Here's a cross-state route with only one cost: Time
If mostly rural U.S. 422 and U.S. 22 were faster, you might miss names and food worth noting.
If I-80 becomes a toll road and the Pennsylvania Turnpike is already a toll road, how can you get across the state for free?
Slowly.
There are several ways to travel from the Philadelphia area to Ohio without paying tolls, but none make it easy to use your cruise control.
Take U.S. 422, for instance. A scenic, leisurely route through small-town Pennsylvania, it roughly parallels the two interstates, wending its way from King of Prussia to Youngstown, Ohio.
Looking for alternatives to toll roads present and future, we tested 422 last week and found it unsurpassed as a rural ramble. But if time is money, this is a good way to go bankrupt.
U.S. 422 is a strange road, missing a section in the middle. There's an eastern portion and a western portion, but nothing in between. So we followed U.S. 22 between Harrisburg and Altoona.
At 350 miles, the trip is 10 miles shorter than taking the Northeast Extension of the turnpike and I-80, but 25 miles longer than the main line of the turnpike.
It's as Pennsylvanian as a road can be: It's the Benjamin Franklin Highway (around Pottstown), Penn Avenue (west of Reading), and Chocolate Avenue (in Hershey).
And it's a fine place for a taste of the Pennsylvania Dutch. Near Womelsdorf, you can get stuffed pig stomach, and in Myerstown, the Kumm Esse diner implores passersby to "try our strawberry pie."
Beyond Harrisburg and across the Susquehanna, the route climbs above the Juniata River, through farm valleys and old mill towns and railroad towns. Onrushing log trucks and gravel trucks, as well as roadhouse signs exhorting "Here We Go Steelers," are regular reminders that you're now in Western Pennsylvania.
You get to travel by Nanty Glo and Nolo. And at some undefined point between Indiana and Butler, soda turns into pop.
They must be drinking something else out there, too, because yellow warning signs proclaim "High D.U.I. Crash Area."
New Castle welcomes you to the Fireworks Capital of America, and then three miles beyond Frizzleburg lies the Tic Toc Food Market, gateway to Ohio. From there, 422 goes on, but we don't.
This toll-free Pennsylvania peregrination takes 7 1/2 hours, which works out to about 46 m.p.h. That's about an hour and a half longer than taking the turnpike and an hour longer than using I-80.
Use the money you save for another helping of stuffed pig stomach.
- Paul Nussbaum