As mandated by law, the state’s fuel tax is set to go up 8 cents per gallon on January 1. Act 89 of 2013 designed to provide revenue for bridge and highway maintenance and replacement has already pushed PA’s gasoline tax to 50 cents per gallon, the highest in the country.
That is bad enough for motorists, but the Act also added enormously to the cost of using the Turnpike. Under the law, the Turnpike must borrow $490 million per year and turn that money over to PennDOT to cover mass transit funding.
This is colloquially known as a double whammy. Motorists pay more for fuel and then get hit harder when they use the Turnpike.
One wonders whether all this is producing much of a positive net benefit for the state. Certainly, the costs imposed by having “prevailing wage” requirements lowers the payoff from highway expenditures and heavily subsidizing the high cost transit agencies in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia by Turnpike charges is problematic for the cost benefit payoff.
