Pa. Turnpike is eliminating toll plazas soon. What you need to know.

In the not too distant future, drivers on the Pennsylvania Turnpike will be able to pay their tolls without having to slow down or battle traffic at toll plazas. A series of gantries over the highway will take care of that.

Beginning Jan. 5, the turnpike’s open road tolling system will go into effect in the eastern part of the state, including the section that passes through the Lehigh Valley. In this system, tolls are charged electronically as motorists drive at highway speed beneath gantries between interchanges.

Members of the media were given a tour Wednesday of one of the gantries, and its adjacent building that holds computer equipment, near King of Prussia, Montgomery County.

Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission CEO Mark Compton said the tolling system will accomplish several goals.

“This move reiterates our commitment to the safety of our customers and employees, while modernizing our operations and meeting customer expectations for seamless, nonstop travel,” he said.

The first phase begins in January when the tolling system goes into effect at mile marker 290 in Lancaster County and points east. Construction has begun on the central and western parts of the turnpike, which is expected to be completed in 2027.

Here are four things to know about open road tolling:

How does it work?

When the system is operational statewide, the turnpike will have about three dozen gantries installed along the mainline turnpike and the Northeast Extension between interchanges.

Alan Williamson, the commission’s construction engineer for the eastern and northeastern portions of the highway system, said a series of overhead and embedded sensors are in each travel lane that passes through a gantry. That includes the shoulder, he said, to stop anyone who tries to cheat the system.

Williamson said they are programmed to create a profile of each vehicle “in nanoseconds.” Besides reading the E-ZPass transponder or license plate, the sensor will pick up such things as the height of the vehicle and the number of axles it has. The turnpike will no longer use weight to classify vehicles as the scales used at toll plazas have become expensive to maintain.

The data is then transmitted to the computer in the gantry building, where it builds a “package” that is transmitted via fiber optic cable to turnpike headquarters near Harrisburg for billing.

As for those who use an illegal cover on their license plate, Williamson said they constitute a very small part of the scofflaws who use the turnpike. The bigger problem are those who don’t pay their toll-by-plate bills; they are handed off to law enforcement

How much does it cost?

The turnpike will adjust its tolling system to a base per-mile rate, which means customers will get a single toll per segment as opposed to the aggregate trip they get now.

For a two-axle car, an E-ZPass customer will pay 7 cents per mile, plus $1.09 per segment, while those using toll-by-plate will be charged 14 cents per mile, plus $2.18 per segment.

The PTC says about 86% of its customers use E-ZPass.

A trip from the Lehigh Valley interchange to Quakertown, a distance of about 12 miles, will cost about $1.93 under the new system for a car using E-ZPass, slightly up from the current rate of $1.90. Overall, though, about half of the drivers who use the turnpike could pay less under the new system.

Williamson said each gantry installation is about $5 million each. About 36 will be installed statewide.

By comparison, building the multilane Neshaminy Falls toll plaza when the connection to Interstate 95 in Bucks County was completed in 2016, cost $85 million-$95 million, which didn’t include maintenance. Overall, about $25 million per year will be saved on maintaining the toll plazas.

What are the benefits?

One group that’s enthusiastic about the new system is the state’s truck drivers.

Rebecca Oyler, president and CEO of the Pennsylvania Motor Truck Association, said truckers and trucking companies will have a better idea of what tolls will be.

“Overall we support open road tolling for a couple of reasons,” Oyler said. “It standardizes the per-mile rates, which makes tolls a little simpler to understand and to plan for. But even bigger, it does reduce congestion significantly and sort of ameliorates those safety issues that we see at interchanges with lane changes, speed differentials and things that tend to cause congestion and also some accidents. So that is something we definitely are happy to see go away.”

Interchanges will be safer, especially at busy ones such as Lehigh Valley, as the toll booths will be removed and allow for more free-flowing traffic.

The environment will also benefit as less fuel will be used because vehicles will no longer have to speed up after passing through the toll plazas.

Additional access points

Without having to build toll plazas, the turnpike commission will be able to add additional exits at a fraction of the cost.

“It also allows us to create mobility options for people across the communities that are not served now by the turnpike because it’s too far from an exit to get to it,” commission Chief Operating Officer Craig Shuey said. “In the future we will be able to serve more people because we can add interchanges in a much more effective way and much safer. We can connect with those roadways off of our systems better than we ever have been in the past.”

Currently three new interchanges are on the drawing board: Lafayette Street in Norristown, Montgomery County; Route 130 in Westmoreland County; and the Scranton Beltway in Lackawanna County.

Turnpike officials have said that the Lehigh Valley could be eligible for additional interchanges and will listen to local officials who express an interest.

Morning Call reporter Evan Jones can be reached at ejones@mcall.com .