PennDOT Secretary: More Turnpike Connections Down The Road
By Tony Romeo
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- The secretary of PennDOT says more access points to the Pennsylvania Turnpike may be in the offing as extra revenues start rolling in under the state's new transportation funding plan.
PennDOT Secretary Barry Schoch says the first sign of the increased funding will be road resurfacing projects this spring. But as he testified at state budget hearings, he was asked what sort of improvements people might expect beyond that. One specific thing Schoch cited is new connections to the turnpike.
"We go to all electronic tolling, which is what we want to do at the turnpike, it's more efficient, more cost-effective. We can collect the tolls on the main line and then build, basically, just call them 'interchanges'. That's what we call them at PennDOT, but they're basically connections to the turnpike, which better distributes traffic from our system to the turnpike."
By that, Schoch says more access points to the turnpike may eliminate the need to improve roads feeding current access points.