DELAWARE WATER GAP, Pa. — Hundreds of cars and trucks scream past Chris Howsare and Laren Myers in the half-hour they spend examining the hodgepodge of wetlands, historic landmarks and utility lines on the stretch of Interstate 80 that bisects this town on the New Jersey border.

Except for a small culvert unearthed by these two environmental planners, everything matches their maps.

So goes the laborious surveying needed to find 10 sites for tollbooths that the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission wants to install by 2010 along the 311-mile stretch of I-80 that spans the state.

“It’s a process of elimination,” said Ms. Howsare, who works with Mr. Myers at McCormick Taylor, a Philadelphia engineering firm hired by the commission to come up with a list of possible sites. “We’ll tell them that if they want to build here, they’ll need to get x, y and z permits.”

The new tolls, a particularly controversial part of Pennsylvania’s plans to meet its growing transportation needs, are an unpopular idea among users of I-80, long a free alternative to the Pennsylvania Turnpike for truckers, tourists and residents alike. But with Pennsylvania’s budgets stretched, like those of many other states, the legislature approved the proposal last July.

The tolls — which still face hurdles, notably a need for approval from the federal government — would provide a substantial share of the hundreds of millions of dollars a year that the state says it needs to repair and expand its roads and bridges and so keep up with traffic growth.

“The wish list is extensive,” said Chuck Ardo, a spokesman for Gov. Edward G. Rendell. “We have the highest number of structurally deficient bridges in the country, miles and miles of highway that need repair and public transit systems that need support.”

The transportation squeeze is hardly unique to Pennsylvania.

“There is a perfect storm,” said Phineas Baxandall, an analyst at the United States Public Interest Research Group. “States have had a hard time facing up to their shortfalls in their transportation programs, gas taxes haven’t kept up with inflation, and there’s all these bridges and roads that haven’t been maintained.”

The push to charge tolls along I-80 followed legislators’ rejection of Mr. Rendell’s proposal to lease the Pennsylvania Turnpike to private investors, an approach taken in Illinois, Indiana and Virginia. Lawmakers were wary that the investors might raise tolls too quickly.

The governor continues to support that idea, though, because the proceeds could be used for more than highway repairs alone. Under the bill passed last July, as well as federal rules, revenue from tolls on I-80 can be spent only on that Interstate.

As in other states, Pennsylvania lawmakers have been reluctant to raise their gasoline tax, the fourth-highest in the country, because fuel prices are so high. The tax would need to rise by 13 cents a gallon to meet the state’s transportation needs, the turnpike commission estimates. (In neighboring New Jersey, where the gas tax is the third-lowest in the country, Gov. Jon S. Corzine introduced a proposal last week to raise tolls on the New Jersey Turnpike, the Garden State Parkway and the Atlantic City Expressway as much as 700 percent by 2022.)

Under Pennsylvania’s plan, drivers on I-80 would pay the same as on the turnpike. Cars crossing the entire state would be charged $25, trucks $93.

“We’re working to solve the state’s transportation-funding crisis to ensure we have a vibrant, growing economy across the I-80 corridor and the entire commonwealth,” said the commission’s chief executive, Joseph G. Brimmeier.

But Mike Biondi, owner of a trucking company that hauls produce, said that he considered the new tolls, combined with fuel taxes, akin to “double taxation” and that the higher costs would be passed on to consumers. “These trucking companies cannot absorb that,” he said.

“It couldn’t come at a worse time,” Mr. Biondi, of Moscow, Pa., near Scranton, said at a commission hearing in East Stroudsburg. “We’re getting whacked.”

Yet the growing burden on I-80 and other roads in Pennsylvania has outpaced the financing for them. According to the commission, the state needs $1.04 billion a year for paving and repair of its Interstate roads and bridges. Currently, only $380 million a year is available.

The state wants to spend $2.1 billion in toll revenue over 10 years to improve I-80. Contrary to the claims of some critics, none of that money could be used to pay for mass transit in Philadelphia and other cities.

States need federal approval to collect tolls on Interstate highways, and the Bush administration has been making it easier for private investors and states to play a greater role in managing those roads. “The nature of highway funding is changing,” said Ian M. Grossman, a spokesman for the Federal Highway Administration. “We are encouraging innovative approaches.”

In October, the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission and the state’s Department of Transportation applied to the federal agency for the last of three slots in a program that allows states to charge tolls on federally financed highways as long as the money is used to make repairs that could not be made otherwise. (Missouri and Virginia have received the two other slots for their portions of I-70 and I-81, respectively.)

In December, the highway agency requested more information of Pennsylvania, which is preparing a response that includes the data being compiled by Ms. Howsare and Mr. Myers, the environmental planners. The turnpike commission must work quickly, though, because it has already issued bonds in anticipation of starting to collect toll revenue by 2010 to pay them off.

“When you are talking about 300 miles, trying to get it done in three years is mind-boggling,” Ms. Howsare said of the survey work.

Thorny negotiations over where to put the 10 tollbooths are certain once a short list of potential sites is released in a few months. I-80 has 59 interchanges in Pennsylvania, so tollbooths would be placed every six exits or so. To assuage many drivers, the commission is considering keeping the tollgates away from towns where lots of commuters use I-80, so that people in places like Clarion, State College and Wilkes-Barre can avoid paying tolls for local trips.

But residents worry that I-80 tolls would nonetheless be so expensive that drivers would opt for nearby roads instead, creating heavy traffic there.

Of Route 611, which runs near I-80, Peggy Craft of Stroudsburg said: “You get a half a dozen trucks on there and it takes forever to get through town. It’s going to impair us local folks who use that road for errands.”

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