CLEVELAND — If you’ve traveled the Ohio Turnpike East of Cleveland near Lordstown over the past year and a half, you’ve noticed the construction of the new Mainline Toll Plaza. It’s one of four being added to the 241-mile toll road as part of the Turnpike's new toll collection system set to debut later this fall and designed to speed up your cross-state travel.
“Open Road tolling is coming to the Ohio Turnpike, that means our EZ-Pass customers will be able to travel non-stop across the entire turnpike at highway speed,” said the Ohio Turnpike’s Charles Cyrill.
In addition, seven of the 31 toll plazas are being eliminated, and if you have EZ-Pass, you won’t have to deal with this anymore. The toll gates on the EZ-Pass-only lanes, instead, will be able to roll through at 10 MPH. Good news for Justin Machuga of Youngstown, who uses the Turnpike every day for work.
“That is wonderful because we’ve actually had it hit our trucks before driving through,” Machuga said of the gates. “When it says EZ-Pass accepted, and it goes to close the toll gate on you, and you’re like 'ahhhh.'”
Still, the upgrades come as other nearby states like New York and Pennsylvania have gone one step further, going to an entirely cashless tolling system, with no stopping anymore at toll booths. So If you don’t have EZ-Pass like Loraine Hanson from Michigan, paying in cash at the toll booth in those states is no longer an option.
“They take a picture of your plate when you’re going underneath it and then they send you a bill later on,” Hanson said, who was passing through Ohio to Pennsylvania.
She’ll pay cash for the turnpike in Ohio, but she said she knows for Pennsylvania, she'll get a bill.
The state of New York, in fact, removed its very last toll booth along the Thruway two years ago. Cyrill said the Ohio Turnpike never considered that option.
“No, no, the Ohio Turnpike will continue to have a ticketed and gated system to accommodate our customers who travel without an EZ-Pass,” Cyrill said.
Automatic Toll Payment Machines, which accept cash, coins and credit cards, will be available at all 20 toll plaza interchanges as well as the four mainline toll plazas when the new toll collection system is completed. Chris Lehman of Pennsylvania says his state’s full cashless tolling system is convenient, but it also comes with problems.
“Well, I think it’s good for the motorists, but then they have a hard time collecting tolls,” Lehman said. “They’re millions of dollars behind.”
Nearly $105 million, to be exact, in unpaid tolls, according to Pennsylvania’s State Auditor last fall, looking back on fiscal years 2020 and 2021. Auditors found almost a quarter of uncollected tolls were because of unpaid invoices, unidentified license plates or because PennDOT either had the wrong address or no address at all to match with the plate.
The Ohio Turnpike Commission estimates the overall cost of the upgrades, which will come in around $250 million, will be offset in savings over 30 years because of the reduction in the number of Toll Plazas, the elimination of toll gates on entry and a projected increase in EZ-Pass usage.
In Ohio, more than 90% of commercial truck customers are currently using EZ-Pass, a number that drops to nearly 65% for passenger car customers. Drivers who use EZ-Pass save an average of 33% on their tolls by doing so.
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