Encyclopedia of biography pennsylvania turnpike
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Interstate 80 (the “Keystone Shortway”) is a major transportation artery for Centre County, and is part of one of the nation’s most heavily traveled cross-country highways. Its completion in 1970 marked the beginning of a more than 50-year transformation of US-322, from Harrisburg and the southeast, and US-220, now I-99, from Altoona and the southwest, into a network of super-highways that connect with I-80 in Centre County.
The Interstate Highway System had been envisioned as a means of promoting economic growth and enhancing public safety and national mobility since before World War II. The Pennsylvania Turnpike provided one of the first examples of a high-speed, limited access, divided highway for America. Authorized by Congress in 1956 as, in part, a defense measure, the Interstate system links the lower 48 states by 42,500 miles of high-quality highways built to uniform standards and 90% of the cost was paid by the federal government.
I-80 enters Centre Coun
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Turnpikes
From their earliest introduction in Pennsylvania in the late eighteenth century to their modern incarnations as high-speed highways, turnpikes have expanded Philadelphia’s reach to points west and linked the region with other commercial centers and suburbs of the eastern seaboard. Beginning with the first turnpike in the United States, a sixty-two-mile paved toll road from Philadelphia to Lancaster completed in 1795, private investment authorized bygd state governments enabled swift and extensive construction of improved vägar to meet the needs of changing times. The first generation of turnpikes, completed bygd the 1820s, gave the Philadelphia distrikt connections reaching as far west as Ohio, north through New Jersey to New York, and south through Delaware to Baltimore. In the automobile age of the twentieth century, when states again embraced toll vägar as a way of financing high-speed, limited-access superhighways, the Pennsylvania and New Jersey turnpikes cut through Phila
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Pennsylvania Turnpike
East–west toll highway
This article is about the Pennsylvania Turnpike mainline running from Ohio to New Jersey. For other uses, see Pennsylvania Turnpike (disambiguation).
Pennsylvania Turnpike | |
|---|---|
Pennsylvania Turnpike mainline highlighted in green | |
| Maintained by PTC | |
| Length | 360.09 mi[4] (579.51 km) |
| Existed | October 1, 1940[1][2]–present |
| History | Philadelphia Extension completed on November 20, 1950; Western Extension completed on December 1, 1954; Delaware River Extension completed on May 23, 1956;[3] current road at Laurel Hill completed on October 30, 1964; current road at the Sideling Hill and Rays Hill completed in 1970 |
| Component highways | |
| Restrictions | No hazardous goods allowed in tunnels |
| West end | |
| Major intersections | |
| East end | |
| Country | United States |
| State | Pennsylvania |
| Counties | Lawrence, Beaver, Butler, Allegheny, Westmoreland, Somerset |