Privatization Of America's Highways

[Jcrowley]

The Highwaymen



News: Why you could soon be paying Wall Street investors, Australian bankers, and Spanish builders for the privilege of driving on American roads.

By Daniel Schulman with James Ridgeway
January/February 2007 Issue

The deal to privatize the Toll Road had been almost a year in the making. Proponents celebrated it as a no-pain, all-gain way to off-load maintenance expenses and mobilize new highway-building funds without raising taxes. Opponents lambasted it as a major turn toward handing the nation's common property over to private firms, and at fire-sale prices to boot.

The one thing everyone agreed on was that the Indiana deal was just a prelude to a host of such efforts to come. Across the nation, there is now talk of privatizing everything from the New York Thruway to the Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey turnpikes, as well as of inviting the private sector to build and operate highways and bridges from Alabama to Alaska. More than 20 states have enacted legislation allowing public-private partnerships, or P3s, to run highways. Robert Poole, the founder of the libertarian Reason Foundation and a longtime privatization advocate, estimates that some $25 billion in public-private highway deals are in the works—a remarkable figure given that as of 1991, the total cost of the interstate highway system was estimated at $128.9 billion.

On the same day the Indiana Toll Road deal closed, another Australian toll road operator, Transurban, paid more than half a billion dollars for a 99-year lease on Virginia's Pocahontas Parkway, and the Texas Transportation Commission green-lighted a $1.3 billion bid by Cintra and construction behemoth Zachry Construction to build and operate a 40-mile toll road out of Austin. Many similar deals are now on the horizon, and mig and Cintra are often part of them. So is Goldman Sachs, the huge Wall Street firm that has played a remarkable role advising states on how to structure privatization deals—even while positioning itself to invest in the toll road market.

Goldman Sachs' role has not been lost on skeptics, who accuse the firm of playing both sides of the fence. "In essence, they're double-dipping," says Todd Spencer, executive vice president of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, a truckers' group that opposes toll road privatization. "They're basically in the middle, playing one side against the other, and it's really, really lucrative."

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2007/01/highwaymen.html

[Selatius]

1. There's no way I'm paying out of pocket just to use the fucking interstate

I already pay when I pay my taxes. Why should I have to pay a for-profit company whose only interest is in enriching shareholders instead of ensuring I don't get ripped off for the sake of those shareholders and bankers and whoever else is in on the deal?

[Union Thug]

6. Try it. I dare them.

Really. I'll ride or drive on any goddamned road I want to. Stop me. Oh, the how my angry, old-school biker-self comes out when this subject comes up.

[elocs]

12. I'll be driving the Interstate this weekend going to Chicago from Wisconsin.

I will certainly be paying for the pleasure of driving on the Illinois tollway. The funny thing is that nearly every weekend thousands of cars pour out of Chicago, heading for Wisconsin. But we have to pay for the upkeep and maintenance on our roads with our taxes. Somebody always gets ripped off.

I have had this lurking suspicion for quite awhile that the goal of the neocons is to bankrupt the country to the extent that everything needs to be privatized. If Democrats do not have long term goals rather than short term gratification we may be surprised to again find ourselves on the bottom looking up.

[thingfisher]

43. This is the same thing that is going on in other countries.

Only there it is "structural adjustment" demanded by the World Bank in order to get re-paid the loans that were made. How can these public highways be sold without any say by the taxpayers? Didn't tax money pay to build them? Doesn't tax money pay the repair and maintenance? Who benefits from the sale? The state? What will they do with the money?

This whole thing is a scam, a fraud of the greatest magnitude. Goldman Sachs is litle more than a criminal operation. What's next, water treatment plants? garbage collection? public transportation? education? public television and radio?
WHAT A CROCK O' SHIT!!!!

[whopis01]

36. Paying out of pocket just to use the fucking interstate

is already standard operating procedure in many places. Have a look at Interstate-95 in New Jersey and Interstate-93 in New Hampshire just to mention a couple. Granted it isn't a corporate run Interstate, but they are still part of the national interstate system.

[nam78_two]

2. K&R.nt

[KingFlorez]

3. That would be disasterous if it were ever to happen

People would start having to pay fees just to get anywhere, which would leave less money for gas. It would be highway robbery.

[Initech]

4. Please don't get me started.

Not only do I live a mile from the worst freeway intersection in the country (two lanes of which are privatized and tie up the traffic for hours on end), but I recently heard that California is proposing an east-west toll road be built and that would tie things up even further, not to mention that the initaitive has passed to expand the freeways, which will further fuck things up on an already fucked-up freeway...

:argh:

[TheFarseer]

46. excuse me - two lanes are privatized???

Like, you have to pay to be in the fast lanes basically? I lived in Houston and the Sam Houston Expressway" was throw 5 quarters in a bucket every mile or so. You run out of quarters pretty damn fast and lose any speed advantage by stopping to throw quarters in a God damn bucket and the traffic jam that creates! Try to drive the 'feeder' and you stop for a stoplight every 50 feet. Take the interstate and you're driving 5 or 10 mph to wherever you're going the whole way. That's a big reason I now live in Omaha and when people complain about traffic I tell them you don't even understand bad traffic.

[Initech]

47. Yeah, in California we have this thing called "Fastrack"

It sucks. The freeway by my house is six lanes in both directions, but two on each side you have to pay a toll if you want to use the two most left-hand lanes. On a week night, the traffic gets backed up for hours on end.

[neoblues]

5. Great way to control, lock down and

de-mobilize a country's citizens, as well as to watch and track their movements...

[havocmom]

10. BINGO!

Maybe my tin foil is too tight, but I just do not believe all the shit happening at airports is an accident. They just do not want the common folk to have access to transportation.

Plus, what will toll roads do to small trucking and private truckers? Just one more industry pushing out the little guy.

Happening to farmers too.

Picture a world where your food is controlled by the same type folks who control the oil.

Water is up next. The corporations already getting their ducks in line there - world wide.

The bush/cheney malAdministration has just been one more side show while the doors and windows get boarded up with all us poor folks still inside.

We are all New Orleans now. About to drown, herded off to where they wanted us to be and then left with nothing.

[neoblues]

16. Double Bingo.

Add to the list controlled access to decent healthcare and medications... Controlled access to education and good jobs... Controlled access to information and News... Controlled access to the Internet...

Everything a person could need is becoming more and more controlled by Corporate entities. Indeed people themselves are being more and more controlled and manipulated. "Big Brother" himself is being controlled by Corporations.

It's no tin-foil thing; our lives are being arranged. It's no coincidence that even if you have a good (maybe not great) job that the basic necessities seem to be ever so cleverly arranged to consume just about exactly everything you make. The "free market" manages to arrange housing prices/mortgages, rents, utililites, food--as though they all collaborated to set the prices to what people could afford, rather than what it all should cost (if profits were limited to a reasonable rate--rather than to whatever the market can endure). Uncontrolled free markets always tend towards monopoly/oligopoly; and to some degree, it's okay for producers of a high-demand product to take a little more in profits--but the kind of greed we're seeing is just sick and wrong.

It's creating a wealth-gap of such proportions that it millions live in desperation. Perhaps that's a good thing--in one way, anyway... perhaps it will wake people up and motivate them to act. It's going to take some massive popular uprising to undo this increasingly totalitarian system.

Again, no tin-foil required. It's all obvious and apparent--they're so confident, they don't even hide much of it. Of course, if there is a proposed agenda such as 'one-world'** government, a tin-hat might help.

**In some ways, it would only seem to make sense for the world to have one central government, so long as it wasn't corrupt and worked towards bettering all mankind, distributing resources, educating everyone (and ensuring at least one common language). Still, any/all "advanced", "weathy" country/s would suffer a considerable drop in standard of living in order to raise the rest of the world (and that does seem to be happening from "natural" causes), so it makes sense to resist such a thing.

[Odin2005]

26. The Corporatists want us to be thier serfs.

[bullwinkle428]

37. Illinois has done that with the I-Pass : essentially forced tollway

users to purchase the electronic transmitter used to pay tolls while at the same time doubling the toll rate at all stations for those choosing to pay cash, and provided the addtional "incentive" of rebuilding the toll stations using "open-road tolling". This allows I-Pass users to pay their tolls without having to stop at the toll station, or even slow down.

[TheFarseer]

50. you're way overthinking this

what is a better investment than buying something where you can have millions of people throw 5 quarters in your bucket every mile or so, you don't have to provide them with any real service, you don't even need employees to take the money and you only have to pay upkeep on a road. Tell me where you can find a better profit margin than that?

[neoblues]

52. Of course, I never said it wasn't it's massively profitable too. nt.

[mntleo2]

7. Sometimes I Hate These People

All they think about is profits, profits, profits as if that is something next to God. I agree we already paid for the damn things with our taxes, and toll roads are not much better. I am sick and tired of companies owning everything ~ even my body parts fer cryin' out loud. what a bunchj of greedheads and pigs. Someday the pitch forks and torches will come out and these entitled pigs will rue the day they became so greedy as they are being torn apart limb to limb!

GAWD!

Cat In Seattle

[Union Thug]

15. I'm with you. Water privatization would lead me to take up more than..

a pitchfork. And that's all I'm going to say.

[lostinacause]

29. Something has to be done about the water situation. Perhaps privatization is not the best

idea but people need to have incentives that coincide with the scarcity of water.

[bobbolink]

8. Will we have to take off our shoes to go through the toll gates?

[Miss Chybil]

9. I bet they'll lower taxes now they don't have to pay for the roads.

Right.

[NashVegas]

11. Who Will Police These Toll Roads?

Just curious.

[Jcrowley]

14. Chilean mercenaries

hired by CACI with shares in Goldman Sachs as incentive for picking off pesky citizens?

Geez these days the macabre scenarios seem too close to reality.

[NashVegas]

21. Riding on Llamas?

..

[rman]

30. why would they?

[taught_me_patience]

13. sweet

less traffic for me. Hopefully, they set the toll high to keep the poor people off the roads!

:woohoo:

[ret5hd]

19. Now if we could just figure a way to set the tolls...

based on internal ugliness. That would keep you at home more...but your mom would sure be pissed.

[taught_me_patience]

22. I was being a bit sarcastic

However, if people are able and willing to pay, above and beyond, to receive extra services, shouldn't they be able to?


taught.

[tkmorris]

31. How the fuck is a road an "extra service"? nt

[Melissa G]

17. Making this obnoxious give away of public trust items to private entities an illegal

activity should be a major initiative of the new congress leadership. Tell your congress critters!

[Patchuli]

18. How in the heck

do you 'sell' the citizens of this country's possessions and holdings legally? We paid for those roads with our taxes. They belong to U.S. = us. These crooks should be hauled off for this kind of crap.

[SammyWinstonJack]

20. God Damn It!

:wtf: :banghead: :argh: :mad: :grr:

[Canuckistanian]

23. Your toll roads are getting out of hand

I recently did some driving in NJ and was astonished at all the toll fares I had to pay.

Here in Canada, toll roads are rare and the ones that do charge the toll had better offer some benefits to driving alternate routes.

We have this Highway 407, for example....

Unique characteristics

The 407 uses a system of cameras and transponders to toll vehicles automatically. There are no toll booths, hence the name "Express Toll Route" (ETR). Highway 407 is designed as a normal freeway with interchanges connecting directly to surface streets, without the need for toll booth intermediaries (typically via a trumpet interchange) which could otherwise take up significant land. A radio antenna detects when a vehicle with a transponder has entered and exited the highway, calculating the toll rate. For vehicles without a transponder, an automatic number plate recognition system is used. Monthly statements are mailed to users. The 407 is the world's first highway to feature this system throughout.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_407_(Ontario)

[JCMach1]

24. Silver lining- Indiana turns Blue over this!

[meuniermr]

25. I wont pay..

On the Indiana Turnpike if I drive from Detroit to Chicago. I'll tell them they will have to take me to court so I can get it out there to people that we are paying taxes to a foreign company. And I would go on the media also.

[Erika]

49. With the W administration you may well be locked up

as a terrorist and never seen again. Anyone who thinks W had terrorists in mind only when he did away with civil rights of Americans is a fool.

[demobabe]

27. What's really ironic about all this

Is the original reason the Interstates were built: Military purposes to protect our country.

Wouldn't it be a threat to national security to sell our roads to another country? Same thing with the ports?

[Kolesar]

34. "military" was tacked onto the Interstate Highway Act to avoid Constitutional challenges

The federal government has limited powers and this was a way of insuring that nobody stopped the project in mid construction.

[lostinacause]

28. Selling off old roadways is absolutely ridiculous especially from an economic standpoint.

Competition is essentially nonexistent so companies end up charging much more then the marginal cost of service. In the end even if the bidding processes is perfect and the government is benevolent with the extra income generated people are still worse off. If there is a problem with funds just raise the fuel tax. In most areas it is to low.

[B Calm]

32. No matter who runs the toll roads, I'm against stopping every few miles

and paying a toll. You should see what it cost to drive an 18 wheel truck on toll roads.

[Kolesar]

33. I remember Michael Kinsley busting the Libertarian plot to privatize *all* roads

This looks like a Libertarian "plot" that is targeting the easy target: toll roads that already have a toll structure.

GOP gubernatorial candidate Ken Blackwell proposed privatizing the Ohio Turnpike and rode that flaming stuka to a crash on November 7.

[JNelson6563]

35. They want to own everything!

They'd buy all the air if they could.

[Zech Marquis]

38. careful now

Don't give * and Darth Cheney ANY ideas about that :evilgrin:

[lectrobyte]

39. Because of our trade and deficit spending, sadly, moves like this

are probably inevitable. Those countries holding all those dollars have to spend them on something.

[Kolesar]

40. I have noticed a trend in publicly-held corporations going private

There was even a rumor that Ford Motor Company would be bought out by one investor.

[unc70]

41. NC starting down this path: Tolls on existing I-540 and others

NC has not had toll roads (public or private) in modern times.

But our state government, in its "infant wisdom" is now justifying moving in those directions. They haven't quite got around to selling off highways to the lowest bidder yet, but powerful interests are lobbying in every way they can find. (They are already doing this type thing with precious state-owned property such as the Dorothy Dix Hospital in Raleigh -- first transfer it to Wake County and then let them sell it to their buddies for development.)

While the public is opposed 10-1 to the idea, they passed a law this year that will allow an almost completed stretch of I-540 to retroactively become a toll road, possibly the first ever for an Interstate that was build and paid for as non-toll. I suspect this was a way of getting around the outcry about making parts of existing I-95 into a toll road.

We also have a new Turnpike Authority with the right to build a couple of private turnpikes and bridges to be paid for by tolls. While "private", I believe the latest version of this is structured as a Public/Private partnership or some such, and has rights of condemnation, etc. Both the toll and turnpike efforts are promoted as ways to build roads more quickly. Looking at the membership of the Turnpike Authority as an example, it is heavily weighed towards the large real estate developers, highway construction firms, with similar members from NCDOT. Several of the proposed projects should not be build by anyone, no matter the source of funds.

In NC, I believe we might still be able to stop this stealing of state resources, but it needs a quick, highly visible grassroots effort. I don't know that the looting of the mental health system and its property can be stopped. Too many greedy people in Raleigh/Wake County.

[Jim Warren]

42. Well just fuck it

No big thing, only the rich are going to be able to afford fuel anyway.

Soon, mobility, both the literal and upward kind, will only be for the wealthy.

Highwaymen indeed, and we'll all be robin hoods.

[AzDar]

44. Time for REVOLUTION. n/t

[Geek_Girl]

45. This is about the dumbest thing I've ever heard

This is basically giving away a major monopoly to private companies. What the hell are people in these states thinking to allow this to happen.

[Erika]

48. They own shares in the private companies

Face it, the American worker has been sold down the tube.

[izzybeans]

51. Mitch Daniels is the worst Governor we've ever had in Indiana. He's Bush multiplied.

If you think Bush is little lord pissypants, you should see My Bitch Mitch cry and moan about his "partisan" detractors. Yep little ol' grannies, 62 year old truck drivers, and members of the Citizen Action Coalition = partisan to this asshole.

How anyone thought the former CEO of Ely Lily was their "man" is beyond me. Report after report comes out about fudged data, misinformation about drug risks, and the like while on Mitchiepoohs watch, and nary a word. Daniels is the bioengineered hybrid demon seed of Cheney and Bush. They just shat him out in my home state.

[Fire Walk With Me]

53. Face it. We'd let them get away with it. What would we do to stop them?

Also, they could use the timestamps on a toll road to nail you for speeding. Let them build that into the system...

It's the r(e)ich against us. "Think, what to do?"