Pennsylvania Turnpike Gantry Tolls Start Jan. 3 as Rates Rise 3.5 Percent

• From Jan. 3, 2027 the entire Pennsylvania Turnpike mainline, from the New Jersey border to the Ohio border, collects tolls under overhead gantries instead of at interchange booths, the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission has announced.
• Tolls rise 3.5 percent the same day, the 19th straight yearly increase and the lowest increase in more than a decade, the commission says.
• Drivers without E-ZPass are billed by plate in the mail at a higher rate, so mounting the tag and linking the license plate to the account is the step to take before the switch.

What Changes on Your Toll Invoice on Jan. 3

Pennsylvania Turnpike drivers will stop paying one toll for one trip on Jan. 3, 2027. The Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission moves the whole mainline, from the New Jersey border to the Ohio border, to open road tolling that day. Overhead gantries between interchanges charge each car electronically as it drives past without slowing down or stopping, and the invoice that follows lists the charges segment by segment.

The same day, tolls climb 3.5 percent. The commission approved the increase at its July 7 meeting. The dollar change per mile and per segment is small and covered below. The larger shift for most drivers is how the charges are recorded and billed.

Mark Compton, the Turnpike Commission’s CEO, described the moment on Friday, Nov. 6. “We will literally flip the switch here on the gantry system, which will have us now collecting our tolls through the gantries,” Compton said. “Transitioning to the gantry-type system on the roadway as opposed to the interchanges really enables us to be, in many ways, a better neighbor that we’ve been desiring to be.”

More than 500,000 drivers use the turnpike every day, on a road that runs 565 miles.

How Segment Tolling Works on the Turnpike

Open road tolling replaces the ticket-and-booth model with a charge per segment, the distance between two interchanges, plus a drive-by-mile charge. Drivers receive that pair of charges instead of the single aggregated trip toll they get now.

Craig Shuey, the commission’s chief operating officer, gave a concrete example. “Instead of one trip being from, say, Harrisburg to Pittsburgh, there will be, I think, ten gantries that you’re going to pass between those two points. And each one of those will have a toll attached to it,” Shuey said.

Compton stressed that the experience from the driver’s seat stays the same. “The only thing that really changes is the way your invoice looks,” Compton said. “Each segment will hit your invoice, but the customer experience itself won’t change.”

Open road tolling is not new to the turnpike. The commission already runs it east of Reading and on the Northeast Extension. Compton said the results are good. “Two years ago, we did it in the east and in the northeast extension,” Compton said. “It’s working really well.”

The gantries handle both E-ZPass and toll-by-plate transactions, Shuey said. Cameras tag each vehicle as it passes beneath, and a small building beside each structure holds backup generators and information servers so the system keeps running if something fails. Testing of the gantries has run for close to a year.

Shane Szalankiewicz, a construction engineering manager for the commission, said the staff who run the tolling system know how to spot a fault. “Our folks in tolling are very familiar with those systems to be able to know when there’s a problem,” Szalankiewicz said. “With the cameras and sensors in the road. It gets that tolling information together to send back to our system.”

He summed up the construction work in one line. “It looks so simple, but it is a relief to have it done,” Szalankiewicz said.

What the 3.5 Percent Rise Adds to Each Trip

The commission announced the increase in July. Under that announcement the E-ZPass per-mile rate goes from $.073 to $.075, and the E-ZPass segment fee goes from $1.13 to $1.17.

Put in plain numbers, the E-ZPass per-mile charge rises 0.2 cent, and each segment costs 4 cents more. The segment fee is charged at every gantry, and Shuey’s example of ten gantries between Harrisburg and Pittsburgh shows how often that happens on a long trip. The commission points drivers to its PA Toll Calculator for budgeting a drive, so price a specific route there before Jan. 3.

The system switch itself changes no rates. Tolls rise by the 3.5 percent and nothing more, and the two changes land on the same date, which makes it easy to blame one for the other. Our earlier report on the 3.5 percent rise announced in July covers the increase on its own.

Tolls on other roads are climbing too. Our report on why eight states are raising tolls in 2026 puts the Pennsylvania rise in context.

Why Pennsylvania Tolls Keep Climbing Every Year

The 19th straight yearly rise has a legal cause. The increases follow Act 44 of 2007, which Act 89 of 2013 amended. Under those laws the commission must help fund ground transportation across Pennsylvania, well beyond the turnpike itself.

The commission explains the logic on its own blog. “The annual toll increases are driven by Act 44, a law passed in 2007 requiring the Turnpike to help fund transportation initiatives across Pennsylvania,” the blog states. “Rather than raising taxes, Act 44 used toll revenue to support state infrastructure.”

At 3.5 percent, the commission says this is its lowest rate increase in more than a decade. Commission officials say they have had no choice but to raise tolls each year. The Kansas Turnpike raised tolls the same way this year to fund a $500 million upgrade. For a driver, that makes the yearly rise a product of the law and not a fresh decision each July, so a commuter’s budget should carry it every year.

Compton also spoke about the commission’s future. “It’s great to be part of an 86-year-old organization that’s still in growth mode,” Compton said. “This is another opportunity for the commission to continue to evolve.”

E-ZPass or Toll by Plate: The Gap in What You Pay

The cost gap between the two payment methods is the biggest money issue in the switch. The commission says drivers who use E-ZPass save 50 percent on tolls compared with drivers billed by license plate.

E-ZPass covers 86 percent of turnpike motorists. Their tolls come out of the account at the E-ZPass price. Everyone else gets a toll-by-plate invoice mailed to the vehicle’s registered owner, and commission officials say that method costs more to process.

The remaining 14 percent of motorists pay another way. For those drivers the gantries remove the booth and not the bill. Cameras read the plate, and the invoice arrives at the registered owner’s address. Drivers can also pay cash through KUBRA, the commission says.

The fastest saving is an E-ZPass account: the 50 percent gap applies to every trip a plate-billed driver takes.

What to Do Before Jan. 3

Start with the tag. Officials say drivers should place the transponder on the windshield near the mirror and should not raise it by hand at each gantry at highway speed. Chris Maugans, the commission’s toll operations project manager, said a properly mounted tag needs no further attention. “The best advice is as long as it’s up there now mounted, you can even forget that it’s there,” Maugans said.

Compton asked for two steps. “We ask you to please mount the [E-ZPass] tag,” Compton said. “Also, please make sure your license plate is hooked up to your account.”

The plate link counts, as the gantry cameras read plates and tags alike. Check that every vehicle you drive on the turnpike is listed on the account, and that the tag sits where the officials say it should.

Drivers who do not have E-ZPass have a choice to make. Open an account and save 50 percent, or expect a mailed invoice at the higher rate, with the payment option through KUBRA. Either way, price the usual route with the commission’s PA Toll Calculator now, so the first January invoice holds no surprise.

Toll booth demolition follows the launch. Shuey said the work begins soon afterward and “that process will take about two years to complete.” Compton said the removal pays off in safety. “We’ve had less crashes in those interchanges because that toll apparatus is no longer in the way,” Compton said. “So those toll booths are no longer there, which is a much safer experience and a much more pleasant experience.”

Shuey described the result for traffic. “There are no longer those site-impeding and traffic-impeding tollbooths. Traffic will flow much more like a normal interstate highway,” said Shuey.

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Sources

• CBS Pittsburgh: Tolls on the Pennsylvania Turnpike will increase in 2027
• Patch: PA Turnpike Tolls To Rise Again As Open Road Tolling Goes Statewide
• WTAE: Open Road Tolling set to start on Pennsylvania Turnpike in early 2027
• WHP: PA Turnpike moves closer to Open Road Tolling amid tollbooth phase out

Reviewed by Preetam Gadekar