Editorial: Turnpike's PennDOT payments lower but results still felt

The Pennsylvania Turnpike has several ins and outs as it winds its way through Westmoreland County.

On Thursday, another one was announced after years of lobbying by locals. The Turnpike Commission gave the official go-ahead to an interchange in Penn Township at Route 130.

The specifics of when the project will start aren’t known yet, but the first cars won’t roll through a cashless tollbooth until at least 2026.

What is known is why something locals have pushed to get for about 15 years is just now being OK’d.

Is it that the traffic now justifies it when it didn’t before? No, a 2017 study showed that an interchange would bring about 8,000 more vehicles onto Route 130 every day.

Is it that the commission didn’t see it as a good idea? No, the commission added it to the 10-year plan in 2019.

Well, then it must be that the area municipalities weren’t happy about the idea. No, that’s not it either. Jeannette, Manor, Murrysville and Penn Township all passed resolutions in support of the project back in 2019.

So, why has something everyone agreed would be a good idea been stuck in a drawer for 15 years?

Because it had to wait for the Turnpike Commission to be free to pay for it instead of sending giant piles of cash to PennDOT to spend on other things.

In 2022, the $450 million the commission has been obligated to give PennDOT since 2007 drops to just $50 million. That puts a a lot of money back in play for turnpike maintenance, upgrades and improvements like an interchange.

This is a perfect example of why the toll road should never have been utilized as an ATM for PennDOT. Act 44 was legislation that tried to avoid raising taxes by funding transportation services with toll money generated by the turnpike and Interstate 80. The problem with that was I-80 was not then and never became a toll road, placing the entire burden on the turnpike.

The commission has since paid $7.9 billion to PennDOT — and been forced to take on $14 billion in debt.

It was a stupid plan then, and even with the lowered payments, it’s a stupid plan now. It just seems a little less so because it now costs a mere ninth of what it has.

Without Act 44, the Penn Township interchange could have been in use already, bringing more business to the municipality and creating more income that relieved the tax burden from the largely residential area’s homeowners.

That will happen come 2026, and that is a good thing. But how many other municipalities like Penn Township are suffering because of the state’s poor planning?