The Blade of Toledo, Ohio, reported in its Sunday edition that commercial traffic on the Ohio Turnpike increased by about 17 percent in February.
Ohio Gov. Bob Taft has made it a priority to entice truck traffic on parallel routes back to the toll road.
At the governor’s initiative, truck speed limits on the toll road were raised to 65 mph in September. Truck tolls were reduced by about 25 percent in January. The measures were intended to draw trucks away from parallel routes such as U.S. 20, State Rt. 2, and U.S. 6.
"It seems to be very successful so far," said Joe Rutherford, an Ohio Department of Transportation spokesman.
The Blade said that off-turnpike truck traffic increased by a cumulative 82 percent after massive toll increases during the mid-1990s. More recently, Ohio DOT statistics showed a decline of more than 20 percent in truck traffic at virtually all of its counting stations on State Rt. 2, U.S. 6, U.S. 20, U.S. 20A, and U.S. 24 in northwest Ohio. Truck volume was down by more than 35 percent on U.S. 6 west of Fremont and Route 2 west of Port Clinton, and by nearly 30 percent on U.S. 20A east and west of Wauseon and on U.S. 20 west of Pioneer, Ohio.
The temporary toll decrease will end on July 1, 2006, when officials will review its effectiveness.
Meanwhile, according to the Blade, the Ohio Highway Patrol has stepped up enforcement on parallel routes. During January and February, Bucyrus district troopers issued more than 1,800 tickets to truckers, roughly quadruple and triple the respective numbers from a year earlier
To offset lost revenue from lower tolls, the state legislature approved payment of $23 million from the state’s DOT budget to the toll road. Officials likened the payment to "buying capacity" on the turnpike rather than having to spend the money to repair or expand the parallel roads.