Pennsylvania has placed a high-stakes bet on the federal government approving the Rendell administration plan to turn Interstate 80 into a toll road. Paul Nussbaum offers a background
piece on the situation today (Feb. 22) in The Inquirer. If federal transit officials refuse the state's request -- and they have done so once before -- it will blow a $450 million hole in transportation funding around the state -- both for highways and mass transit. One of the holdups is strong political opposition to making I-80 a toll road in the counties along the state's northern tier. They fear it will hurt their local commuters and also drive trucks off the superhighway onto smaller local roads.
