Asides for Jan. 3, 2010
THE NEW YEAR has dawned, bringing with it a new supply of hopes and dreams. But if the fulfillment of those dreams requires traveling the Pennsylvania Turnpike, it's no use hoping that the old rates apply. As of today, turnpike tolls will be 3 percent higher. That means a trip from Pittsburgh (Monroeville) to Philadelphia will rise from $22.50 to $23.20. This is the second in a series of increases mandated by Act 44, which was passed by the Legislature in 2007 to help solve the state's transportation funding crisis. One important part of the formula hasn't yet come to fruition -- tolling I-80. Those who live nearby have resisted this idea vigorously, and the federal government is still considering the application by the state Department of Transportation and the turnpike commission to allow the tolling. It should be granted. To delay or deny this change invites the worst of all worlds -- less traffic on the turnpike because of higher tolls, more drivers on I-80 not paying their fair share and more likelihood of a bigger statewide transportation funding crisis.
THOSE OF US in the newspaper business think we know a thing or two about typefaces -- Caslon, Futura, Times Roman and the like. But until we read a story Tuesday by Post-Gazette staff writer Jon Schmitz, our latest font of all wisdom on transportation matters, we didn't realize that Highway Gothic was a typeface (if asked to guess, we would have guessed that Highway Gothic described any scene involving construction zones marked by orange cones). In fact, Highway Gothic has been used for the lettering on signs for the interstate highway system since the 1950s. That is changing. PennDOT is erecting signs in new, more easy-to-read lettering appropriately called Clearview, which was developed with the help of researchers at Penn State University. It is said to be 10 to 18 percent more legible. No excuses now for missing an exit.
POPULAR CULTURE being what it is, fame is having your name on a big sign (not necessarily written in Clearview) or having your likeness made into a bobble-head doll or else having a snow globe made in your honor. Snow globe? Sure -- and these days they have unusual subjects. The Arab courier attacked by lions -- a dramatic diorama exhibit familiar to countless visitors to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History -- will be memorialized by its own snow globe in 2010, museum officials say. The globe will have gold-leaf flakes instead of "snow" to suggest a desert sandstorm. Now, if that Arab had taken his camel on the local turnpike, he would have been spared the lions but not the higher tolls.