PennDOT, being a corrupt mobbed-up organization, constantly runs in the red. Pennsylvanians pay some of the highest gas taxes, yet our roads still suck. Consequently in Harrisburg they lay awake at night thinking up ways to shift that cost onto people who don’t live here.
Our equally corrupt former Governor, Fast Eddie Rendell, hatched a scheme whereby he wanted to toll I-80 to force everyone driving from New York to Chicago to fund PennDOT. Problem was that violates Federal Law, and even his buddy Obama could not find a work-around for it.
But the enabling legislation for that scheme forces the Turnpike Commission to fork most of their money over to PennDOT every year. As PennDOT spends further in the red they are literally forced to keep hiking tolls.
The legislature passed a law a few years back that automagically increases tolls annually by an INSANE percentage.... The toll for the first non toll booth section of the turnpike coming in from OHIO has gone from $2.90 to $7 in less than 7 years, and will be going up again come January 1.
Its a complete scam anymore. It went from being a slush fund for cronies to be a cash wow for them.
They keep doing things to “LOWER THEIR COSTS” while lowering service and raising their rates... Its absolutely inexcusable.
If you travel all the way across the state, from Ohio border to the Deleware bridge the toll is currently 51.85, and its going up January 1 again. A distance of about 340 miles.
So they are over .15 a mile now, and rates go up again January 1.