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Posted: Sun, Apr 13 2008, 6:10 am EDT Post subject: Toll Road Offers New Jersey a Fiscal Test Drive |
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Toll Road Offers New Jersey a Fiscal Test Drive
HAMMOND, Ind. — The 157-mile-long toll road that slices through northern Indiana and connects Ohio to Illinois is as unremarkable as they come. On the western end, commuters speed past idled steel mills to get to and from Chicago, while in the east a stream of tractor-trailers plows past an equally undistinguished rural landscape.
But when a private Australian-Spanish consortium took control of the Indiana East-West Toll Road in 2006 after leasing the adjoining Chicago Skyway the previous year, the move touched off a fierce debate in Indianapolis that is reverberating in Trenton, Harrisburg and other statehouses across the country, where the struggle to finance soaring transportation costs goes on.
“I go to these governors’ meetings and 49 of them are wringing their hands,” Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana said in an interview. “It’s not very complicated. Most of them can see it and are astonished at how great a deal Indiana got.”
Gov. Jon S. Corzine has been pushing to privatize New Jersey’s toll roads, much as Governor Daniels did in Indiana when he leased the road for 75 years and received a $3.8 billion lump sum, which he earmarked for transportation projects. But events and public opinion have conspired against Mr. Corzine.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/13/nyregion/13indiana.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin |
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