CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The first busy travel holiday since the tolls were doubled on the West Virginia Turnpike produced fewer toll transactions but state Parkways Authority General Manager Greg Barr doesn’t believe the toll increase was the reason for the slight decrease in traffic from 2018 numbers.
“I don’t think that had anything to do with it,” Barr told MetroNews Tuesday about Memorial Day weekend travel. “There’s really no other way to go.”
Traffic was down 2.5 percent from Memorial Day weekend 2018 and a total of 4.5 percent since the 2017 holiday.
Tolls doubled on the 88-mile highway from $2 to $4 per toll plaza on Jan. 15. Many West Virginians took advantage of the deeply discounted offer of a $24 three-year unlimited use EZ Pass but not as many out-of-state drivers. That was the majority of travelers on the Turnpike for the Memorial Day weekend.
“Overall (this year) our traffic has been up two percent,” Barr told MetroNews Tuesday. “It’s hard to figure out exactly what happens (with holiday traffic) and why that happens.”
The Thursday-Monday travel period wasn’t exactly slow. There were more than 588,000 vehicles that passed through the toll plazas. At times there were 1,700 transactions an hour. Some toll collectors were doing 300 transactions an hour. There were 604,000 transactions last year.
“We were very busy. Even though you’re down 2.5 percent (over last year) you really can’t see it that much out in the lanes. There were still a lot of people pounding through there,” Barr said.
There were two bad wrecks that impacted Turnpike. A driver lost of control of his pick-up truck heading south between Beckley and the Ghent at around 11:30 Friday morning. The truck flipped. Barr said the wreck resulted in a four-mile back-up of traffic at the Ghent toll plaza.
A Saturday wreck in Charleston before you actually get on the Turnpike ended up causing a significant southbound back-up at the Chelyan toll plaza.
The volume of northbound traffic Monday caused a long line at the Pax toll plaza. Barr said that took a couple of hours to clear.
“It’s so busy that we can’t give up a lane in the other direction because then it would cause long back-ups in that direction as well. So we can to stay at five (lanes north) and five (lanes south),” he said.
Discounted EZ passes are still available to in-state and out-of-state motorists but they are now $25 annually with a one-time fee for a transponder.