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Transportation and Urban Geography

Roads and Railways

What is a turnpike

A turnpike is a toll road. In the late eighteenth century, private companies in the United States and in the United Kingdom built roads and charged users to pass. Beginning in the 1840s, turnpikes had to compete for traffic, and thus profits, with the railroads. The name turnpike is still common on toll highways in the eastern United States, such as the New Jersey Turnpike, the Massachusetts Turnpike, and the Pennsylvania Turnpike.