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Bush official promotes Rendell's push to lease Pa. Turnpike
By Marc Levy
Associated Press
HARRISBURG - Gov. Rendell enlisted the Bush administration yesterday in his push to get wary legislators to agree to privatize the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
Rendell, a Democrat, appeared with U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary E. Peters to extol the benefits of a proposal to lease the turnpike, an arrangement Rendell hopes will provide nearly $1 billion a year for the state's highway network.
"This partnership," Peters said at a news conference in the state Capitol's rotunda, "could generate billions of dollars that could be used to repair deteriorating roads and bridges, and free up money for construction and keep the state moving both now and into the future."
The agency vowed to appeal the ruling in a suit brought by Philadelphia
By Paul Nussbaum
Inquirer Staff Writer
The transfers live.
A Common Pleas Court judge ruled yesterday that SEPTA must not eliminate the paper transfers that permit bus and subway riders to change vehicles for 60 cents.
The transit agency said it would appeal Judge Gary F. DiVito Jr.'s decision.
SEPTA had wanted passengers to pay full fares ($2 with cash or $1.30 with tokens) whenever changing from one bus to another. The city sued, saying that poor and minority passengers would be especially hard-hit by the elimination of the transfers.
In ordering the board to reinstate the transfers, DiVito called the SEPTA decision "capricious and . . . a manifest and flagrant abuse of discretion."
"What the evidence demonstrates," DiVito wrote, "is that SEPTA's board (1) voted to eliminate paper transfers (2) to mollify the legislature in hopes of ensuring funding (3) without any study of the impact on those who would be most adversely affected (4) without any semblance of a 'modernization plan' ready (5) with no agreement with the school board in place when (6) they could have designed a plan with an equitable impact on all of its riders."
By Paul Nussbaum
Inquirer Staff Writer
Imagine the new slogan on license plates: "Pennsylvania, Land of Tolls."
The state legislature is increasingly enchanted by the notion of converting free interstates into toll roads as a way to raise money for highway maintenance and mass transit operations.
When the state House reconvenes Monday to tackle transportation funding, there are likely to be new calls for new toll roads. I-80 across northern Pennsylvania. I-81 in eastern Pennsylvania. I-79 in western Pennsylvania. Even Philadelphia's two main interstates, the Schuylkill Expressway (I-76) and I-95.
But there are serious federal barriers to widespread tolling on existing interstates that could burst the bubble in Harrisburg.
The state leaves it little leeway for a local, dedicated source of revenue.
By Paul Nussbaum
Inquirer Staff Writer
When Pennsylvania legislators complain that SEPTA already gets more state funding and less local funding than most transit agencies in the United States, they're right.
But whose fault is that?
In Pennsylvania, the state prevents regional transit agencies and local governments from raising money in many of the ways used by their counterparts elsewhere.
Colorado and Georgia provide none of the money to operate Denver's and Atlanta's mass transit. Instead, they authorize local sales taxes, approved by local voters. New York, Michigan, Illinois and Ohio are among the states where local property taxes are earmarked for mass transit. Los Angeles County uses a 1 percent sales tax, approved by county voters.
Thirty-three states have authorized local or regional sales taxes specifically for transportation.
Not Pennsylvania.