U.S. toll roads increasingly sold to foreign companies

[question everything]

U.S. toll roads increasingly sold to foreign companies

By Leslie Miller
ASSOCIATED PRESS

July 16, 2006

WASHINGTON – Roads and bridges built with U.S. taxpayers' money are starting to be sold off, and so far foreign-owned companies are doing the buying.

On a single day in June, an Australian-Spanish partnership paid $3.8 billion to lease the Indiana Toll Road. An Australian company bought a 99-year lease on Virginia's Pocahontas Parkway, and Texas officials decided to let a Spanish-American partnership build and run a toll road from Austin to Seguin for 50 years.

Few people know that the tolls from the U.S. side of the tunnel between Detroit and Windsor, Canada, go to a subsidiary of an Australian company – which also owns a bridge in Alabama. Some experts welcome the trend. Robert Poole, transportation director for the conservative think tank Reason Foundation, said private investors can raise more money than politicians to build new roads because these kind of owners are willing to raise tolls.

(snip)

The Bush administration's plan to let a foreign company manage U.S. ports met a storm of protest in February. But plans to sell or lease highways to companies outside the United States have not met such resistance.

(snip)


Find this article at:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060716/news_1n16highways.html

[babylonsister]

1. What. The. Hell? I had no idea this was doable. nt,

[eleny]

2. Peter Werbe was talking about this tonight on his radio show!

Thanks for the link.

[AlGore-08.com]

3. I was just visiting family in IN and they were all talking about

the IN tollroad being "sold" to an Australian company...