Three leading House Democrats have unveiled a study concluding that the I-80 tolling plan will provide considerably more revenue for highway needs than a Turnpike lease ever could. Majority Whip Keith McCall, Transportation Chair Joe Markosek and Appropriations Chair Dwight Evans said leasing the Turnpike would result either in significantly higher tolls or significantly lower revenue than the measures contained in Act 44, the highway funding measure passed last July.

The study was completed by two Penn State professors and a senior fellow at Harvard, all of whom have years of experience in investment banking and in the transportation industry.

The study said a Turnpike lease would not make financial sense because a non-public operator would need to pay much more to finance the deal. It said the value of the Turnpike under Act 44 is $26.5 billion, while its value under a private lease would be only $14.8 billion. The difference was attributed to the availability of tax-exempt bonds to a public entity, but not to a private operator.

The authors also noted that the value of a Turnpike lease would be significantly less if I-80 were to remain a "free" road, which confirms that leasing the Turnpike or tolling I-80 is not the "either-or" proposition claimed by some.

"We now seem to have come full-circle in the transportation funding debate," said PHIA President Ron Drnevich. "Nearly 18 months ago, the Pennsylvania Economy League study concluded that there is no single solution to the funding dilemma. Everyone acknowledges that Act 44 was only a partial solution. We need to stop talking about how not to fix the problem, and start talking about how to fix it."