Plans unclear on Centre County tolling posts

By Mike Joseph

- mjoseph@centredaily.com

Interstate 80 in Centre County could get one or two tolling stations or none at all under the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission’s preliminary plan on where to toll the 311-mile highway, lead commission consultant Barry Schoch said Wednesday.

Schoch, vice president of McCormick Taylor, said the locations of potential diversion roads such as U.S. Route 322 in Clearfield County and state Routes 64 and 45 in Centre County, not county lines, will determine where the open-road toll gantries would be located.

The turnpike commission submitted a beefed-up application to toll I-80 to the Federal Highway Administration on Tuesday. Schoch gave a closed-door briefing to Centre County transportation officials Wednesday, one of a series of nine he is making in the nine tolling “zones” of the 311-mile I-80 corridor.

A Centre Daily Times reporter who went to cover the meeting at the Centre Region government building in Ferguson Township was asked to leave. Schoch, Centre Regional planner Tom Zilla and county planning director Bob Jacobs answered a reporter’s questions in a conference call afterward.

The 33 or so miles of I-80 in Centre County stand to get $411 million worth of work to repair 13 bridges and seven highway sections and to build two interstate interchanges under the commission’s application to the federal government.

The application must show that I-80 needs the work and tolls are needed to pay for it.

None of the other 14 counties threaded by I-80 have as many projects as Centre County in the commission’s first 10-year plan. But more money would apparently be spent in Monroe County, which has the oldest I-80 section in the state.

Zilla said Wednesday that the Centre County Metropolitan Planning Organization last week removed from its long-range transportation plan the two long-awaited I-80 interchanges in Marion Township — one with Jacksonville Road and the other merging I-99 and I-80.

The interchanges, already designed, were removed from the long list because the state has not dedicated the $179 million or so to build them. The interchanges would be built in the first three years of the commission’s capital plan for I-80.

Schoch said Wednesday the open-road tolling system planned for I-80 would collect toll revenues from out-of-state vehicles by a process of snapping photos of license plates and billing registered owners.

Late-payment fines and collection-agency intervention would compel payments, he said.

He added that a nationwide system is evolving that may result in an automatic check for unpaid toll bills whenever authorities run routine checks on vehicle registration data.

An unpaid Pennsylvania toll could result in an unexpected confrontation with the law in California, he said.

In a meeting last week in Hermitage, Schoch told Mercer County transportation officials that they could expect one I-80 toll station between the Ohio state line and the interchange with Interstate 79, to capture revenue from I-79 motorists heading west on I-80, a meeting participant said.

In another meeting last week in Lewisburg, the turnpike commission consultant told planners for SEDA-COG (Susquehanna Economic Development Association-Council of Governments) that there could be three tolling plazas along the 77 miles of I-80 in their planning region, from the eastern edge of Centre County to the eastern edge of Columbia County, according to SEDA-COG spokesman Steve Kusheloff.

Act 44 allows for up to 10 tolling places along I-80, which would result in an average gap of 30 miles between stations. Schoch said his planners have divided I-80 into nine tolling zones to consider “candidate” locations within them. In the end, he said, actual distances between tolling stations could range from 25 to 45 miles.

He said two tolling zones meet toward the middle of Centre County, the basis for concluding that one or two toll stations — or none at all — may end up in the county.

“It could have one. It could have none ... It’s almost possible that you could have two,” Schoch said. “That’s not an issue for us. We’re looking at the routes that feed to the destinations.”

Zilla told Schoch on Wednesday that local planners were concerned that state Route 64, which parallels I-80 and has historically served as a busy commuter route, would attract motorists diverting from tolls.

Mike Joseph can be reached at 235-3910.