The Law of Unintended Consequences could be about to get another workout in Allegheny County.
The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) has begun the process that will lead to the tolling of nine bridges statewide to pay for their replacements and ancillary upgrades.
One of those spans is the heavily traveled (and relatively short) Interstate 79 bridge over Route 50 at Bridgeville. It’s part of an already approved plan that would form public-private partnerships to repair and improve highway infrastructure around the commonwealth.
And it’s seen as the more dedicated and consistent way to pay for such things in a climate in which the state says traditional funding sources have become insufficient.
As the Post-Gazette reports it:
PennDOT “has been highlighting its financial shortcomings for several years, noting that 74 percent of its funding comes from state or federal gasoline taxes, where revenue hasn’t been growing because of more efficient vehicles. The federal tax hasn’t gone up since 1993, while the price of building materials has gone up 140 percent.”
That said, Act 89 of 2013 did increase the state gasoline tax, giving the Keystone State the second-highest such tax in the nation.
All that said, the coronavirus pandemic certainly has not helped total gasoline tax collections.
The upgrade plan also involves adding a third lane to the interstate between Bridgeville and just north of Southpointe in Washington County.
Enter the public-private concept. Private firms will design and build the highway projects, then maintain them for 30 years. The exact amount of the tolls has not been finalized but state officials say it likely will be from $1 to $2 for cars and start being collected perhaps as soon as in 2 ½ years. Truck tolls would be higher.
How long the tolls would remain in place is anybody’s guess. But can you say “Johnstown Flood Tax,” the “temporary” tax that remains in place to this day?
The toll charge would be assessed either through the E-ZPass system or a system that takes a picture of a vehicle’s license plate and a bill sent, the same way Pennsylvania Turnpike tolls are collected.
While PennDOT says a slim majority of motorists favor the private-public partnership idea, the voices of those opposed have, as expected, risen to the top of the debate, especially those in the trucking industry. After all, the cost is not insignificant.
Let’s say PennDOT sets the car toll at $1 each way. That’s $2 a day, $10 a week, about $40 a month and about $480 a year. Double the cost if the each-way toll cost is $2. The cost would be far greater for local businesses that deliver their products by truck.
And while public-private partnerships are, in principle, a worthy idea, their operational and economic efficacy remain worthy of continuing and robust debate. So, too, is the targeted tolling of specific bridges.
But user costs aside, there are two other immediate concerns that come to mind about such projects.
The first is that fact that the state’s “prevailing wage” – an inflated wage set not by the marketplace but by organized labor – will be required to be paid. And that will inflate the cost of these projects by anywhere from 10 percent to 30 percent. (See Policy Brief Vol. 21, No. 8).
If public-private partnerships are billed as a more efficacious way to build and maintain public infrastructure, “prevailing wages” go a long way in undermining that claim. Legislative action to abolish the “prevailing wage” in Pennsylvania remains long overdue.
(That said, if federal dollars still are involved, the Davis-Bacon Act, the federal prevailing wage law, would apply.)
The second concern involves one of human nature. And it’s where that Law of Unintended Consequences comes in.
While final tolling/design details are lacking, this project stands to exacerbate the bottleneck that the Bridgeville area was before I-79 was constructed in the mid-1960s and, in too many regards, remains to this day.
Yes, PennDOT does have plans to first upgrade the Bridgeville entrance and exit ramps in the Chartiers Road, Route 50 and I-79 nexus area. But … .
Depending on where tolling recording information is set up, Bridgeville could become a dumping ground for thousands more vehicles a day if the toll zone begins immediately after the northbound exit.
And if PennDOT’s plan is to eliminate that potential by beginning tolling before the exit, traffic most assuredly will find prior on which to dump.
Southbound, PennDOT will have a captive audience, given the Bridgeville exit is after the bridge. But astute drivers might very well exit 79 south at Collier/Heidelberg/Kirwan Heights, further exacerbate Bridgeville traffic and re-enter the interstate after the bridge.
Will PennDOT and local municipalities seek to thwart such toll evasion by restricting access to certain roads? Officials, however, should remember that traffic, like water, always finds the easiest path to travel.
On paper, this project sounds worthwhile. But the reality could be anything but.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
