The Delaware River Joint Toll Bridge Commission is one of the nation’s oldest toll agencies. Its genesis is rooted in the advent of the automobile age during the first quarter of the last century. Its incorporation and history of operations reflect an ongoing responsiveness to a continuous trend of rising traffic rates, larger and faster vehicles, and growing volumes of interstate commerce in each ensuing decade.
The watershed event that gave rise for a reconstituted toll agency occurred in 1925, when the Northampton Street Bridge linking Easton, Pa. and Phillipsburg, N.J. required major repairs. In the course of making repairs, one half of the road deck had to be closed to traffic. This resulted in crippling traffic jams, economic losses in the two communities and numerous problems for law enforcement.
The legislative process to convert the predecessor commission into a toll agency began in 1931, but it was not completed until late 1934. By this time, the region’s transportation needs were growing rapidly. Almost all car models were longer, wider, more powerful, and increasingly affordable. The price of a brand new 4-door Dodge sedan was $665. Innovations such as aerodynamic designs, one-piece curved windshields, and radio controls built into instrument panels all took root in 1934.
Responding to the legislative mandate, the reconstituted Commission organized itself on December 28, 1934. Its first official meeting took place in February 1935, a non-voting session where testimony was gathered on the need for the proposed Bushkill Street Toll Bridge between Phillipsburg and Easton. (The bridge was later renamed the Easton-Phillipsburg Toll Bridge after a “dual high-speed highway” approach through Easton was constructed and opened to traffic in 1952.)
Construction on the Bushkill Street Bridge began in 1936. It was completed and opened to traffic on January 17, 1938, at the cost of approximately $2,500,000 financed by revenue bonds payable solely from tolls collected at the facility. The new bridge was hailed as the “The World’s Most Brilliant Bridge” and it ranked as the longest single steel truss in the nation, a distinction it held for 19 years. It would be more than a decade—a period that included the end of the Great Depression and the dark years of World War II—before the Commission would break ground to construct another vehicular bridge.
Despite the Depression, traffic volumes grew steadily during the Commission’s early years. In its first full year of operation in 1935, the agency’s network of non-toll bridges carried slightly more than 20 million vehicles. Like its predecessor agency, the Commission operated and maintained these bridges with tax revenues provided by the two states. One of the non-toll bridges was a wooden covered span—Portland-Columbia. Constructed in 1869, it would go on to hold the distinction as the longest remaining wooden covered bridge in the country.
The Commission responded to this new mobile society—and the need for stronger bridges for national defense purposes—by launching and completing a series of “super highway” toll bridge projects. The first of these was the Trenton-Morrisville (Route 1) Toll Bridge, which opened in 1952. The project required the relocation of a series of residences to make way for the bridge and the corresponding completions of a new Route 1 roadway in Morrisville, Pa. and the “Trenton Freeway” in New Jersey. The project also included construction of a four-story administration building adjacent to the bridge’s toll plaza. The facility—situated between Route 1 and Wood Street in Morrisville—served as the agency’s headquarters for the next 56 years.
In December 1953, the Commission opened three new toll bridges in its northern district in a single month: Portland-Columbia, Delaware Water Gap (I-80) and Milford-Montague. During the decade, the Commission also reconstructed a flood-damaged bridge and built a new pedestrian bridge.
As heady as the Fifties were for the Commission, the decade posed one notable setback. In 1955, the most devastating flood ever recorded along the Delaware River presented an unanticipated set of problems for the Commission, its administrators and its engineering staff. The flood waters resulted from the remnants of two separate hurricanes—Connie and Diane—that inundated the river region with rain during a one-week period.
A steel girder pedestrian bridge constructed on the piers of the venerable Portland-Columbia timber bridge opened on October 22, 1958.
When the 1960s arrived, the Commission had responsibility for operating 13 non-toll state-owned bridges (two of which were pedestrian only spans) and five toll bridges. Total traffic for 1960 was slightly more than 56 million vehicles—an increase of over 21 million vehicles from 1950.
Partly due to this traffic surge and the congestion that regularly inundated the overcrowded, weight-limited, two-lane truss span connecting New Hope, Pa., and Lambertville, N.J., the Commission in the early Sixties began planning construction of a new toll bridge to carry U.S. Route 202 traffic around the two communities. Ground was broken October 7, 1968 and the $13 million structure opened to traffic on Thursday, July 22, 1971.
Traffic rose steadily in all corners of the Commission’s jurisdiction with the onset of dual-income households and the maturation of the car-crazed “baby boom” generation in the 1960s. To ease the situation at the Commission’s toll bridges, the agency began employing automated coin and token collection devices at its toll plazas in the early 1970s. (While the Commission’s tokens were stamped with the year 1934, the reference date applied to the agency’s founding and not the actual minting of the coins.)
Like other toll agencies in the country, the Commission weathered two major oil embargoes and resulting gas crises in the 1970s. It was during this period that new terms like “data processing” and “computerized toll collection and recording systems” began creeping into the Commission’s vernacular for the first time. The Commission purchased its first computer system for tabulating toll collections in 1975.
By the end of 1980, the total annual traffic figure for the Commission’s bridge system was 72,602,610—roughly 20 percent more than the 60,389,480 total crossings recorded in 1970. Traffic growth remained the overriding dynamic for the Commission throughout the 1980s and the 1990s.
Toll bridges continued to see unbridled traffic increases, but the traffic rates at non-toll crossings remained relatively steady, save for one exception: the Scudder Falls (I-95) Bridge linking Mercer County, N.J. and Bucks County, Pa.
Governance wise, a major change in the Commission’s bi-state agreement and federal compact occurred in 1984 when Pennsylvania and New Jersey charged the Commission with assuming full financial responsibility for the 13 non-toll bridges within its jurisdiction. Prior to that time, the costs of operating and maintaining the non-toll bridges were financed by appropriations from the two states.
Ownership of the state-owned bridges was not fully transferred to the Commission until July 1, 1987. With the transfer of ownership, the 13 non-toll spans became “toll-supported bridges,” a designation reflecting the fact that a portion of the tolls collected at the Commission’s toll bridges are used to finance the operation, maintenance and security of the non-toll spans.
The I-78 Toll Bridge opened to traffic on November 21, 1989. The event marked completion of the last segment of I-78, a 144-mile interstate highway between Harrisburg, Pa. and the Holland Tunnel linking New Jersey and Lower Manhattan. The new river connection soon demonstrated its worth, providing an additional travel route to and from the Lehigh Valley.
In its first full year of operation in 1990, the I-78 Toll Bridge carried more than 8 million vehicles, a first-year record for a new Commission toll bridge. The bridge also enabled the agency to reach a major milestone in 1990: it marked the first time traffic at the Commission’s toll bridges (54,314,407 vehicles) surpassed the levels of its non-toll bridges (50,277,254 vehicles).
The Commission launched a four-year long capital improvement program to enable the agency to better fulfill its central mission of providing safe and efficient river crossings. Now anticipated to total more than $1.1 billion, the capital improvement program has already achieved numerous successes—some of which are explained in detail elsewhere in this annual report.
In 2002, the Commission began transitioning all of its toll bridges to the E-ZPass electronic toll collection system, reducing queuing and congestion for customers. More than 60 percent of revenue is now collected electronically. Radio communications, security, and computerization are now up to current standards. And the Commission’s administrative headquarters has moved to newer—and more centralized—offices adjacent to the New Hope-Lambertville Toll Bridge in Solebury, Pa.
At the close of 2009, half of the Commission’s 20 bridges have undergone rehabilitation, widening, or improvement under the program. Future capital improvement plans include the replacement of the existing commuter-choked Scudder Falls (I-95) Bridge with a new facility, including overhauled interchanges and a widened Pennsylvania approach roadway.
The agency that ended its first year of operations with 20 million vehicle crossings in 1935 now handles roughly 140 million crossings annually. Total traffic during its first 75 years of operation (January 1, 1935 to December 31, 2009) exceeds 5.3 billion vehicular crossings. The Commission currently operates seven toll bridges, 13 non-toll bridges—two of which are pedestrian-only facilities—and an additional 36 approach structures (smaller overpass/underpass type bridges) throughout its river region.