Tolls on The Maine Turnpike Go Up Today – Here’s How Much More You’ll Pay

Starting today, November 1, if you drive on the Maine Turnpike you'll be paying more in tolls to travel.

When the Maine Turnpike opened in 1947, construction of the new highway was to be paid for by tolls with a plan to make the highway free to travel once it had been paid for. When that time was about to come in the 80s, the Maine Legislature authorized the continued collection of tolls to pay to maintain the road and tolls remain to this day to pay for improvements such as rebuilding bridges, installing open road tolling to allow drivers to pay tolls with EZ-Pass at highway speed and widening the road to three lanes from Kittery to South Portland. A current project is widening the road to three lanes through Portland.

As of today, those tolls increase. Here's the breakdown:

• Cash tolls at the York toll plaza will increase from $3 to $4
• EZ-Pass rates increase from 7.7 cents per mile to 8 cents per mile
• EZ-Pass discount of 25 to 20 percent for 30 trips or more a month
• EZ-Pass discount of 50 to 40 percent for 40 trips or more a month

The increase you'll notice the most is the $1 increase in York and is aimed right at the tourists who flock to Maine by the droves for the summer. Your best bet to save money on the higher toll rates is to get yourself an EZ-Pass if you don't have one already. You don't have to worry about having cash on hand, you'll get discounts the more you drive and you don't have to stop to slow down at all to pay your toll at locations where open road tolling is available.