Others critics were alarmed that some of the $38 billion in bonds Mr. Corzine hoped to issue would be used for projects unrelated to transportation.

“Early on, there was excitement about the big checks that came in,” Jonathan R. Peters, a finance professor at the City University of New York and an expert on toll roads, said of the arrangements in Indiana and Chicago. “But now academics and departments of transportation are starting to see that you can give away too much.”

In the aftermath of the agreements in Chicago and Indiana, lawmakers in California, Texas and other states have struggled to muster support for their own lease deals. In Pennsylvania, Gov. Edward G. Rendell’s plan to lease the state’s turnpike has been delayed by a counterproposal to collect tolls on Interstate 80. As these other states try to devise a plan acceptable to their residents, drivers who use the Chicago Skyway and Indiana East-West Toll Road seem to be adjusting to the new operators from Macquarie-Cintra, the Australian-Spanish consortium.

But Mr. Peters and other specialists who study toll road deals cautioned that the lease in Indiana was structured so that tolls would remain relatively stable for the first decade, then could rise quickly for the remainder of the lease  after many of the politicians who signed the original lease have left office. That may explain why drivers on the Skyway and Toll Road, while still suspicious of privatization, are largely pleased with conditions on the roads.

They say they like the additional tollbooths and the introduction of electronic tolls. And while truckers and those using cash saw tolls rise this month in Indiana, drivers of passenger cars with E-ZPass or the local alternatives, known as iPass and iZoom, are still paying tolls that have not been raised in more than two decades.

“The positive thing is they put in iZoom and the roads are well maintained,” said Roy Platz, 60, of Naperville, Ill., who for years has used the Skyway and Toll Road to get to his job at a steel company in East Chicago, Ind.

“I don’t care who they sell it to,” Mr. Platz said between bites of a double cheeseburger at a McDonald’s near the Skyway. “If the Spanish want to give us $4 billion, fine. But government being government, the money could be frittered away.”