Nov 20, 2021 3 min read

When it was announced last week that South Fayette and Collier townships and Bridgeville borough were filing suit in Commonwealth Court to stop the proposed electronic tolling of the Interstate 79 bridge at the Bridgeville exchange, attorney John Smith emphasized that the lawsuit was not some kind of stunt.

“This is a serious lawsuit,” Smith said.

We wouldn’t want to hazard a guess on how it will be decided once it reaches the nine judges on the Commonwealth Court, or how it would fare in the appeals process, but the three communities on the southern edge of Allegheny County have a solid argument to make – if drivers are expected to fork over $1 to $2 every time they cross that bridge, it would severely dent business development in the area, drive up traffic on streets and roads that are already clogged and leave those thoroughfares in even worse condition.

It would also drain the pocketbooks of commuters who have to travel on I-79 every day, whether they live near the bridge or farther afield. Let’s say a toll is set at $2 per day – that would be $4 per day or $20 per week for a daily commuter. Spread that over 49 weeks – we’ll subtract three weeks for vacations and holidays – and that would come close to $1,000. When families are being squeezed by escalating inflation, soaring housing costs, rising gas and home heating prices, stagnant paychecks and a host of other budgetary woes, handing over an additional $1,000 to get to and from work or other obligations amounts to a profoundly regressive tax.

To recap, the I-79 bridge is one of nine bridges on interstate highways that the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) is considering tolling to pay for repairs and upgrades. PennDOT contends the tolling is necessary because revenue from the state’s gasoline tax is no longer sufficient to cover the many projects that could be undertaken and the revenue that is there should be diverted to local streets and roads. They have a point. The state’s Transportation Revenue Options Commission (TROC) said in a report issued this summer that PennDOT’s $8.8 billion budget would need to double in order to address Pennsylvania’s transportation needs.

And let’s also assume for the sake of argument that the I-79 bridge does need to be refurbished. This was last carried out in 1998, and it’s estimated that 87,000 drivers pass over the bridge on a daily basis. Adding an additional lane in each direction when approaching the bridge is also something PennDOT would like to do. But isn’t there a better way to pay for it than sticking already hard-pressed drivers with the bill? TROC suggested a number of alternative ways to fund transportation in a report issued in the summer, including additional fees being placed on vehicle rentals and the delivery of goods, and diverting revenue from the Motor License Fund that would go to the Pennsylvania State Police to PennDOT, and covering the state police through the general fund.

Any of these would make more sense – and more evenly spread the burden – than placing a toll on the I-79 bridge.

Hopefully PennDOT will realize its error and drop the whole idea of tolling the I-79 bridge sooner rather than later.