PA Turnpike / tolling: July 2008 Archives

The Pennsylvania Turnpike is part of my American heritage. Rolling into a toll booth, I look at it as the gateway to a national treasure of transportation history.

I have a vested interest in supporting and preserving it, whether that just means not throwing trash at it or becoming actively involved when it's threatened.

When I am empowered, I go the extra mile to care about things and look to preserve this treasure and practical function of this roadway for future generations.

It's public, non-profit status gives me a say in it's future and ensures that my toll is actually going to the generational preservation and enjoyment of it. Not to financing a capital investment group; someone else's dream or worse a shady future deal that I am inadvertently supporting with my toll.

When an investment group is pushing very hard to enguage me in a public debate they view it as a sales pitch, but the true beauty of this moment is that I still have control of the power to guide the turnpike's destiny.

Although I love free enterprise and the America dream of the freedom to grow a small business, the flow of money tends to flow faster in the direction of the most money.

Big business is rarely interested in the good of the whole, for this we have a democracy.

Interesting opinion article in the Philadelphia Inquirer:
Hidden costs will make Turnpike deal a bad one
Summary:

• Huge unseen financial incentives pull from the tax base during the deal


• Costs associated with ensuring the contract gets inforced


• With tax subsidies greatest in the first 15 years, the profit window will rapidly close, leaving the company with aging and expensive infrastructure and large debt remaining for the rest of a century.


• This deal was negotiated in secret without public input and information. Pennsylvanians had less than a month to read and digest a 686-page contract and attempt to predict and value how its thousands of conditions might affect the commonwealth through 2084

I was walking around my village today and a couple neighbors were responding to my blog entry Why can't "WE" keep making a profit on the turnpike? (6/25)

One neighbor was blaming Gov. Ed Randell for siphoning the money off to Philadelphia under the current set-up. I drop off the mail for another neighbor who often is listening to Gary Sutton. She just plain asked my opinion on the merits. I have yet to hear anyone, except the governor, say they think it's a really good idea, "it's slam-dunk" he said.

I believe the heart of the matter is a difference in perspective that has widened between the ever increasing transience of business and what the great population hopes government's long-term commitment is to them.

When you privatize a public entity ownership is moved from government to the interest of a group of investors. Government is you and me because we elect and reject those who represent us.

The Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission was created in 1937 to build, finance, operate and maintain the Pennsylvania Turnpike. The commission is comprised of five members. Four members are appointed by the Governor of Pennsylvania. So ultimately the turnpike management is an arm of government, made of people we elect and reject.

Barcelona-based Abertis Infraestructuras, Abertis investor Criteria CaixaCorp of Spain and Citi Infrastructure Investors offered $12.8 billion to lease the turnpike. (AP) I will not be on a seat of the board of directors of a company in Spain or the equally nebulous Citi Infrastructure Investors group. What is my recourse if i had a concern about the business of the turnpike or what my tolls are financing.

Meanwhile, up north 80 percent Interstate 80 needs resurfacing to replace more than half of its pavement, which was applied between 1958 and 1970. Officials proposed replacing 60 bridges within the first 10 years. Sixteen of the interstate's bridges are structurally deficient and 13 are in worse condition, which the turnpike described as "fracture critical." pittsburghlive.com

The scramble is on to get tolls on I-80 because PennDOT cannot fund a complete rebuild. Any bids on I-80? Going once, going twice... hello, any takers? Mmmm, must not be such a good deal.

From personal experience over the past 28 years of driving on it, The Pennsylvania Turnpike have been a very well maintained road in road surface and snow removal. It

The turnpike is currently a non-profit meaning they have to put the revenue from tolls into the road.