PA Turnpike beginning to build open road tolling infrastructure in Pittsburgh region
According to the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission, more than 500,000 people drive the Turnpike system every single day.
Bill Howe of Donegal is often one of them.
'How often do you drive the Turnpike?' Channel 11′s Andrew Havranek asked him at the Donegal exit.
'Probably about four or five times a week,' Howe said.
Howe said he takes the Turnpike to Cleveland every other month. He said he's looking forward to the Turnpike getting rid of the toll booths — which haven't been staffed in several years — and moving to the open road tolling system.
'You don't have to stop, and as long as you have an EZ Pass, you get a discount,' Howe said.
Open Road Tolling is already in place on the other side of the state — east of Reading and through Philadelphia. It launched at the start of the year.
Work has started here in western Pennsylvania to make the change. Stone poles — called gantries — will hold the overhead technology to read your EZ-Pass device or capture your license plate.
The Turnpike Commission said it'll make getting on and off the highway safer.
'Rather than having to slow down or try to change lanes to get into the lane with the toll booth that will read the equipment, we'll eliminate that and we'll be able to collect your toll as you're traveling down the highway at your normal speed,' said Crispin Havener, of the Turnpike Commission.
This modernization of the toll system will also allow for more access point interchanges to be built -- like the proposed interchange on Route 130 in Penn Township.
'In fact, we would not be able to build that Route 130 interchange if it weren't for open road tolling because your typical interchange model required a lot larger footprint than we need with open road tolling,' Havener said.
While you might see the gantries being built now — like the ones near New Stanton — the Open Road Tolling system here in the western part of the state won't officially launch until January 2027.
The old toll booths will be taken out after.
Once they're gone, the Turnpike Commission said there will be changes made to those interchanges.
'We'll reconfigure that so that it'll be, we won't need all those lanes, so we'll narrow that down and we'll figure out what to do with the excess space down the line,' Havener said.
Havener said Open Road Tolling will save nearly $25 million a year in maintenance costs.
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