Red Light on the Turnpike

For more than two decades U.S. road builders have looked upon high-speed, multilaned, uncrossed toll roads as the "highways of the future." The success of the pioneer Pennsylvania Turnpike, opened in 1940, established what many roadmen thought was a pattern. Their dreams were confirmed, they thought, by the rushing, booming New Jersey Turnpike, completed in 1952. Toll roads began to spread out across the country, and plans for more of them were laid out at highway association meetings, in legislatures and on drawing boards. Last week, after only a few dim warning signs, a red light was flashing on the turnpikes.

"Dismayfully Contrary." Some of the new toll roads are having financial trouble. Most striking example: the 241-mile, $326 million Ohio Turnpike, which is nearing the end of its first half year of operation. Advance surveys had forecast that 14 million vehicles would roll over the road the first year, paying $20,576,000 for the privilege. So far, traffic and revenue are running at only about half the anticipated rate. Ohio officials are confident that traffic will increase in the summer travel months, but they are frankly uneasy.

The cloud over the Ohio Turnpike's prospects : trucks are avoiding it. Ad vance estimates were that trucks would account for 44.4% of the pike's traffic and 75% of the revenue. Instead, they make up only about a sixth of the traffic, and are producing only a little more than a third of the revenue. In a letter to Governor Frank Lausche, Turnpike Commission Chairman James W. Shocknessy said that the situation is "rather dismay fully contrary to what was expected." Truckers contend that the Ohio fee, averaging 7.2-c- a mile ($30 for the heaviest trucks traveling the full route), is too high. Average rate for trucks on the New Jersey toll road is only half that, and the Pennsylvania Turnpike's truck rate aver ages only 4.2-c- a mile. In Ohio, truckers maintain, it is less expensive and more practical to use the old stop-and-go high ways, particularly since the turnpike has drained off passenger car traffic and left the other highways for what Shocknessy ruefully calls a "free, private right of way" for trucks.

In an effort to solve the problem, Shocknessy and his fellow commissioners have begun to woo trucking companies and truck drivers. A series of meetings has been arranged to discuss possible rate changes ("What we want to be sure of," said one turnpike man, "is that if we change, we get both more trucks and more revenue, not simply more trucks"). At 16 service plazas along the pike, drivers are offered tiled washrooms, hot showers, lunch counters and special parking facilities; now Ohio officials are considering construction of sleeping quarters.

Ruts on the Web. Ohio is not the only rut on the 1,800-mile U.S. toll road web.

West Virginia's 88-mile turnpike from Charleston to Princeton, which does not connect with any other expressways, last year took in not quite half the revenue it needed to break even. On the new 427-mile New York Thruway, truck revenue is disappointing. Having seen these warning signals, other states that are building toll roads have begun to consult the trucking industry before opening day.

In Indiana, where a 156-mile toll road from the end of the Ohio Turnpike to the outskirts of Chicago is to be completed this fall, highway officials have arranged a series of meetings with trucking industry leaders. Truckers will be asked for their views on rates, regulations and facilities. Weeks before the road is opened Indiana will launch a promotional campaign such as Ohio is now considering, five months after its road opened. Theoretically, the best remaining route in the U.S. for a toll highway would be between Los Angeles and San Francisco, or south from Los Angeles to San Diego, but Californians are being uncharacteristically cautious about the possibility.

In the rush to superhighways, some roadmen failed to give sufficient consideration to the fact that toll roads will pay only under quite specific conditions. The Pennsylvania Turnpike (which cost less to build because it followed the half-finished roadbed of Andrew Carnegie's old South Penn Railroad) has been a huge success because it is by far the best route through rough country. The New Jersey Turnpike has boomed because it serves an area of crushingly concentrated traffic. When such important factors are missing, toll roads may not pay.

As a result of the red light, turnpike bonds were sliding downward last week, and proponents of new toll roads were taking another look. Most traffic engineers now think that the majority of toll roads in existence and under construction will survive, but they are not optimistic about new routes. In Washington Bureau of Public Roads officials say that there are few places left in the U.S. where toll roads would be financially practical. As if to illustrate the point, private investors in Texas (where the impossible is often considered likely) have all but abandoned a plan to build a toll road from Dallas to Houston. They have not been able to find buyers for their revenue bonds.

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