The situation is frustrating, and PA government has a long tradition of showing poor judgement. That said, the conditions that caused this situation were somewhat complicated but basically caused by Federal laws, and I think PA's position was somewhat defensible.
You can read the below at
THIS LINK.
Anyone who has ever traveled I-70 in the vicinity of Breezewood knows the problem. The connection you imagine must exist between the toll-free I-70 and the Pennsylvania Turnpike, which carries the I-70/76 designation between Breezewood and New Stanton-doesn't exist! The motorist must leave one or the other and make the connection via U.S. 30 through a bewildering array of roadside businesses.
The lack of an interchange becomes even more of a problem during peak periods, such as the Sunday after Thanksgiving, when traffic becomes backed up at the toll booths on the turnpike and on U.S. 30 and I-70. Many a motorist, trapped in gridlock after giving thanks to a higher authority for their blessings, has asked a lower authority to ensure a very warm spot in the afterlife for the highway engineers who conceived this design.
Actually, Breezewood is the unintended consequence of decisions having nothing to do with it.
When the first segment of the Pennsylvania Turnpike opened in October 1940, it included an interchange with U.S. 30 at Breezewood, turning the small town into a crossroads. In 1957, the Pennsylvania Turnpike was incorporated into the Interstate System, with the segment in the vicinity of Breezewood included in I-70. Then toll-free I-70 was built from the Maryland line to the turnpike at Breezewood-without a direct connection between the two.
This peculiar arrangement occurred because of Section 113 of the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956. Under Section 113(b), Federal-aid funds could be used for approaches to any toll road, bridge, or tunnel "to a point where such project will have some use irrespective of its use for such toll road, bridge, or tunnel." In other words, a motorist could use the toll facility or not. Under Section 113 (c), the State highway agency and toll authority could use Federal-aid highway funds to build an interchange between a toll-free Interstate and an Interstate turnpike (i.e., the motorist would have no choice but to use the toll road). However, the State highway agency, the toll authority, and the BPR would have to enter into an agreement to stop collecting tolls when the bonds were retired.
The Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission (PTC), which had no desire to stop collecting tolls, decided not to use the State's Federal-aid funds for the I-70 connection. The PTC also decided against using its own revenue for the interchanges.
The lack of an interchange in Breezewood and other intersections along the turnpike was one of the topics considered in 1966 when the Special Subcommittee on the Federal-Aid Highway Program held hearings on the relationship of toll facilities to the Federal-aid highway program. Franklin V. Summers, the PTC's Director of Operations, testified on May 10, 1966. Referring to the statutory restrictions, he explained:
We are willing to share whatever we legally can, of course, in making such direct connections; and we are doing so on some of them. However, where new interchanges would not afford an increase, great increase in revenue, we do not feel that these matters should be thrust upon the turnpike commission.
The PTC, he pointed out, was concerned that it would face declining revenues when the toll-free Keystone Shortway (I-80) was completed on a parallel alignment across the State to the north. It would, he said, divert a considerable amount of traffic, and potential revenue, from the turnpike.
Because the PTC was unwilling to use its own revenues for an interchange at Breezewood, State highway officials used Federal-aid highway funds to extend I-70 north beyond the turnpike to a terminus with U.S. 30. Consistent with Section 113(b), this configuration allowed motorists to use a toll-free route (U.S. 30) or the turnpike to travel east or west of Breezewood.
Breezewood was not the only place where the Pennsylvania Turnpike and a toll-free Interstate intersected without a direct connection. However, as
Business Week stated in 1991, Breezewood is "perhaps the purest example yet devised of the great American tourist trap":
Motorists must drive through the self-proclaimed Town of Motels, a half-mile stretch of blacktop and buildings sandwiched between the two roads. Breezewood, population 180, is the Las Vegas of roadside strips, a blaze of neon in the middle of nowhere, a polyp on the nation's interstate highway system.
