Electronic toll-taking coming to Pa. turnpike

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Electronic toll-taking coming to Pa. turnpike

Friday, October 05, 2001

By Joe Grata, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

The Pennsylvania Turnpike will offer electronic toll collection in the Pittsburgh area starting Dec. 15.

The date of the expansion and the campaign to sell E-ZPass were announced yesterday, symbolically at Irwin (No. 7) interchange, where the western end of the original 160-mile toll road opened 61 years ago.

Here's the way to the fast lane

"E-ZPass is a major plus for transportation technology," turnpike Executive Director John T. Durbin said.

"People who enroll will no longer need to stop at toll booths, take or surrender toll tickets or fumble with money."

Instead, with a credit card-size transponder affixed to the windshield and a pre-established means of paying, drivers can slow to 5 mph in designated lanes to enter and leave the turnpike. High-tech electronics will do the rest, deducting the proper toll from your account and mailing a monthly receipt, if you want.

When E-ZPass becomes operational Dec. 15 on 200 miles between the Ohio line and Blue Mountain (No. 15) interchange in Franklin County, the program will be available on all 360 miles of the turnpike's east-west mainline and from Mid-County (No. 25A) interchange to the Wyoming Valley toll plaza on the Northeast Extension through the Poconos.

Since E-ZPass was introduced in the Philadelphia area about a year ago, 137,000 people have enrolled and account for more than 100,000 transactions a day on the turnpike.

"Customers love it," Durbin said.

Half of all cars -- mostly commuters -- at Valley Forge interchange north of Philadelphia pass through the toll plaza outfitted with E-ZPass transponders. Traffic backups of 15 minutes during rush-hour peaks have virtually disappeared since electronic toll collection was introduced.

Toll collectors can handle from 200 to 250 transactions per lane per hour manually. E-ZPass lanes process five times as many.

Drivers still will be able to pay tolls the conventional way -- by cash. E-ZPass, while convenient and fast, neither offers a discount nor charges a premium.

Durbin said the program does not threaten the jobs of 1,200 toll collectors employed statewide. While some future reductions are possible, they'll be made through attrition.

He said the Turnpike Commission is paying $150 million for the multiphase program to upgrade toll plazas and modernize the toll collection system, most of it for E-ZPass operations.

An E-ZPass purchased for use in Western Pennsylvania is good not only on the turnpike but at dozens of toll facilities in seven other Northeastern states. Those facilities include the New York Thruway, New Jersey Turnpike, Atlantic City Expressway, Peace Bridge to Canada and West Virginia Turnpike.

Tolls incurred in other states on E-ZPass purchased from the Pennsylvania Turnpike are electronically transmitted to its customer service center, where accounts are adjusted accordingly.

For now, the E-ZPass system is for passenger cars and other Class 1 vehicles only. By the end of next year, the electronic toll collection system is to be expanded to buses and other commercial vehicles.

Turnpike officials said E-ZPass probably won't be implemented on its other Western Pennsylvania toll roads -- the Greensburg Bypass, Beaver Valley Expressway and Mon-Fayette Expressway -- before 2004. Priority is being given to the mainline because it carries about 160 million vehicles a year.