With uncollected tolls now reaching $237 million, the Pennsylvania Turnpike has added another method to deal with scofflaws: filing civil lawsuits against Pennsylvania residents through the state attorney general’s office.
Over the past year, the turnpike has referred more than 100 of the most egregious cases of toll avoidance to Attorney General Dave Sunday’s Civil Division for collection enforcement. So far, the threat of civil lawsuits appears to be having some success: The agency collected $6.5 million from past due bills in the first quarter of the current fiscal year, compared to $2.4 million the previous year, and the number of people paying their past due bills has increased to 43% in October 2025, 10 percentage points higher than October 2024.
In an interview last week, turnpike CEO Mark Compton called working with the attorney general’s office “another tool” the agency can use to go after “the worst of the worst” Pennsylvania residents who refuse to pay turnpike tolls. Others include asking the state Department of Transportation to suspend the vehicle registration of anyone who hasn’t paid four tolls or has accumulated more than $250 in past due bills, and referring cases to local district attorneys for criminal prosecution in an effort to collect from the 7.8% of motorists who don’t pay within 150 days.
This year alone, PennDOT has suspended 18,000 vehicle registrations for nonpayment of turnpike tolls. In addition to either paying their full debt or setting up payment plans, motorists must pay $119 to reactivate a suspended registration.
“It’s an opportunity to get the highest law enforcement officer in the commonwealth involved,” Compton said of the civil cases. “A lot of these are people who already have their registration suspended and they continue to drive. Everything else has been exhausted, so we go to the attorney general.”
Before the more serious steps of lawsuits, criminal charges or license suspensions, the turnpike sends a series of notices for overdue bills, including contact from a collection agency. Those who don’t make arrangements to pay face more serious consequences.
Growing ‘leakage’
In the toll collection industry, unpaid tolls have a name that’s almost never associated with anything good: “leakage.”
For the turnpike, leakage keeps growing, more than doubling from 2021, when it stood at $105 million. From October 2024 through September, uncollected tolls grew from $195 million to $237 million, according to the quarterly Revenue Assurance Plan prepared for the turnpike.
The agency claims that part of the reason for that rising number of unpaid tolls has been the annual rate increases over the past 17 years, including 5% this year. The percentage of motorists who don’t pay their tolls remains fairly steady and about the industry average, Compton contends, but the unpaid amount increases because the amount of each unpaid toll is higher every year.
Most of the remainder can be attributed to increased traffic on the turnpike, including about the same small percentage of folks who don’t pay. Overall, the RAP report shows, the agency collected $1.84 billion for the year ending in September with another $237 million uncollectable after 150 days, about 7.8%.
“That’s a lot of money to us [that goes uncollected],” Compton said. “I can tell you we are making progress. As our toll charges continue to rise, we do continue to keep those numbers steady.”
Mike Carroll, secretary of the state Department of Transportation and turnpike board chairman, said “out of fairness” all motorists are required to pay their tolls. He said he’s satisfied with the turnpike’s efforts to collect.
“[Leakage] is consistent with what the percentage is across the industry,” he said.
The worst
How bad are the worst scofflaws? How about one commercial driver in Bucks County who has racked up tolls and fees of $153,178 and a total of five who owe more than $84,000 each.
For privacy reasons because the cases are in various stages, the turnpike declined to identify the in-state drivers who owe the most, but the top 10 referred to the attorney general have avoided paying a combined $859,377. About 61% of all tolls are charged to Pennsylvania residents, 39% to out-of-state drivers.
The attorney general’s office couldn’t be reached for comment on why the office is filing civil rather than criminal cases and whether that office could go after out-of-state drivers who don’t pay their tolls.
The turnpike has good success collecting tolls from drivers who use E-ZPass, where a transponder in their vehicle is linked to their credit card for payment when they drive through a toll booth or under a payment gantry. About 86.3% of drivers use E-ZPass.
The rest use Toll-By-Plate, where the turnpike takes a photo of their license plate when they go through a pay point and sends them a bill through the mail. The eastern part of the state already has switched to all-electronic tolling where tolls are charged on the highway when motorists drive under gantries, but electronic toll plazas are expected to continue in the western part of the state until 2027.
The remaining 13.7% of customers are charged through Toll-By-Plate, and that is the major culprit in generating unpaid tolls.
The RAP report for October shows 5.9% pay their tolls within 150 days, but 5.5% don’t. That amounts to 40.9% of Toll-By-Plate customers who don’t pay their bills.
The remaining 2.3% are uncollectable for a variety of reasons such as plates are covered, unreadable or missing; the vehicle registration has a bad address; or the state Department of Motor Vehicles has no record of the plate.
The RAP report doesn’t break down the amount of unpaid tolls generated by out-of-state motorists, but they are a particularly vexing problem for the agency.
Not surprisingly, motorists from Ohio (8.3%), New Jersey (7.3%), West Virginia (2.5%) and New York (2.4%) are the most active on the turnpike. However, if they choose not to pay tolls, there is little the turnpike can do to collect from them.
That’s because states won’t allow each other’s violators to be prosecuted in another state because each state has different penalties for toll avoidance. Compton says the state has been working for more than a decade to reach reciprocity agreements where the states would have similar penalties to allow more stringent collection efforts, but there are no major breakthroughs yet.
Compton points out the RAP report shows other areas where the turnpike has shown strong improvement over the years. For example, since March 2020, the number of unreadable plates is down 27%, bad registration addresses are down 22% and undeliverable bills are down 71%.
The agency also has expanded the number of retail outlets where motorists can pay bills, added Google and Apple Pay, and will accept payments online, by phone, in person or via QR code. It also encourages all motorists to use E-ZPass for a discount of up to 50% compared to Toll-By-Plate and offers Toll-By-Plate users 15% off if they notify the turnpike they will be using the system and arrange a payment method.
“We have to do everything we can to collect that money,” Compton said. “It’s a matter of fairness. A vast majority of our customers pay their bills on time.”
Ed covers transportation at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but he's currently on strike. Email him at eblazina@unionprogress.com.