Breezewood: The Gap America Left in Its Own Interstate

Interstate seventy runs two thousand one hundred and fifty miles across ten states, and in Bedford County, Pennsylvania, it stops at a red light. Not for construction. Not for a detour. This is the permanent, designed arrangement. Traffic comes off the toll-free interstate, sits at a light next to a gas station, drives a quarter mile of commercial strip past motels and truck stops, sits at a second light, and gets back on the interstate. Around five million vehicles a year do this, and it has been this way since the nineteen sixties. Everyone who has sat in that line has a theory. A corrupt legislator. The businesses paying somebody off. Both are wrong, and the real answer is worse, because nobody did this on purpose at all. Breezewood exists because of one clause in a federal funding law written in nineteen fifty-six by people who had probably never heard of it. And as of five months ago, after seventy years, there is finally a construction date. LOCATIONS IN THIS VIDEO The Breezewood connector, US 30 between the Turnpike and I-70: 39.99722, -78.24472 Pennsylvania Turnpike Exit 161, original 1940 interchange structure: 40.00500, -78.24278 Northern terminus of the toll-free I-70 segment: 39.99306, -78.24500 Abandoned Pennsylvania Turnpike, Pump Station Road trailhead: 39.99361, -78.20583 Sideling Hill Tunnel, on the abandoned stretch: 40.04806, -78.12917 Access: US 30 through Breezewood is a public road and can be driven at any time. The original 1940 interchange structure is best seen from the Turnpike side. The abandoned Turnpike and its tunnels are about ten miles east, off Pump Station Road, and open to walk or cycle. SOURCES Federal Highway Administration, Highway History — "Why Does The Interstate System Include Toll Facilities?" Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, Section 113(c) Testimony of Franklin V. Summers, Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission, Special Subcommittee on the Federal-Aid Highway Program, May 10, 1966 Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission, Breezewood Interchange Project materials, 2025 to 2026 TribLive and Mon Valley Independent reporting on the interchange project #Breezewood #Pennsylvania #InterstateHighways