U.S. Rep. John Peterson (R., Pa.) urged acting Federal Highway Administrator Jim Ray to deny the application. Peterson's constituents in northwestern Pennsylvania, along the I-80 corridor, fear that tolls would mean economic ruin for the region.

Meanwhile, most of the Philadelphia area's representatives in Congress are supporting the tolls, in preference to leasing the Pennsylvania Turnpike for $12.8 billion to a Spanish-U.S. consortium, as proposed by Gov. Rendell.

U.S. Reps. Robert A. Brady, Chaka Fattah, Joe Sestak and Allyson Y. Schwartz, all Democrats, signed a letter urging Transportation Secretary Mary Peters to give the state authority to place tolls on I-80.

Brady, a former turnpike commissioner, said yesterday: "I think the lease is a bad idea. The numbers they're predicting they'll get from the lease are too high. And I've got a major problem with giving one of our major assets to a foreign country. . . . Maybe our governor better take another look at what he's doing."

Sestak was more equivocal. "I presently support the tolling option," he said, "but as Gov. Rendell has expressed, it needs to be determined if leasing the turnpike will produce significantly more funds to finance the needed improvements to our transportation infrastructure, and I can only consider the idea of a lease if that is proven to be the case."

Rendell said yesterday that federal officials faced a dilemma of dueling preferences within the Bush administration.

"They love P3s," he said, referring to "public-private partnerships," such as his proposed lease of the turnpike to the private consortium. "But they also want more toll roads. So they're dealing with two conflicting priorities."

Rendell has the same kind of conflict. He said he preferred a turnpike lease because he believed it would produce more money for transportation projects, but he also endorsed the application for tolls on I-80.

Pennsylvania officials hope to win federal approval to have as many as 10 tollbooths on the 311-mile highway by the summer of 2010.

Those tolls are a key part of a state transportation-funding plan to raise about $1 billion more per year over the next 10 years for highways, bridges and mass transit.

The Federal Highway Administration returned the state's first proposal to get permission to add I-80 tolls in December, citing a number of unanswered questions about finances and construction.

After his meeting yesterday with the agency's administrator, Peterson said: "They're going to do a quick but thorough study of the application."

Peterson said Ray was noncommittal, but "I don't think it can qualify. . . . There was no impact study, no diversion study. I'm not discouraged after talking to them."