Plans to address Pennsylvania Turnpike's Breezewood interchange move forward
The idea is to make the interchange like any interchange you use. It would get you from the turnpike to 70 without having to go through Breezewood.
For decades, the Breezewood interchange has nauseated drivers. You get off the turnpike and drive through the town, just to get on I-70 a short distance later.
"I've been in situations where on Thanksgiving weekend we were backed up 20 miles on I-70," Steve Shuhart of Erie said.
The whole reason for the turnpike not directly connecting to I-70 goes back to an old rule of not forcing drivers to get off a highway and onto a toll road. As the Pennsylvania Turnpike moves to open road tolling, they felt it was time to make a change and hired a company to work on a newly designed interchange.
"That little stretch is a byproduct of its time and what we could do and what could be done," Pennsylvania Turnpike assistant press secretary Crispin Havener said.
According to the Turnpike, some of their recent data from 2022 says more than 2.6 million drivers exited and 2.8 million got on at Breezewood. Almost 40% of that traffic is trucks. There has been pushback because of the businesses there but times are changing.
"In more recent years there has been a shift in the direction of what to do there and how best to handle it," Havener said.
Bypassing Breezewood and getting on with their journeys is a welcomed idea for drivers. Early estimates put the project at $200 million.
"Give you the option to pull off or not would be the best scenario I think," Shuhart said.
Don't expect to see any shovels in the ground anytime soon. The earliest we could see some work on the interchange begin would be in the 2030s.
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