CLARION, Pa. -- Opponents of converting Interstate 80 to a toll road to generate billions of dollars in new transportation funding gave Pennsylvania Turnpike representatives an earful yesterday.

They said the plan will hurt people of modest means and struggling small businesses on the 311-mile corridor that cuts an east-west swath through 15 mostly rural counties.

They argued it will divert traffic and choke alternate routes like Route 322, which runs through the heart of this small college town.

They vowed it's not too late to stop the plan, which the Federal Highway Administration must approve as the last of three national candidates for a pilot program to toll interstates.

And they complained about how Act 44 was hurriedly drawn up by the state Legislature, passed without public input, signed by Gov. Ed Rendell and then handed off to the Pennsylvania Turnpike to implement.

About 250 people showed up at Clarion Junior-Senior High School to view an array of charts and a video presentation, talk to turnpike officials and engage in a question-and-answer session that grew testy.

It was the first of eight public meetings being held in towns along the highway this month -- meetings that some said state officials should have held before voting in July to toll I-80 as part of a hastily crafted transportation funding deal.

The free shortcut for mostly out-of-state traffic is proposed to end by 2011, when I-80 users would start paying the same rates as Pennsylvania Turnpike users.

"Ed Rendell should be here, not you," said Dave Cox, an officer of Farmers National Bank with six of its 11 branches along I-80. "This was one of those pay raise-type deals," he said, referring to controversial raises that lawmakers approved for themselves two years ago in the early-morning hours.

Act 44 combines tolling I-80 with higher tolls on the existing turnpike to provide up to $116 billion in new revenue for roads, bridges and public transit over the next 50 years. The plan includes $9.6 billion in upfront borrowing that will have to be repaid, with interest, even if the FHWA rejects the partnership between the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation and the turnpike.

At the outset, the turnpike is to hand over $750 million to PennDOT for this fiscal year, $850 million for next year and $900 million for 2009-2010.

About 40 percent of the money to be generated through Act 44 will come from I-80, or $350 million to $400 million in the first full year of tolling. Officials have said about $250 million will be used to operate, maintain and improve the highway, including building special truck rest areas and park-n-ride lots at busy interchanges.

While turnpike officials faced some tough accusations and questions, they promised to continue an open process, advance the studies that will provide more details and update people at another series of meetings about six months from now.

"We're here to listen to issues, ideas and concerns," turnpike chief engineer Frank Kempf said. "We don't have a lot of answers ourselves right now."

He said I-80 officials should soon be able to report where and how many toll barriers will be built and how local travel will be impacted.

"Why should the northern corridor pay for Philadelphia and Pittsburgh to have better roads and bridges?" asked Barry Shine, whose manufactured home business is the largest in the area, employing 700 people. "Why put the burden on one part of the state?"

Mr. Kempf said money that the turnpike is generating for PennDOT will be spent over the entire state, "including Venango, Mercer and Clarion counties, so the notion that this is to support the rest of the state isn't accurate and isn't fair."

To remain in the Clarion area and be competitive, Mr. Shine vowed to send 6,000 flatbed trucks a year that now deliver modular homes via I-80 onto alternate routes that they can travel for free, thereby avoiding round-trip tolls for the wide-load rigs.

Butch Moore of Rimersburg said he currently pays about $17,000 a year in state taxes as an independent owner-operator of a tractor-trailer. "If you want to toll a highway, build one," he said.

State Rep. Fred McIlhattan, R-Clarion, a co-sponsor of a bill to repeal Act 44, said tolling I-80 threatens the economy of the region and mortgages the future of all Pennsylvanians as a result of the borrowing associated with Act 44.

"We're in a fight for our lives," he said. "If we win, we survive. If you [turnpike] win, we die."

He said tolling I-80 was not an option mentioned by the blue-ribbon Transportation Funding and Reform Commission that Mr. Rendell created to determine the extent of the state's road, bridge and transit problems and recommend solutions.

Two congressmen from the corridor, Reps. Phil English, R-Erie, and John Peterson, R-Venango, are aggressively fighting the plan at the federal level.

Mr. Peterson yesterday hailed results of a Quinnipiac University poll that found tepid support for I-80 tolls and another funding option, leasing the turnpike to a private operator.