Another Personal Observation On Privatized Highways
Another Personal Observation On Privatized Highways
Last month I posted a personal observation on Trump’s plan to privatize infrastructure, noting especially how in the long run privately owned turnpikes in Virginia ended up in government ownership. In the comments on that post there was discussion of the Indiana Toll Road, privatized a few years ago. I have just ridden on it (yesterday), and I shall recount as an anecdote datum my less than pleasant experience, bad enough to make me want to avoid it entirely in the future.
I was driving west on it from Ohio. I stopped in one of the new service areas to get some pizza. Fancy roof, but only two eating places, Lagrange in the east. OK, but nothing great. I would say road condition about same as Ohio’s, but tolls higher, although not as high as in Illinois or Pennsylvania. Anyway, I saw that I had enough gas to make it to the LaPorte service area in the western part of the state, so did not refill there or at the Elkhart one. Nowhere did I see any signs or information about any problems with any of the upcoming service areas.
So, two miles before the LaPorte service area on the sign for it was draped a cloth saying the area was closed. Indeed, when got there, it was torn up, presumably to build a new one like what I saw before, not that big of an improvement. It was OK for trucks to park there, but no gas.I had 10 miles of gas left in my car. Got off at the next exit to go into LaPorte to get gas. There was a machine to take the payment, no attendants,, two machines actually. One would not take my card. Managed to back out and go into the other one, which took my card, but would not take my credit card. I did have cash which it took, but there I am fiddling around while my gas is running low. Had to go around a closed road to get to LaPorte. Fortunately I got to a gas station with one mile of gas left in my tank.
On returning following the detours, could not reenter the Indiana Toll Road and had to go further to get onto I 94, but given my experience with it, I was not all that unhappy not to be on it. Maybe this is just an odd case, but I have to say I was not impressed with how these private owners of the toll road are managing it, not at all an obvious improvement.
Of course, Trump has completely stalled out on doing anything about his infrastructure plan, with even his air traffic controller privatization plan sitting there doing nothing, although, of course, his proposed budget does cut actual ongoing infrastructure projects that will shut some of them down, mostly for non-auto transportation systems in urban areas like Pittsburgh. When I continue to see commenators talking about how his infrastructure plan might stimulate the economy, I am not sure whether I should laugh or cry.
Barkley Rosser
After the bankruptcy is the Indiana Toll Road still privately owned ? The last info I found had it managed by a joint public-private commission.
Brinksmanship?
Why wait so long to fill up?
I used to do the run from Syracuse, NY near where I used to work to Ann Arbor, Michigan. I would fill up on the west side of Syracuse on the toll road and not stop till west of Cleveland in my little car. I would be less than a quarter of a tank and would fill up again.
The roads were good except they always seemed to be under repair.
Why are you surprised? Haven’t you ever heard the saying, “It’s good enough for the private sector.”? The public sector has to answer to the users, the taxpayers. The private sector just has to answer to the stockholders. Unfortunately, there is no way to make money from a transportation asset in the long run without having a government’s ability to tax the general economy to pay the system subsidies. That’s why airlines, railroads, steamboats, mule rental operators and the like tend to go broke on a regular basis and are often reconstituted only with government aid. Every nation is full of canals, turnpikes, highways and port facilities that were once privately owned and operated, but are now in government hands or government subsidized. The economics don’t work.
Hey, you should try the city of Churchill, in northern Manitoba, on Hudson Bay. It’s our northernmost seaport, and can be reached by sea or by rail, only. The rail line and the port provided a shipping option, especially for grain.
In 1997 our Conservative (read “Republican”) federal government sold the seaport to OmniTRAX, a Denver company, and also the rail line, because obviously an American private company can manage a remote Canadian rail and shipping line better than the Feds, eh? (At the same time our homegrown GOP wiped out the Canadian Wheat Board, because obviously individual prairie wheat farmers will be better at negotiating grain sales to huge foreign nations than an eighty year old government agency.) (Not.)
Last year, OmniTRAX, which had been trying unsuccessfully to sell the port, closed it down, and also the bulk freight portion of the rail line. Last winter, a stretch of the line was flooded and the rail bed destabilized, and OmniTRAX has done nothing about it.
Nor has our current Conservative provincial government. Sitting on their thumbs, the pair of them. God knows what the navy thinks, but Churchill residents are hopping mad.
My guess is that Omni is waiting to be nationalized (for some vast sum) and counting on their Churchillian captives to be effective hostages. And our provincial Conservatives are probably waiting for our federal Liberals to sigh and foot the bill, so they can scold them for … something or other.
Meanwhile our Churchillians are now, in July, desperately preparing to ship in natural gas in huge bulk so they will have enough to last them for next winter. What they’ll do for food and medical care I’m sure I don’t know.
Private monopoly ownership of essential services? Gee what a grand idea.
Public / Private Infrastructure Plan
1. State uses eminent domain to purchase property right of way, thus taxpayers paid for & own property
2. State lets it’s now public property to for-profit private enterprise.
3. Private enterprise charges taxpayers to use their own land and profits by it.
Sweet deal for capital owners, huh? This is called crony capitalism.
It is my understanding from other sources that the original Spanish owners defaulted in 2014, and the franchise, if we can call it that, was taken over by an Australian company. So, it is still a private operation, not some joint private-public commissions, although the state still owns the underlying roads and land.
I know that there used to be a major tollway near Sydney, but the horrific traffic jams as people queued to pay the toll (combined with Bushfire danger – I think it came to head when a traffic jam and a bushfire coincided – maybe even with casualties) resulted in the toll being removed.
Surely, somebody has noticed that revenue collection has a cost, and that cost may exceed the net benefits that might be claimed from the resulting “efficiency” from user pays.