Private Roads, Public Costs: The Facts About Toll Road Privatization and How to Protect the Public

U.S. PIRG
April 2009

A growing number of states are considering arrangements in which a private operator provides an up-front payoff or builds a new road in return for decades of escalating toll receipts. The report assesses these deals and identifies a number of problems, including:

· Private toll roads typically require greater toll hikes to generate the same upfront payment that could be generated without privatization.

· Private deals lead to serious loss of public control that hinders future transportation planning and typically force public payments to compensate private companies if policies reduce toll traffic.

· Deals are often conducted with inadequate public disclosure or input.

· States generally lack the capacity to oversee or enforce private road agreements

· Problems are compounded by the fact that contracts typically extend 50-plus years in order to obtain large federal tax subsidies.

The study examines 15 completed private road projects and 79 others that are proposed or underway.

The report, which provides numerous public opinion survey results on private roads, also provides six basic principles for protecting the public from bad road privatization deals.

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