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03/28/2024 11:59 AM
Pennsylvania State Senate
https://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/Legis/CSM/showMemoPublic.cfm?chamber=S&SPick=20150&cosponId=19312
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Senate of Pennsylvania
Session of 2015 - 2016 Regular Session

MEMORANDUM

Posted: November 23, 2015 04:16 PM
From: Senator John C. Rafferty, Jr. and Sen. Jay Costa
To: All Senate members
Subject: Strengthening the Turnpike's Ability to Punish Toll Evaders
 
In the near future, we intend to introduce legislation that will strengthen the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission’s (Turnpike) ability to punish toll evaders who illegally pass through the toll collection points without paying the user fee to travel on the Turnpike.

The Turnpike set the national standard for modern, limited-access highways and served as the model upon which America’s Interstate Highway System was built. Today, the Turnpike manages 552 miles carrying more than 194 million vehicles a year. The Turnpike is also in the process of rebuilding and widening the entire roadway from four lanes to six to meet today’s traffic demands as well as safety and design standards.

To ensure the user-based system maintains the efficient collection of toll dollars, which supports the operations and improvements of the Turnpike, legislation is needed to provide the Turnpike with a critical tool to punish toll evaders. At the end of their last fiscal year, the Turnpike had a total of $33 million in uncollected tolls; however, $30 million was finally collected over the course of a couple of months leaving approximately $3 million in uncollected toll dollars. The primary evaders are Class 1 vehicles from Pennsylvania and New Jersey as well as Ohio, New York and Delaware.

The Turnpike can only place uncollected tolls with a collections agency unlike other state agencies and authorities in this Commonwealth. As a result, our legislation will allow the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation to suspend the registration of motorists who fail to pay tolls on the Turnpike until the motorist makes the payment. This will be applicable to vehicles registered in Pennsylvania as well as our neighboring states through a reciprocity agreement.

Please join us in supporting this needed legislation to equip the Turnpike with a critical tool to ensure users of “America’s First Superhighway” pay their fair share for utilizing an important asset of the Commonwealth’s transportation system.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Nolan Ritchie, Senator Rafferty’s Office, at nritchie@pasen.gov or Ron Jumper, Senator Costa’s Office, at rjumper@pasenate.com.



Introduced as SB1086