Editorial: Stop raising turnpike tolls

Two things in Pennsylvania are as dependable as the sunrise.

The Pittsburgh Pirates will disappoint everyone but their opponents, and the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission will raise toll rates.

Even the state Legislature and governor — whoever that might be — tease us a bit with their annual budget battle. They don’t always miss the deadline and head into sudden death overtime. Sometimes it’s just a down-to-the-wire nail-biter. And to be fair to the Bucs, they even win a game on occasion, even if it seems like an accident.

But nope, there is nothing you can set your clock by like the steadily climbing cost of using a Keystone State-maintained road that connects the two biggest cities.

In a move that surprised no one, the commission on Tuesday announced a 5% toll increase. The new rates will be a belated Christmas gift, taking effect Jan. 8. It will be the 15th straight year for a rate hike.

For E-ZPass users, that means $1.80 for the most common toll and $4.40 for those who use Toll by Plate. But that’s just for people who drive regular cars and SUVs.

Where it really hits hard is for the professional drivers. Class 5 tractor-trailers will see the price go up to $14.40 with the E-ZPass and $29.40 with Toll by Plate.

Is this really what we need right now?

We are in the grip of inflation that hasn’t been seen in decades, trying to come back from the perfect storm of supply chain, worker shortage, foreign war and pandemic impacts that collided to produce an economic hurricane. Many experts decline to call it a recession, but the vocabulary doesn’t matter when you are trying to feed your kids.

Prices are staggering, and transportation is one of the major factors in costs. Gas isn’t as pricey as it was in June, but it’s still costly enough to make getting a product from one place to another expensive. Federal and state authorities spent time talking about gas taxes and how they could impact families and businesses.

Well, what about the tolls?

Pennsylvania has been playing this costly shell game since 2007, taking money from the turnpike and turning it over to PennDOT to fund other projects. This year, the amount of that payment dropped to just $50 million instead of the $450 million to $900 million that had been the annual — and unattainable, as they had to borrow money to satisfy it — demand.

And yet the increases remain steady and unavoidable — and will continue to be, by a 2007 law, until 2050.

Pennsylvania is not the only state with high tolls. In fact, several others have much higher tolls per mile. A stretch in New York is $1.25 per mile. The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in New York is $15 for a one-way trip. The Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel in Virginia is $30 round trip.

But Pennsylvania’s highest cost is its length and its pivotal place in transportation. The maximum cost for a truck to cross the state is $639.40. Any increase to that in the current economic climate is downright offensive. It doesn’t only affect truckers but everyone who depends on truck-transported goods — which is all of us.

Lawmakers were wrong to set this in motion in 2007. Today’s Legislature should do something about it.