The Highwaymen (who owns your roads?)

[donsu]

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


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


-snip-

Fifty years to the day after Ike put his pen to the Highway Act, another Republican signed off on another historic highway project. On June 29, 2006, Mitch Daniels, the former Bush administration official turned governor of Indiana, was greeted with a round of applause as he stepped into a conference room packed with reporters and state lawmakers. The last of eight wire transfers had landed in the state's account, making it official: Indiana had received $3.8 billion from a foreign consortium made up of the Spanish construction firm Cintra and the Macquarie Infrastructure Group (mig) of Australia, and in exchange the state would hand over operation of the 157-mile Indiana Toll Road for the next 75 years. The arrangement would yield hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks for the consortium, which also received immunity from most local and state taxes in its contract with Indiana. And, of course, the consortium would collect all the tolls, which it was allowed to raise to levels far beyond what Hoosiers had been used to. By one calculation, the Toll Road would generate more than $11 billion over the 75-year life of the contract, a nice return on mig-Cintra's $3.8 billion investment.

-snip-

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."

-snip-

they've been buying toll roads in Chile and in France
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america is dead - chopped up and the pieces sold to the highest bidder

there is nothing left to fight for. the Constitution IS now just a piece of old paper.

[truedelphi]

1. Our tax dollars willpay them tobuild these roads

And the likelihood of tolls is also real.

Most Americans seem unaware of this problem.

Also they are unaware that in many states, a good portion of the money they pay at the pump is for stte taxes for roads. And that in the last eighteen months, there has been a huige surplus of these funds (After all, with gasoline prices so high, the taxes on the gas have also been at record highs) Yet still communities see little if anything done to improve their roads.

Where is oversight?

[Joanne98]

2. This means war......

[brokensymmetry]

3. Wait until you see what comes along with this.

Water infrastructure.

Just as our various cities, counties, and states are
unwilling or unable to build and maintain roads, they
are likewise unable to build and maintain water infrastructure.

So yes, we'll pay a toll to drive somewhere.

Expect to pay a lot more for water from your tap.

Think of it as a dividend for the rethuglicans...who are
investing in those very companies, and will be garnering the
cash dividends I allude to.

Don't believe it? Look up PHO.

[Union Thug]

9. Water privatization will be a tipping point. The elite, I think, will be in for

a big surprise, as desperate people don't think twice about fighting back when their families basic needs are held from them. Personally, I think water privatization, juxtaposed with stagnant/falling wages and benefits will unleash direct confrontation not seen since the 1930s. Of course, the corporations are much more sophisticated in their mind/perception management these days, but at some point, the reality will override the propaganda.

[Joanne98]

15. That's what I think too.

[Jose Diablo]

4. What about the fuel taxes collected

the purpose of the fuel tax was to build the interstate road system. How can elected officials sell any public property? It's not theirs to sell. Certainly not sell to the ones bribing the officials, what's next, sell the water in the great lakes? Or how about the trees in the western rockies? The port facilities?

Look, all these things are the commons, it's not theirs to sell. And with the selling of the interstates, the government owes us all those taxes used to build them. The king does not own this stuff.

This is little more than another form of deregulation at the peoples expense. These guys are trying to sell grandma's teeth, before they get kicked out of the house.

[ieoeja]

5. Correction:

Mayor Daley started this. Ditch Daniels went second.

[Cleita]

6. They'd better not do that in my state.

Who owns the land that the roads are built on? I'll bet the people do. Are they prepared to buy this land from each and every citizens in Indiana? Otherwise, how could this be legitimate? How do you sell someone else's property and keep the money?

[pitohui]

7. what will you do about it when they do?

the reality is that they will do it and you will pay because you will have no alternative

already predators in louisiana have come in to put those traffic cameras that cause rear end collisions since you can no longer drive thru on a yellow light without paying a $200 ticket -- they are using the excuse of the storm and the lack of police officers (in jeff parish?) to place these devices owned by private companies and send the victim's money to the out of state private companies that own the camera w. some small kickback to the parish

no one is stopping them, no one can stop them

the powerful people of this nation see no reason why a middle class person should have a coin left in his pocket

[B3Nut]

8. If this isn't definable as treason

it should be. Damn these opportunistic jackasses!

Todd in Beerbratistan

[Union Thug]

10. Good luck. I can't wait for the day corporate rent-a-cops have to deal with

100 well armed 1%ers. It will be like that scene in Dawn of the Dead when the bikers ride through the mall.

[genie_weenie]

11. Long Ago the Rulers decided that all Land

belongs to them. All Land in the world is under control of the Nation-States. The people have no say except to delude themselves with voting...

[damntexdem]

12. Where and when possible, we should boycott any such road.

Here in the Dallas area, I already avoid the Bush Turnpike, and that's just because of its name, not who owns it.

[Union Thug]

16. Boycott them with backhoes and bulldozers. n/t

[notadmblnd]

13. Aren't tollroads private roads anyway?

That's the reason people pay to drive on them. I've never used one and am not sure there are any where I live but it seems to me that if they're not kept up consumers could sue the shit out of the owners when their roads tear up their cars, no?

[Joanne98]

14. There taking the regular freeways and selling them off to private companies

[barb162]

17. The toll roads were built with public money

and shouldn't be sold without the "say so" of the public who paid for them, even though they may be legally owned by a tollway authority of some sort.