A trend has began that places the privatizing of parts of the United States' interstate highway system in the hands of forgeign companies. The trend started 1 1/2 years ago, when Mayor Richard M. Daley (D) pushed through a 99-year lease of the Chicago Skyway for $1.8 billion, according to this Washington Post.com article.
Some of the questions the article poses:
Still, skepticism abounds: Will companies take good care of highways? Will toll roads become too expensive to drive? Will investors pluck profitable routes, leaving others to crumble? What will happen to public toll-road workers -- including 600 in Indiana who have been promised interviews by the new operators, but not the same job?
The most recent to join the trend is Indiana, whose official state motto is "the crossroads of America" with its turn over of its entire toll road for the next 75 years to two foreign companies.
What do locals have to say about this?
In Elkhart, resistance to such change runs deep. At a rest stop here on a recent day -- at Milepost 77 near the midpoint between Illinois and Ohio -- both Indiana drivers and interstate truckers were almost uniformly against what the state has done. "I heard that foreigners were going to lease it, and that sounds like a bad deal to me," said Kreig Eberle, 36, a truck driver from Chillicothe, Ill., who uses the toll road nearly every day. "I think it is kind of baloney. Indiana ought to run it itself."
Dankia McLaren, 22, a kitchen designer from nearby South Bend, said: "It is sad. . . . It is just going to make it more expensive to drive.
Read the full article here.
Know More about business travel at RoadGladiator.com.
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