Modernizing The PA Turnpike

A Spanish company won the rights to the Pennsylvania Turnpike with their $12.8 billion bid for the 75-year lease.

To hear some people talk, you'd think privatizing the turnpike was the worst decision ever, but leasing the Turnpike to an outside investor is a sensible solution.

First, the lease is a great alternative to tolling I-80. It creates a competition of sorts by deregulating the state's monopoly of roads. In addition, the private company will likely provide greater efficiency and a much needed investment in the roads. The government is likely to be more constrained by budget crunches and can't continual devote resources towards improving roads. That's much of the reason why the condition of our bridges and roads has remained stagnant and failing to improve. The Turnpike was already in $3 billion worth of debt which influenced the bidding price. By freeing up the financial commitment to the Turnpike, Pennsylvania can devote more resources in more places and invest for the future. It's not going to provide an tax relief, but it does decrease the size of the government and future obligations.

Second, private control of roads has historically been a good thing in this country. While we have been ingrained to think that roads must be operated by a government bureaucrat to be effective, a private-public partnership can be a great substitute. By eliminating the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission, we can also cut ties with the thousands of bureaucratic jobs and reckless money spent on the turnpike (including the taxpayer money spent on federal lobbying efforts). In the early history of this country, private turnpike companies built and operated their own roads. That seemed to work well. Furthermore, Indiana went through a similar decision process a few years back and has experienced success. It's only been couple years (not a reliable indicator), but believe it or not the roads didn't fail to exist in Indiana because of involvement of a private-foreign company. The private enterprise has instituted electronic tolling and is working to implement a third lane.

Finally, Pennsylvania's lease agreement does not give the private company carte blanche. For instance, toll increases are chained and cannot be raised higher than the inflation rate for that year.