A trek across Pennsylvania on a tolled I-80 will cost motorists approximately $25, according to the state's preliminary figures. Turnpike chief Joe Brimmeier optimistically projects revenues of $15 million monthly.
Pennsylvania's mass-transit money pit will get a share. Revenues also will pay debt service on billions to be borrowed by the state Turnpike Commission.
Oh, and there will be a 25 percent turnpike toll hike in 2009, after which tolls will rise 3 percent annually.
All this from a transportation funding plan long on pie in the sky but lacking many specifics. It was hatched behind closed doors without debate or public input.
Aside from government's penchant for overestimating revenues, the whole contrivance is balanced on the Federal Highway Administration's okey-dokey on tolling I-80 and diverting a share of the revenues elsewhere. Are the feds willing to open that can of worms?
More astounding still, mass transit, for all its fiscal ineptitude and refusal to reform, is rewarded with an infusion of cash. Gov. Ed Rendell's own Transportation Funding and Reform Commission concluded that "no additional funding should be provided for highways, bridges and transit unless a series of parallel actions are taken to reform funding structure and a number of transportation business practices."
For whom the highway tolls? Isn't that painfully obvious. The Legislature must put a stop to the pavers of this perfidy.
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