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 states and large cities are selling or leasing roads and bridges to private firms also. The “proceeds will pay for urgent projects such as road and bridge improvements.”
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.
Maybe this is a good idea, but it feels like more evidence that our country is coming apart at the seams.
I emailed to Mark Thoma the fact that Jonah Goldberg has finally learned about this issue. Mark emails me back that Jonah’s The Corner post was weak given that there has been a lot of discussion on this issue, some of which I’m guilty of spreading. But my thanks to Jonah for letting us know about an article which mentions a couple of old pros (one on the right and one on the left) on this issue. I link to some of their writings on this issue as well as some of the economist blog back and forth on this issue over at Angrybear.
more privatization of public space and function= not good. There is a whole right wing movement to privatize roads so the rich can ride unencumbered by the poor. more of a two tiered society.
Privatization was a terrible idea when Reagan pushed it 20-odd years ago, and it’s a terrible idea today. The fact that the companies are foreign isn’t the most important part of the story, but it does highlight the absurdity of privatizing public infrastructure.
http://www.salvationarmycorrections.com/
OK, let’s all join in for a chorus of Bringing in the Sheeves while you wait to see your probation officers.
I tried(unsuccessfully) to sell a bridge to a foreigner many years ago…
I guess timing IS everything…..
I feel compelled to admit that I was totally wrong about how the Republicans would take care of the huge debts, federal and state, that they have run up over the past few years. My first guess was that Saudi Arabia would be granted the forests of the Great Northwest in return for not calling in our debt to them. And that China would get the franchise for Taiwan. Those might still happen, but the sale of Texas roads to Spain, and other roads in other states to other Nations did not occur to me. Mea culpa. The sale of roads in Texas may not go beyond this first or a second sale, as even your grass roots Texas Republicans, having raised themselves from their normal stupor of religious fundamentalism and the put-more-blacks-and-Mexicans-in-jail, have noticed that they will have to pay through the driver’s side window for the privilege of driving on highways which they have already paid for, through taxes and bond sales and such.