HIGHWAYS FOR SALE HIGHWAYS FOR SALE A glance at some of the nation's highways: ALASKA: Backers of the Knik Arm Bridge say they will look to private funding for the $600 million bridge that will connect Anchorage to Point Mackenzie. COLORADO: The Front Range Toll Road Company proposes a 210-mile toll corridor from Wellington to just south of Pueblo. FLORIDA: The Tampa-Hillsborough Expressway Authority requested proposals from investors to build a 3.1 mile toll road connecting Interstate 275 to New Tampa Boulevard in central Tampa. The road is expected to cost $150 million. ILLINOIS: Privatization of the 274-mile Illinois Tollway is the subject of legislative hearings and study. INDIANA: Gov. Mitch Daniels wants a private company to help build a $1.8 billion, 142-mile extension of Interstate 69 from Indianapolis to Evansville and then manage it as a tollway. MISSOURI: In May, the Legislature approved a plan that would allow a $910 million bridge to be built between St. Louis and Illinois by a public-private partnership with the right to collect tolls. NEVADA: In May, Boulder City agreed to study a toll road - possibly privately financed and operated - along a 10-mile stretch between the new junction of Interstates 93 and 95 and the new Hoover Dam Bypass Bridge. NEW JERSEY: The Legislature is considering selling 49% of 173-mile Garden State Parkway and 148-mile New Jersey Turnpike to private investors. NEW YORK: Privatizing the Long Island Expressway and the Tappan Zee Bridge have been proposed, but the state needs to change its laws to enable such deals. OHIO: Republican gubernatorial candidate Ken Blackwell proposes leasing the 241-mile Ohio Turnpike for $4 billion to $6 billion for 99 years. OREGON: Oregon has invited a group led by Macquarie to assess the feasibility of three toll projects outside of Portland: an 11-mile bypass, a new corridor and a widening of an existing corridor. TEXAS: On June 29, The Texas Transportation Commission approved a deal in which Cintra and San Antonio-based Zachry Construction Co. agreed to pay $1.3 billion to build 40 miles of state toll road from Austin to Seguin in exchange for the right to collect tolls for 50 years. The state will receive a share of the toll revenue. It's expected to open to traffic in 2012.nIn March 2005, the state entered into a $7.2 billion deal with Spanish-American consortium Cintra-Zachry to develop a 600-mile toll road from Oklahoma to Mexico and the Gulf Coast parallel to the existing Interstate 35. VIRGINIA: The state is negotiating with Fluor-Transurban for a $913 million project to add a high-occupancy toll lane to the existing HOV lanes between the 14th Street bridge and Dumfries, Va. From Dumfries down to Massaponax, Va., two new lanes would be built. Fluor is a construction company based in Aliso Viejo, Calif.; Transurban Group, a Melbourne, Australia-based toll road developer. *Source: Associated Press Foreign companies buying U.S. roads, bridges WASHINGTON (AP)  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 experts welcome the trend. Robert Poole, transportation director for the conservative think tank Reason Foundation, said private investors can raise more money than politicians to build new roads because these kind of owners are willing to raise tolls. "They depoliticize the tolling decision," Poole said. Besides, he said, foreign companies have purchased infrastructure in Europe for years; only now are U.S. companies beginning to get into the business of buying roads and bridges. Gas taxes and user fees have fueled the expansion of the nation's highway system. Thousands of miles of roads built since the 1950s changed the landscape, accelerating the growth of suburbia and creating a reliance on motor vehicles to move freight, get to work and take vacations. In 1956, President Eisenhower pushed to create the interstate highway system for a different: to move troops and tanks and evacuate civilians. The Bush administration's plan to let a foreign company manage U.S. ports met a storm of protest in February. But plans to sell or lease highways to companies outside the United States have not met such resistance. John Foote, senior fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, said the government can take over a highway in an emergency. But he objects to selling roads to raise cash. But that is just what Chicago has done. Last year, the city sold a 99-year lease on the eight-mile Chicago Skyway for $1.83 billion. The buyer was the same consortium that leased the Indiana Toll Road — Macquarie Infrastructure Group of Sydney, Australia, and Cintra Concesiones de Infraestructuras de Transporte of Madrid, Spain. Chicago used the money to pay off debt and fund road projects. Skyway tolls rose 50 cents, to $2.50; By 2017, they will reach $5. The Indiana Toll Road lease is a better deal, Foote thinks, because the proceeds will pay for urgent projects such as road and bridge improvements. That need is precisely why cities and states have begun to look to foreign investors. Between 1980 and 2004, people drove 94% more highway miles, according to Federal Highway Administration statistics. But the number of new highway lane miles rose by only 6%. 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. So Illinois lawmakers are examining privatizing the Illinois Tollway, New Jersey lawmakers are considering selling 49% of the state's two big toll roads and a gubernatorial candidate in Ohio wants to sell the turnpike. Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, who championed his state's toll road deal, now wants investors to build and operate a toll road from Indianapolis to Evansville. Patrick Bauer, the Indiana House's Democratic leader, says such deals are taxpayer rip-offs. Bauer believes Macquarie-Cintra could make $133 billion over the 75-year life of the Indiana Toll Road lease — for which Indiana got $3.8 billion. "In five, maybe 10 years, all that money is gone, and the tolls keep rising and the money keeps flowing into the foreign coffers," Bauer said. Orange County, Calif., got burned by a toll-road lease for a different reason. The road, part of state Route 91, was built and run for $130 million by California Private Transportation Company, partly owned by France-based Compagnie Financiere et Industrielle des Autoroutes. The toll road opened in 1995. Seven years later, Orange County was looking at gridlock. But it could not build more roads because of a provision in the lease. So it bought back the lease — for $207.5 million. To encourage more domestic investment in highways, former Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta made a pitch to Wall Street on May 23. "The time is now for United States investors — including our financial, construction and engineering institutions — to get involved in transportation investments," said Mineta, who left office July 7. U.S. companies are getting the message. San Antonio-based Zachry Construction Co., along with Cintra, received approval on June 29 for a 50-year lease to build and run a toll road from Austin to Seguin for $1.3 billion. That is part of Texas Gov. Rick Perry's vision to attract more than $80 billion in private funds for roads by 2030. He wants a new tollway from Oklahoma to Mexico and the Gulf Coast, and one from Shreveport, La., and Texarkana to Mexico. Cintra-Zachry reached a $7.2 billion deal last year to develop the project's first phase. Not everyone in Texas buys the idea. Harris County officials recently voted against selling three toll roads. Also, independent gubernatorial candidate Carole Keeton Strayhorn opposes Perry's toll road plan. "Texas freeways belong to Texans, not foreign companies," she said. Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.