Democratic money grab

He might have got the idea from Ken Blackwell of Ohio

Don't need no stinking turnpike.

How much for that Liberty Bell?

Rendell is a miserable governor.

I've got a relative in Pa. The roads could use some attention IMO. I remember the first time I tried to find his house. More than half of the street signs I was supposed to use were either missing or faded to green with sporadic white sprinkles left. It was interesting. :)

Cut some of your State welfare programs.

We sold a highway here in the hoosier state.

PA needs to make it free and get rid of all the toll collectors and their management.

He might have got the idea from Ken Blackwell of Ohio

Who got the idea from Mitch Daniels in Indiana.

Pols aren't going to leave 3 to 6 billion dollars laying around untouched.

I wonder how much his kid will make on that deal?

ping

Scrap the tolls. Make it free

PA needs to make it free and get rid of all the toll collectors and their management.

The toll collectors went on strike last year and now start at $23+ per hour to do less work than the McDonalds cashiers.

Private operators would have to adhere to a maintenance schedule. And current turnpike workers would have to be protected. "We believe we can put those protections into the contract," Rendell said. Officials at Teamsters Locals 77 and 250, which represent a combined 1,600 turnpike employees...

I guess if a private company can get a 50-100 year lease, the union people will eventually die off. I would not invest in such a scheme.

And it works....$500,000 a day in interest, going right back into those union highway projects around the state,.

How interesting. The deal with the Eisenhower interstate system, is that the tolls have to come down, once the road is paid for, ...or... all of the proceeds from the tolls have to be spent on road improvements.

The PA turnpike was the first eisenhower interstate.

Still collecting tolls.

I'd say, they owe the US a refund.

BTW, the romans built better roads, than those idiots in PA. Water? Let it puddle in the middle, and freeze. Then we can rebuild it, and charge for that.

Building bad roads in PA is a jobs program.

Several Republican mayors endorsed him. As governors go, I think he is more conservative than Arnold.

I can't stand Rendell, but I atually think it's a good idea.

That's "actually."

Rendell is trying to pull a scam here, as I see it.

Selling the Turnpike is an idea with a lot of merit. But what the politicians want to do is to sell it to their friends for cheap so their friends can make money. They tried the same with the liquor stores several years back, Ridge wanted to sell them for a pittance compared to the money they earn.

Auction it off to the highest bidder, same with the liquor store system. That would make economic sense. Finding friends to favor with the sale is just theft.

True. Yet Pennsylvania is in worse shape than it has been in years. Rendell is doing a lousy job.

Watch out, the economic nationalists will be by shortly to tell you how terrible it is to sell your infrastructure to foreigers.

Imagine we might go to war with Spain or Australia and they'd take the turnpike home.

I'm joking, but they are series

I am a new resident to PA and happen to have a child who is deaf. My husband and I do okay and luckily dont' need to take advantage of state paid programs. I was advised by an educator that we should sign up for this program available to all children in PA who have a disability. It pays for durable medical equipment. Since I can pay myself, I have not done so. This is way more than what California, which is a more liberal state, does.

How can you sell an Inrestate? Doesn't it belong to all Americans, not just to Pennsylvania?

Rendell and his cronies will take theirs off the top before the bid.

It's called PENNDOT. I recall they did street light maintenance in Lititz PA (an intersecting state highway). It took them 4 MONTHS. PENNDOT's mentally retarded employees bring incompetence to a new all time high.

I truly want to know how it is in worse shape. I am still a fairly new resident so I ask my question sincerelsy.

By the way, I travel 15 a lot and that road is fine. I travel 322 and 333 also and those roads are also good.

I remember when it was a role of state and local governments to do things like build and maintain roads.

Now, everything is a revenue scheme.

You build a toll road, pay for it, then sell it. The tolls continue.

You contract with Redflex or some other such company to put up red light and speed cameras, cutting yourself into the revenue stream.

You join a bunch of other states to fleece the tobacco companies over decades, then sell "Tobacco Settlement Revenue Bonds" so you can realize the present value of that cashflow stream now.

I swear, we seem to be reverting to the Middle Ages of Europe, where the ruling class sees the rest of us as a source of wealth and power.

Cash cows.

I think we are on the verge of either collapse or revolution.

Scrounging for transportation funding amid the no-new-taxes atmosphere of Harrisburg . . .

No new taxes? The sonofabeech raised our income tax 40%, passed gambling in the dead of night to supposedly give us property tax relief-- none of which has materialized, and just after his re-election pushed a $52 head tax through on every employeee in Pennsylvania, including those working part-time for minimum wage. He's got plenty of money to spread around as corporate welfare and favored boondoogles, but needs more taxes . . . my arse! In a saner time, he would be standing before a firing squad.

I do need to say, this sounds like a risky scheme that was not brought out before the election!

I think we are on the verge of either collapse or revolution.

People are too apathetic for revolution.

How exactly does one make a road system "free?" I-95 in PA is "free" but I have a feeling I'm paying for its upkeep and endless expansion.

No, actually, an interstate road is a state asset, which explains PA's mismanagement of them from day one. Literally.

They have the world's first interstate, and it has been a model of corruption from day one, and still is.

Yet they vote for more government. Go figgure.

Well, I guess if you profit off it, it makes sense, in a sick sort of way...

PA needs to make it free and get rid of all the toll collectors and their management.

If you go back and read the original construction agreements you'll find that it was suppose to become a regularly part of the interstate system and not a toll road about ten years ago. Thanks to the republican party it will remain a toll road. And probably belong to some Saudi backed company.

Mitch Daniels of Indiana did it first. It has pumped billions into the Indiana economy.

No comment on PENNDOT. I have to travel that way sometimes, And I hate spending the night in jail, for telling the truth.

Yeah it should be free! Traffic hardly ever moves - even late at night you'll find yourself 'parked' from never-ending construction. Paying for the privilege to go nowhere - what a concept.

With the tolls they charge for the PA turnpike, they could pave it in gold.

How can you sell an Inrestate? Doesn't it belong to all Americans, not just to Pennsylvania?

One little line in the last highway bill, you just call the pig by a different name. It says you can have toll experiential highways.

People are too apathetic for revolution.

I fear you are correct.

In a revolution, you and your fellow citizens defend yourselves against a repressive government.

In a collapse, you wind up defending yourself against your fellow citizens with the repressive government hanging back to escalate the repression once the bloodshed reaches critical mass.

I pay each time I go to the pump and doubtless many other times. I've been driving the PA TP for > 50 years (and paying the tolls myself for 40). I figure I've paid for it many times over. Now I have to stop for the tolls twice (I don't use it often enough to get a so-called EZ pass) each way. It's a pain.

The Ohio turnpike is much better maintained than the Pennsylvania one, and the tolls are about half or less the cost per mile.

The Ohio turnpike has shiny new well-maintained rest areas with decent fast food places; the Pennsylvania turnpike does not.

The Pennsylvania Turnpike is so poorly designed that if you accidentally go the wrong direction, which is easy with the confusing signs, you have to go ten miles out of your way in each direction and spend $3.50 in tolls just to get back to where you were going. That's a great revenue model but it shows a lamentable lack of mercy for the customer.

If a private contractor could take the existing tolls and run the place better, I'd be all for it. But if they're "protecting" all the workers, I don't see how this would be possible.

D

The PA turnpike is operated and controlled by the Turnpike Authority. They are not part of PennDot, but rather a seperate entitiy all to themselves. They make a good bit of money, none of which goes back into the general fund. They also waste a good bit of money. They built themselves an new HQ building in Harrisburg which is a monument to waste. The PA pike between Harrisburg and Philly is beautiful, (because the money and power are in the eastern part of the state), but west between Harrisburg and the Ohio line is a "nightmare".
It suprises the heck out of me to see Rendell even suggest this-the toll takers are union after all (they went on strike about a year ago). Someone must have crossed "Fast Eddie" for him to even suggest this-every political action, reaction and issue in PA right now is pinned to the "slots" license issue. Who and where the licenses are granted. You thought PA was corrupt before, man this slots thing is really making a mess of things.

Been on that road every now and then since 1957. Sucked then and sucks now. So, does the message that it sucks come through?

Why are there tolls in OH at all? corruption. Once the road was paid for, they were obliged to remove the tolls.

In stead, they decided to spend every dime of toll revenue on the roads. Good Roads? No, but I will give you, better than PA. The real goal, however, is to charge everybody passing through, and spend every dime on a highway jobs program in Ohio.

Exscuse me while I puke.

Pennsylvania already levies some of the highest gasoline taxes in the country; they also apply such levies to various liquid fuels, including home heating oil. Perhaps they could direct some of that money toward highway construction and maintenance under a merely mediocre manager to improve the network dramatically. The commonwealth could eliminate tolls from its main thoroughfare to encourage travel and tourism. If state road tolls and fuel taxes get any higher, Southwest Airlines will beat the Pennsylvania Turnpike on the price of travel between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.

when I lived in PA years ago, the joke was: Quetion- What's orange and sleeps 6? Answer- PENNDOT truck

He is desperate to find more money for SEPTA and other Philly area mass transit. Last week it was a proposal to hike the gas tax at least 11 cents per gallon. This week...sell the 'pike.

The murder rate over the last year in Pennsylvania is up around 6.1% vs. 1.1% nationwide. Pittsburgh murder rate is up over 8%, same with Philadelphia.

Rendell inherited a balanced state budget in 2002. Today, Pennsylvania runs over $600 million in deficit.

With an unusually high number of schools in Pennsylvania failing assesments mandated by the No Child Left Behind Act, Rendell is the only state governor to join the NEA in suing to get courts to stop the U.S. from penalizing schools. Instead of fixing schools in the Keystone state, Rendell, like a typical DemocRAT, is trying to sue his way out of the mess he created.

Rendell is pathetic. You are enjoying a declining quality of life left in that state by past Republican leaders. Oh well, enoy it while it lasts.

Thanks. Somehow I missed that one. The govt. has a sneaky way of slipping these things by us ordinary folks.

They sold the Toll Road in Indiana and now the state is making something like $250,000 every day in interest from the money it has put into a savings fund. The governor has said that he will only allow the interest and not the pricipal to be spent.