Reply #3: Interstate Highway System Sold to Foreign Companies [View All]

When President Eisenhower proposed the Interstate Highway System he stressed its necessity because of National Security. Now it is simply the latest victim of our huge debt and growing trade imbalance. And privatization trumps national interest once again.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/09/AR2006060901775.html

Its official state motto is "the crossroads of America." Yet Indiana is about to turn over its entire toll road for the next 75 years to two foreign companies, making it more expensive to drive.

The decision to hand the Indiana Toll Road to an Australian and Spanish team for $3.8 billion at the end of this month has blown up into one of the biggest brawls here in a generation. It has unsettled the state's politics in the months before the November elections, pitting a governor who was President Bush's first budget director against the people of northern Indiana, which the highway passes through.

The decision also places Indiana at the leading edge of a nascent trend in which states and local governments are exploring the idea of privatizing parts of the United States' prized interstate highway system. The idea goes beyond projects, such as Northern Virginia's Dulles Greenway, in which states have turned to private companies to build or widen toll roads. Now, they are considering selling or leasing some of the best-known and most-traveled routes across America.