High gas prices help take toll on turnpike

Truck traffic fell 1.1 percent and car traffic was down 2.3 percent in the first 10 months of 2007.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

The sluggish economy and rising gasoline prices are thinning out traffic on the Ohio Turnpike, reducing expected revenues and delaying construction projects on the toll road, the head of the turnpike commission said Thursday.

“The turnpike is not going to go out of business, but it means some of the improvements we would like to make, we’re going to have to push them back a little bit,” said Gary Suhadolnik, executive director.

Suhadolnik said the number of miles driven on the 241-mile turnpike — which runs across northern Ohio from Indiana to Pennsylvania — was down 1.8 percent in the first 10 months of this year. Truck traffic was down 1.1 percent; car traffic fell 2.3 percent.

Suhadolnik projects that total revenue for this year will be down $7.2 million — or 3.3 percent — from what the commission had planned for in its $220 million budget, despite an increase in tolls late last year.

He doesn’t expect traffic to increase next year, so the commission will be short a similar amount of money then, he said.

Suhadolnik said he believes truck traffic is down because of the economy. Not as many new cars and building materials for new houses are being trucked on the turnpike, he said.

Car traffic is down because the high price of gasoline has cut into leisure driving, he said. For the most part, cars use the turnpike for travel rather than to commute to work.

“They’re avoiding those extra trips,” Suhadolnik said. “If gas prices are high, you’ll decide maybe you’ll wait to see grandma.”

Susan Kelly, 44, of Springfield in western Ohio, has cut back on unnecessary travel because of high gasoline prices. It currently costs her about $80 to fill up her minivan.

Kelly and her husband no longer make long drives for dinner or entertainment. And driving to out-of-town malls is a memory. Even her mother, who lives 15 minutes away, is seeing less of her daughter.

“Now, she gets a phone call,” Kelly said.

The decline in expected revenues from the toll road is forcing the commission to delay several projects.

It had hoped to break ground in 2008 on the reconstruction of two service plazas in northwest Ohio’s Williams County that were torn down last year. That will be pushed back into 2009.

Also likely to be delayed are plans to widen the turnpike over a five-mile stretch near Toledo and a seven-mile stretch in Northeast Ohio’s Summit County.

Unaffected will be plans to implement electronic tolling, or the so-called E-Z pass. Suhadolnik said the commission has made that a priority and plans to move forward with it in 2009.

Several turnpikes in other parts of the country are reporting either steady traffic or slight increases, according to Neil Gray, director of government affairs for the International Bridge, Tunnel and Turnpike Association.

However, Gray said the Ohio Turnpike is heavily traveled by trucks transporting goods to market or assembly points. That traffic could be sensitive to changes in the economy, he said.

“The rationale they [Ohio Turnpike officials] are suggesting makes a lot of sense,” he said.