment period on two of the bridges, five others will finish that process this month, and the Bridgeville structure and another one will have public comment periods in the spring.
The agency wants to turn over operation of the bridges for 30 years to a private company that would use toll funds for replacement and maintenance. The agency says the bridges need to be replaced, but it would be too expensive for the agency to do the work itself.
PennDOT says it receives about $6.9 billion for road work annually, less than half of the $15 billion it says it should be spending. Additional money the state will receive under the federal infrastructure bill wouldn’t be enough to fix the shortfall, it says.
The agency is studying potential problems that tolling could cause on local roads if motorists avoid the tolled bridges, and it is conducting an environmental review of the area around each bridge before it seeks federal approval.
At the same time, PennDOT has narrowed to three the field of potential teams to take over the bridges. It will seek formal proposals this month and choose a development team by the end of March.
The three teams, which could receive all or some of the bridges, are:
—Bridging Pennsylvania Partners, comprised of Macquarie Infrastructure Developments; Shikun & Binui Concessions USA Inc; STV Inc.; FCC Construction S.A.; Shikun & Binui — America Inc; and SAI Consulting Engineers Inc.
—Keystone Pathway Developers, comprised of Kiewit (Development Company, Engineering Group Inc., and Infrastructure Co., dba Keystone Pathway Constructors); Star America PA Bridges; and Urban Engineers Inc.
—Keystone Pathways Mobility Partners, comprised of Cintra Infrastructures SE, Itinera Infrastructure and Concessions Inc.; Halmar International and North Tarrant Infrastructure (unincorporated joint venture); Jacobs Engineering Group Inc.; and KS Engineers, P.C.
The tolling plan also faces a legal challenge from officials in South Fayette, Collier and Bridgeville, who filed suit in Commonwealth Court last month. They claim the possibility of tolling improperly received blanket authorization from the state’s Public-Private Partnership Board rather than the board reviewing each project after environmental and traffic impact studies.
Meanwhile, the turnpike is moving ahead with open-road tolling after it decided in May 2020 to move up elimination of toll collectors by about 18 months due to the pandemic and become a cashless system. Motorists pay tolls with E-ZPass or face a 45% penalty if they are billed by mail after cameras take photos of their license plates.
Currently, many tolls are charged at E-ZPass lanes at unmanned plazas, but the turnpike is converting to open-road tolling, where overhead gantries are placed on the main line. The turnpike is installing the gantries and fiber optic cable from east to west. Last week, commissioners approved adding $125 million to its contract with TransCore to provide data collection equipment on the gantries.
That equipment reads the transponders, checks the height and number of axles on vehicles to determine the toll and takes license plate photos if there is no transponder.
Craig Shuey, the turnpike’s chief operating officer, said the recommendation to use TransCore was “the culmination of a lot of research and a lot of work” testing potential systems on the turnpike’s Northeast Extension.
”This is the next phase of our all-electronic tolling conversion,” Shuey told the commission. “At the end of this contract, we will move away from having any billing systems at the interchanges. All tolling will be done over the road.”
DeFebo said the agency will begin by installing 19 gantries from Reading to the New Jersey border and along the Northeast Extension. That will be completed by 2024.
The agency is still choosing locations and designing gantries for the rest of the state and expects to have them in operation by 2026.
Once the gantries are in place and operating, the turnpike will remove the old plazas, beginning in 2025 in the east and 2027 in the west.
