Posted on 07/16/2006 10:30:40 AM PDT by cope85
Foreign Companies Are Buying Up American Highways and Bridges Built by U.S. Taxpayers
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Roads and bridges built by U.S. taxpayers 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.
"They depoliticize the tolling decision," Poole said. Besides, he said, foreign companies have purchased infrastructure in Europe for years; only now are U.S. companies beginning to get into the business of buying roads and bridges.
Gas taxes and user fees have fueled the expansion of the nation's highway system. Thousands of miles of roads built since the 1950s changed the landscape, accelerating the growth of suburbia and creating a reliance on motor vehicles to move freight, get to work and take vacations.
In 1956, President Eisenhower pushed to create the interstate highway system for a different: to move troops and tanks and evacuate civilians.
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.
John Foote, senior fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, said the government can take over a highway in an emergency. But he objects to selling roads to raise cash.
But that is just what Chicago has done.
Last year, the city sold a 99-year lease on the eight-mile Chicago Skyway for $1.83 billion. The buyer was the same consortium that leased the Indiana Toll Road -- Macquarie Infrastructure Group of Sydney, Australia, and Cintra Concesiones de Infraestructuras de Transporte of Madrid, Spain.
Chicago used the money to pay off debt and fund road projects. Skyway tolls rose 50 cents, to $2.50; By 2017, they will reach $5.
The Indiana Toll Road lease is a better deal, Foote thinks, because the proceeds will pay for urgent projects such as road and bridge improvements.
That need is precisely why cities and states have begun to look to foreign investors.
Between 1980 and 2004, people drove 94 percent more highway miles, according to Federal Highway Administration statistics. But the number of new highway lane miles rose by only 6 percent.
Washington is not likely to produce more money to build roads. The federal highway fund -- which will have a balance of about $16 billion by the end of 2006 -- will run out in 2009 or 2010, according to White House and congressional estimates.
About half the states now let companies build and operate roads. Many changed their laws recently to do so.
So Illinois lawmakers are examining privatizing the Illinois Tollway, New Jersey lawmakers are considering selling 49 percent of the state's two big toll roads and a gubernatorial candidate in Ohio wants to sell the turnpike.
Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, who championed his state's toll road deal, now wants investors to build and operate a toll road from Indianapolis to Evansville.
Patrick Bauer, the Indiana House's Democratic leader, says such deals are taxpayer rip-offs.
Bauer believes Macquarie-Cintra could make $133 billion over the 75-year life of the Indiana Toll Road lease -- for which Indiana got $3.8 billion.
"In five, maybe 10 years, all that money is gone, and the tolls keep rising and the money keeps flowing into the foreign coffers," Bauer said.
Orange County, Calif., got burned by a toll-road lease for a different reason.
The road, part of state Route 91, was built and run for $130 million by California Private Transportation Company, partly owned by France-based Compagnie Financiere et Industrielle des Autoroutes. The toll road opened in 1995.
Seven years later, Orange County was looking at gridlock. But it could not build more roads because of a provision in the lease. So it bought back the lease -- for $207.5 million.
To encourage more domestic investment in highways, former Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta made a pitch to Wall Street on May 23.
"The time is now for United States investors -- including our financial, construction and engineering institutions -- to get involved in transportation investments," said Mineta, who left office July 7.
U.S. companies are getting the message.
San Antonio-based Zachry Construction Co., along with Cintra, received approval on June 29 for a 50-year lease to build and run a toll road from Austin to Seguin for $1.3 billion.
That is part of Texas Gov. Rick Perry's vision to attract more than $80 billion in private funds for roads by 2030. He wants a new tollway from Oklahoma to Mexico and the Gulf Coast, and one from Shreveport, La., and Texarkana to Mexico. Cintra-Zachry reached a $7.2 billion deal last year to develop the project's first phase. The announcement of a $1.3 billion deal in June was part of that $7.2 billion agreement, said Perry's spokesman, Robert Black.
"In Texas, our population is going to double in the next 40 years and our current infrastructure can't handle that growth," Black said.
Not everyone in Texas buys the idea. Harris County officials recently voted against selling three toll roads. Also, independent gubernatorial candidate Carole Keeton Strayhorn opposes Perry's toll road plan.
"Texas freeways belong to Texans, not foreign companies," she said
>> Let me try another angle - we have something like 15,000,000 illegals. They got here without Cintra's help. <<
Come on, that's like saying we have a drug epidemic, so it won't matter if we permit the Cali cartel to open up an unmonitored airport in the major American markets. There are barriers to illegal immigrants doing certain jobs. For starters, trucking requires some English abilities; truckers have to communicate along the way. The new highway, for instance, will have all bilingual signs, and will create a sheltered, Spanish-language environment for serfs to work in. It will create open up new lines of work to be taken by serfs, encouring their immivasion. It will conceal some of the harmful effects of the immivasion. It will provide easier access for illegal aliens to move from the border towns of Texas (which are hardly much better than the border towns of Northern Mexico) into heartland communities.
>> Contracts are contracts. <<
Contracts are enforced by laws. Government can always change laws. Go ask the millions of women who thought they could give up their careers because they had husbands who were contractually obligated to provide for their well-being, only to see states pass "no-fault divorce" laws, essentially shredding the marriage contract. Go ask legal owners of property who found that suddenly they were not able to develop their property because the land's drainage problem... caused by the construction of a nearby highway... made it offcially "wetlands."
The fact is you cannot back up your statement in #8.
Yup. A couple of state troopers could "nationalize" the roads again in five minutes if the need arised.
I followed your links and it is clear that these are new construction and not being converted as you said in #8.
I will concur that it is very bad business to cancel legislatively cancel contracts without good cause that would be recognized by any possible party with whom a contract might ever be entered into.. which essentially is everyone.
But, as for your assertions that marriage contracts were not explicit, that's just plain silly. You've handled yourself well on the forum, so I hate to call an assertion silly, since it doesn't afford the respect you're due; but, call it my own incompetence, I can't think of a better way to put it. It's not only false, it's outrageously false. Marriage contracts clearly specified their terms, despite the fact it was vey unromantic. Every last living soul expected that, yes, you must pay alimony if you break the terms of the contract, even if they didn't think of it in such terms. And they even ritualized the summation of the contract, so the summation wouldn't seem so gosh-darn unromantic. ("I, Dan, do solemnly swear...") The terms were in writing, were universally understood, were fully representing the spirit, and were part of our social fabric.
very day
Trying to rewrite history is not how we debate in a civilized society. You can try to burn the books, but the links are out there for all to read.
You should be ashamed of yourself.
By the way, tell the gov that Mr. Patrick is out for blood, and is not taking hostages. The Texas Republican Party is about to be reborn, and it does not have room for people who try to re-write history.
Toilet seats and hammers...
Ping me when you find something that backs up your statement.
Ping me when you learn to read.
"(i.e., foreign ownership of highways; no more toll receipts for government; inability to build more highways, expand existing ones, maybe even maintain existing ones; and a populace that feels TOTALLY SOLD OUT by people they voted for and trusted)."
Not only has Perry sold us out but look what Cornyn did on June 29, 2006.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c109:S.3622.IS:
snip....
SEC. 4. PROJECTS FUNDED.
(a) In General- Grants shall be awarded from the Fund for projects to carry out the purposes described in section 3, including projects--
(1) to construct roads in Mexico to facilitate trade between Mexico and Canada, and Mexico and the United States;
(2) to encourage the development and improve the quality of primary, secondary, and post-secondary education throughout Mexico;
(3) to expand the deployment of communications and broadband infrastructure throughout Mexico, with emphasis on rural and underserved areas; and
(4) to expand job training and workforce development for high-growth industries in Mexico.
If Cintra is good enough for Texas, then Cintra should be building the highways in Mexico. Free trade is not free. Since NAFTA has been in effect for 12 years, Mexico should be functioning without the American taxpayer and so should Cintra.
Good luck. He never answers my letters.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.