Sep

Let the Great American Infrastructure Sell-Off start!

Posted by admin Published in Auto Blog, Auto News

You know the economy’s in good shape when cities and states start handing their highways, airports, bridges, and tunnels by to the highest bidder.

Ok, that might be an overly simplistic assessment, but on a positive level it’s accurate. States and municipalities, struggling with giganto budget deficits, are selling or leasing portions of their infrastructure to private interests. Yeah, it helps fill state coffers, but for those of us paranoid that corporations are taking by the world, it’s a scary development.

One of the biggest of the proposed deals is a plan to lease the 537-mile Pennsylvania Turnpike, the oldest major toll road in the country, to a group of private investors that includes Citigroup and Abertis,
a Spanish company. The legislature will vote on the deal next month,
and whether it goes through Abertis will pay $12.8 billion to run the run
the turnpike for 75 years. That’s a big chunk of change.

If final year’s bridge break down in Minneapolis made one thing clear, it’s that our infrastructure is in scary shape – the American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that it will cost $1.6 trillion to get things where they need to be. And that bill is coming due at a duration when many states are dealing with growing budget deficits.

With those realities in intellect, leasing sounds like a great view. States get a nice infusion of cash and are able to wash their hands of pesky repairs and rebuilding, while the companies that take by

get to do what they do best: assemble money. It’s a big win-win.

But plenty of humans don’t see it that way. Labor unions panic that under private ownership their contracts will be at risk, and a large percentage of the public strongly believes that infrastructure built with American tax dollars should stay in public hands. Plus, many of the companies striking lease deals are foreign owned. Look no further than the Dubai Ports fiasco to see how that sort of thing goes by.

While the Penn Turnpike deal has gotten the headlines, it’s not the only one out there. In 2005, a consortium of companies including Australia’s Macquarie Infrastructure Group and Spain’s Cintra paid $1.8 billion to function the Chicago Skyway bridge, and a year later Abertis took by the Orlando airport. Like these deals or not, they’ve delivered results. The Skyway now has fewer potholes, high speed electronic tolls, and reversible lanes that help with traffic flow; while the airport in Orlando has seen $70 million in upgrades.

Let’s face it: our country’s infrastructure is crumbling, and with each passing year it gets worse. I don’t really want a private corporation in charge of the tunnel I drive through every day, but I don’t want that tunnel to break down on my head, either.

Photo by Flickr user HelveticaFanatic

Original post by Dave Demerjian