Roger Nutt, former head of the New Jersey Turnpike Authority and other state transportation entities, will begin Monday as the chief executive officer of the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission.
Nutt is the father of Brian Nutt, who served as Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett’s chief of staff during his tenure as attorney general.
Roger Nutt was executive director at the New Jersey Turnpike Authority, which oversees the 148-mile Turnpike, from 1994 to 1997. Nutt was also head of the New Jersey Transportation Trust Fund Authority and the New Jersey Transit Authority.
He was the project director of a $330 million expressway and tunnel development in Atlantic City for the South Jersey Transportation Authority. That project opened in 2001 and was financed with public and private-sector funds.
“Roger is a transportation-industry professional with nearly three decades of executive-level experience in highway, transit, and tolling organizations,” Pennsylvania Turnpike chairman William Lieberman said in a statement. “As such, he makes an outstanding choice for the next chief executive of the Pennsylvania Turnpike, and we’re quite fortunate to have him on board.”
The Turnpike has $6 billion of outstanding revenue bonds. The 535-mile roadway runs east-west through the state’s southern region. Its tolls last increased by 5% on Jan. 2.
The commission helps support non-turnpike transportation needs by making quarterly payments to the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation. Lawmakers crafted that agreement in 2007 under Act 44, which allows the agency to increase Turnpike tolls to help finance those payments to PennDOT. The PTC has paid PennDOT $2.84 billion since 2007 in Act 44 payments.
