The Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission is an obsolete and out-of-touch political patronage graveyard that should be abolished. The toll road itself should be responsibly leased to private enterprise.

		Bill Keisling is the author of several books about the Pennsylvania Turnpike, including "When the Levee Breaks: The Patronage Crisis at the Pennsylvania Turnpike" and "Helping Hands: Illegal Political Patronage in Pennsylvania and at the Pennsylvania Turnpike" (wk@yardbird.com).

The proceeds of the lease should not go to the coffers of the political parties. It should not be used finance no-bid bond and non-competitive legal work. Nor should it mostly be used to rebuild the rusted bridges and roadways of our carbon-based past.

The windfall should serve as a down payment for a modern, high-speed rail system running between Philadelphia, Harrisburg, State College and Pittsburgh. In this way we can leverage a great 19th-century failure, and a popular 20th-century success, into a revolutionary 21st-century transportation system for our commonwealth.

The history of the Pennsylvania Turnpike is deeply entwined with the history of Pennsylvania. The turnpike was a Roosevelt-era initiative of the Works Progress Administration. In the 1930s, when the turnpike was proposed, a major selling point was that it could be built along the path of an abandoned 19th-century rail and tunnel corridor across the Allegheny Mountains.

Why was this rail corridor partially built, only to be abandoned in the 19th century? It's a story of one of Pennsylvania's greatest failures.

By the early 1800s, Philadelphia had grown into America's premier city and port. All that changed in 1825, with the opening of New York's Erie Canal. The canal stimulated westward expansion, swelled New York City's population, and soon relegated Philadelphia's port and cultural centers to second-class status.

Hoping to reverse this trend and to compete with New York's canal and rail lines, 19th-century Pennsylvanians belatedly launched a number of schemes to haul freight and people across the commonwealth's western mountain barrier. All were too little, too late. These failed efforts produced the abandoned rail tunnels through the Alleghenies. In the late 1930s, those abandoned tunnels were used to jump start the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

The toll road was an immediate success. Pennsylvanians -- and Americans -- quickly fell in love with it. As America's first limited-access superhighway, the turnpike changed America, and Americans.

Even so, the turnpike was always about jobs and political patronage. The Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission that oversees the roadway from its inception was devised to evenly split the spoils between the two political parties.

For decades, if you wanted a job on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, you were obliged to turn over a portion of your pay to the ruling party's patronage boss. When I wrote my 1993 book "When the Levee Breaks: The Patronage Crisis at the Pennsylvania Turnpike," I interviewed a few retired turnpike workers who recalled forking over $50, twice a year, to the pols.

These legalized kickback practices were gradually whittled away by court decisions in the 1970s, '80s and '90s. Thereafter, the real money for the pols came not from lunch-bucket jobs but from what's come to be called "pinstripe patronage."

Bond underwriters, bond solicitors and others received extremely lucrative, no-bid turnpike contracts, and in return tendered big contributions to their political sponsors. In the 1980s, during the administration of Gov. Richard Thornburgh, one piece of turnpike legislation was even called "the Noah's ark deal," because beneficiaries included "two of everyone" -- a bond underwriter and solicitor of each political party.

In the 1990s, reform-minded state lawmakers like then-Rep. Pat Carone, R-Cranberry, held hearings about these and other deeply embedded turnpike patronage practices. Those of us interested in reform came to recognize pinstripe patronage as even more corrupting than lunch-bucket patronage. Widespread calls were made for competitive bidding for bonding and legal services.

All these proposed reforms were arrogantly ignored by the turnpike commission. Those seeking a fair crack at a job were forced to hire a lawyer and go to court, while turnpike attorneys threatened legal action against reformers, whistleblowers and writers (this one included). More recently, the commission has refused to investigate serious security lapses on the roadway.

That's why the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission should now be abolished. The roadway should be leased on a competitive bid basis. The public should be promised that tolls will be increased only in a predictable and reasonable manner. And yes, the bulk of the proceeds should be used to build a state-of-the-art, high-speed rail system, running from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh.

The proceeds of the turnpike lease should not be used primarily to convert rusty four-lane bridges in Pittsburgh and other places into rusty six-lane bridges that further pollute our planet and increase our dependence on cars.

By abolishing the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission, the great failures and the dazzling successes of our past can be leveraged to once again provide transportation leadership for the rest of the United States.

Abolishing the commission also would send a clear signal to other complacent state agencies: We are serious about change.

Who's next on the hit list? The Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board should go. Pennsylvania's court system -- long the laughingstock of the nation -- needs to be overhauled. Our 501 school districts need consolidation.

And, yes, the Pennsylvania Legislature should be downsized.

It's time we move ahead, or we'll remain forever stuck, like those motorists stranded in a 50-mile-long traffic jam on Interstate 78 last winter.