Best idea in years on the condition that the new owners are given the ability to hire both union and non-union workers.

I wonder how much more someone would pay the Commonwealth if we didn't have to pay union wages for menial jobs and/or inferior workmanship.

Why sell it or give it away?
Just abolish it all together...

Why do we need Turnpike Authority?
Shouldn’t Mass Highway department take responsibility for all highways and byways?

T-Dog, the Turnpike Authority now owes more than $2 billion in debt, plus the money it will pay to settle the Milena Del Valle lawsuit. If we sell the assets, or lease them, taxpayers have a decent chance to recoup some money to pay off the debt and get us back to solvency.
Sell it to Haliburton.

Privatized Tolling of our Nation's Roads is Bad Policy

by John L. Smith, Director of COUNT US!
http://www.i69tour.org

Recently former Bush Budget Director Mitch Daniels, now Governor of Indiana, returned to Washington DC to tout the virtues of his 75 year lease of the Indiana Toll Road to foreign consortiums. Congress Transportation Committee member, Rep. Peter DeFazio asked a some tough questions of Indiana's Governor regarding the wisdom of Daniels' moves to privatized and toll more and more roads of the USA to foreign consortiums. We wish we could have given DeFazio some more ammo.

Roads privatized, run strictly with a profit motive, as "tolled luxury routes" is the problem. So is the guarantee of profits to those who buy these trade/ transportation routes for an aging mode of travel. So is the duration of these "agreements".

Looking back, the first auto was built about the same number of years ago that these leases will run out in the future. Can we imagine the "trucks and cars" of 100 years from now? Will they still be the major transportation mode? Will rubber tires still prevail? Ride on a silky smooth 150 MPH train in Japan or Europe compared to our nation's rubber tired trams at airports and resorts ...you will strongly question the future of our current autos and trucks.

Transportation corridors are a valuable resource, not easily duplicated.

Duplication is further complicated as Governor Daniels "Major Moves" legislation in Indiana, guarantees by "moral obligation" that Hoosiers will make up any difference in road use profits should autos decline on the Indiana Toll road. This will slow or stop the adaptation of transportation in our nation and reduce route and vehicle efficiency improvements. By binding contract with international consortiums, the state of Indiana is not allowed to provide "competing" infrastructure. Is this any way to plan for the future?

Tolling... a 5¢ per mile toll is a $1.00 per gallon ADDITIONAL tax to a car that gets 20 miles per gallon. If you get 40 MPG, then it is a $2.00 per gallon tax on top of the existing fuel taxes. Drive a Hummer or a Hybrid, it makes no difference. Those promoting Privatized tolling see per mile charges twice that high as soon common.

There is only one reason to pay a toll over taking a free route... that is "luxury". Toll routes must be under-capacity and force competing routes to be less efficient, to be worth their charges. Tolling is not inherently bad, but done only to profit sections of independently owned roads is no way to forego planning and encumber a national transportation system.

Privatized tolling by international consortiums will only serve to drain our economy of money that could circulate in the USA for the duration of these 50, 75 and 100 year contracts while making our road system's parts compete rather than work together. This taxation provides no motivation to help move our USA auto makers build cars that might sell in nations with higher price fuels, much less even our own country.

Under the privateer tolling model, road building projects, like the Trans Texas Corridor and I-69 from Mexico to Canada will be built with USA taxpayers borrowed money at low interest rates, loaned to foreign consortiums and then they will take all the profits from their guaranteed profitable agreements for the next one-half, or one-full century. The latest Federal Highway Administration funding bill has many new motivations including Private Activity Bonds (PAB) and "Tolling and Pricing" programs for privatization and tolling of our nations existing and planned new road infrastructure. This is bad policy!

This disconnection of road taxation from fuel taxes is the brain child of the road building industry. By contractually private toll taxation of geographic populations for five to ten decades at several times the normal fuel tax rate, it has been determined now that legislators can avoid public pressure.

State wide or nationally, the public will object to a 3¢ per gallon gas tax increase, but toll some tens-of-thousand people and their decedents who will not be born yet for another 50 or 75 years and you hear a lot less objection. Proponents of this privatized tolling promote up to 10¢ per mile tolls. That is $4.00 per gallon on top of any fuel tax for a 40 MPG hybrid. (The math is simple, pay 10¢ per mile and any car has spent $4.00 more in forty miles.)

USA road builders get a quick influx of cash for already existing roads privatized this way. See the details of Daniel's sale of the Indiana Toll Road. If the mature road industry still needs "growth capital", we would be far better off with a higher fuel tax that would encourage increased fuel efficiency. It should be noted that all places in the USA can now be accessed, the growth of this industry even without rising oil prices would be slowing. In the USA, all fuel taxes only go to roads. A strong argument can be made that this industry is contracting our country into long term agreements that should not be made at a time that transportation seems to be on the cusp of a major change.

Many nations use higher gas taxes to effect social policy, the way we use our cigarette taxation, but they direct the proceeds to social programs other than roads like universal paid health insurance. Our auto industry could benefit from both a domestic demand for higher mileage vehicles and a release from the need to provide USA workers private health care coverage. A fuel tax providing broader social benefits could likely provide a healthier auto industry and keep dollars circulating within our boarders. Higher cost per mile travel will reduce mobility while providing inflationary pressures on the cost of goods transported. At least with a fuel tax, improved vehicles with greater miles per gallon efficiency can offset the increases. This provides benefits to peak oil, air quality, without giving up mobility and inflation if technology can keep up with taxation.

Tolling is always more expensive than our existing fuel taxation. Why would it be better for us to pay a higher cost per mile for our roads with no incentive for improved fuel economy and then send the "toll/ tax" to a foreign investment consortium for five to ten decades?

Canada has been threaten with E.U. (European Union) sanctions for trying to get out of their Toll Privatization nightmare with the same company that Daniels has contracted with:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_407

For more specifics about what is wrong with Daniels'  "Major
Moves"
plan: http://www.i69tour.org/IFA_comments.html
and http://www.i69tour.org/majormoves.html

For a portal into the Boondoggle NAFTA I-69 project see: http://www.i69tour.org/maps.html

The roads are a public good. not a private entity. I'd rather see the Pike rolled into Mass Highway. If the company goes out of business or performs poorly what happens to the roads?

I think they should take down the tolls which would distribute the cost evenly among the taxpayers like every other stretch of road, but it will also shift the debt burden and give up the revenue out of state parties provide using the road. If the savings on toll collection offset the difference it could work though.

Giving Halliburton another way to get our money is not the answer I'm looking for.

Smokey, we should take down all the toll roads, just like Connecticut did a few years ago. Consolidate MassTurnpike with the Highway Department, and watch the hacks scurry like rats to the MWRA, Deer Island, or some other public agency. If we need money from tolls, I like the idea of giving every car owner a transponder and having it automatcially charged to a highway account every time a driver goes through a "toll" plaza. Take the human hand out of the equation and the cost should drop. I'll pay my will once a month, even though I don't use the toll roads unless I'm heading to the Berkshires for a respite or on my way to Saratoga.

I would love to see the Turnpike Authority and every other quasi-public agency in the state be privatized. These authorities are nothing more than patronage programs and would be run much more efficiently by a private business. Unfortunately as long as we remain a one party state this will never happen. I would love to see one of our local reps step up and speak out for at least consolidating MassHighway and the Turnpike Authority but seeing these people are spineless and terrified of going against the leadership, this will never happen either. I've said this many times but if we keep electing the same old tired hacks time after time, nothing will ever change.
By the way, I got a kick out of of the Halliburton comment from Smokey, maybe he can blame George Bush for the ceailing tile in the tunnel falling too.

Hey Jack,

I'm not anti-republican, I've even voted for a few. I can say conclusively George W. ain't responsible for the Pike disaster. I suported the war and don't think we should back down there despite my democratic leanings and the fact that I was pretty much lied to about the main reason for going to war in the first place. Actually I wouldn't mind going into a few more countries and enacting a little regime change. I'm just not sure this administration cares about as much about the other countries where people are oppressed as they do Iraq. But I digress...

I am 100 percent for rolling the Pike into Mass Highway. I want it made it cost effective. Even if we take all those people off the pike payroll they will scurry to another state job (and collect unemployment while they scurry).

I just think corporations are gaining too much power in the world. Haliburton is essentially becoming a quasi-government agency of its own, with very little competition, thus milking more of our tax dollars. I gotta hand it to them. They go and do things impressive things in places most people and companies wouldn't even try.

The bottom line though is for profit companies try to make profits (simple right?) and taxpayers don't need to pay for shareholder profits. Given the choice I'd rather pay middle class wages to government workers in my own state that send my money to a corporation's wealthy shareholders.

By the way you guys ever wonder how North Dakota (among others) feels about getting something like 50 cents on the dollar in federal highway funding when they see the crap that went down on the big dig?