The days of slowing down as you approach a toll booth on the Pennsylvania Turnpike are coming to an end.

The overhead Open Road Tolling (ORT) system is expected to go live in the eastern part of the commonwealth in 2025, and in the central and west in 2027.

The turnpike commission started the electronic tolling project 13 years ago. The first four pilot projects were launched between 2016 and 2019. The remaining parts of the turnpike converted to electronic tolling in 2020. Open Road Tolling is in the final stage.

New highway speed collection points are being built along the 360-mile road between interchanges using ORT. Drivers will pass under structures called gantries that are located between the interchanges. Equipment in the gantry and in the road “identifies and classifies vehicles and processes E-ZPass and Toll By Plate payments,” according to the turnpike commission.

Turnpike CEO Mark Compton said ORT will provide “seamless, nonstop travel ... a safer, more convenient way for customers to travel and represents the future of toll collection worldwide.”

He touted it will save the turnpike $75 million a year.

We admire the foresight to reduce operational costs through technology, but the large amount of “leakage” due to unpaid tolls on the turnpike remains a concern.

In September 2022, it was disclosed that the turnpike commission's pandemic-era conversion to all-electronic tolling resulted in more than $104 million in turnpike tolls being uncollected during the 2020-21 fiscal year. That’s a $16 million increase over the previous fiscal year, according to a quarterly report prepared for the turnpike commission.

The amount of unpaid turnpike tolls went up dramatically in 2022 — to nearly 48%. The Associated Press reported half of the millions of motorists who don’t use E-ZPass can travel without paying under the “toll-by-plate” license plate camera system.

The tolls remain uncollected for a variety of reasons: invoices go unpaid, license plates are unidentifiable and PennDOT has an incorrect address or none at all, the release states.

Just before leaving office last year, Gov. Tom Wolf signed legislation aimed at getting owners or operators of some 25,000 vehicles to pay their overdue bills for turnpike usage. The law, which could trigger the suspension of thousands of vehicle registrations, took effect Jan. 8. It allows for criminal and financial penalties to help curb scofflaws.

So far, we haven’t heard any word from Harrisburg as to how these attempts to crack down on freeloaders traveling the turnpike are going. We’d like to know.

— JGG