The Carbon County Commissioners went on record Thursday that they are not in favor of tolling bridges along Interstate 80 to help fund bridge projects.

“I’m not really for that one,” Commissioners’ Chairman Wayne Nothstein said.

“We already pay the highest gasoline tax in the United States of America,” Commissioner Chris Lukasevich said. “It’s probably more about better use of the existing funds than continue to increase what it costs us to transit through Carbon County.”

The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation plans to replace the I-80 bridges over the Lehigh River between Luzerne and Carbon counties and is facing an $8.1 billion funding gap for maintaining and improving highways and bridges across the state, a letter to the commissioners states.

PennDOT says tolling the bridges would help raise revenue to help with replacement and rehabilitation projects and noted the I-80 bridge project is a “critical bridge project that needs to be completed.”

“Everyone looks at the cost to trucking that will increase the cost of the product you buy, but what about the person that it may cost them $8 dollars a day to get to work?” Commissioner Rocky Ahner said. “I don’t think an employer is going to give them an extra $40 a week raise. Plus, on top of this they will seek alternate routes causing congestion and unsafe conditions in all surrounding municipalities or townships.”

Ahner added that the tolling was going to be implemented for approximately 30 years.

“Why is it 30 years?” he asked. “If you look at some other boroughs and they want to do something with their fire company, they might put a percentage on for taxes to do something and then it gets dropped off. Why is this a 30-year thing? I think they should have looked ahead a little bit, five years back to do something instead of now we’re going to fix this bridge and we need this money so we are going to do it this way.”

“It’s going to an issue for local traffic,” Nothstein said. “It’s going to increase the flow for school bus traffic. It’s going to be a higher hazard. It’s going to put more of a burden on municipalities and if they put it on and even though they say it’s 30 years, my feeling is it won’t go away. It will be permanent.”

Last week, PennDOT released findings of a study about the bridge tolling, noting the bridges being considered for tolling are structures of substantial size that warrant timely attention and would require significant funds to rehabilitate or replace.

The I-80 bridges over the Lehigh River are eastbound/westbound structures built in 1965 and approaching the end of their serviceable life spans. These bridges cross over the Lehigh River, Lehigh Gorge State Park, Reading Blue Mountain and Northern Railroad and River Road in Carbon and Luzerne counties.

Combined, the bridges carry an average of 27,400 vehicles per day, about 44 percent of which is truck traffic.

Other bridges considered are: Interstate 78 Lenhartsville Bridge Replacement in Berks County, Interstate 79 widening, and Bridgeville Interchange Reconfiguration in Allegheny County, I-80 Canoe Creek Bridges in Clarion County, I-80 Nescopeck Creek Bridges in Luzerne County, I-80 North Fork Bridges Project in Jefferson County, I-81 Susquehanna Project in Susquehanna County, I-83 South Bridge in Dauphin County and I-95 Girard Point Bridge in Philadelphia County.

Tolling would be all electronic and collected by using E-ZPass or license plate billing. The funds received from the toll would go back to the bridge where the toll is collected to pay for the construction, maintenance and operation of that bridge.