4 Responses to Join Our Contact List

1. Gary says:

   July 18, 2014 at 5:53 pm

   This was an exert from that webpage that if most people knew about, would be so against toll roads.

   2. Toll Roads

   Some states are considering privatizing their roads with “public-private partnerships.” The deal is that private companies maintain the roads and in exchange can charge a toll and make a profit. How is this working out?

   In 2006 Indiana privatized I-80, the Indiana Toll Road. For $3.8 billion the state gave a 75-year lease to the Australian company Macquarie Group and Spain’s Cintra. (Goldman Sachs is said to have earned $20 million for brokering the deal.) At the time Washington Post business columnist Jerry Knight wrote that the deal sounded like “tossing the family furniture in the fireplace to keep the house warm.”

   Since then tolls have just about doubled. And it’s going to get worse. Dave Jamieson at the Huffington Post explained, “The road’s leaseholders can now raise the toll annually at one of three rates — at a flat two percent, at the percentage increase in the consumer price index or at the percentage increase in gross domestic product — whichever is highest. Over the course of the coming decades, Hoosiers can expect to learn a hard lesson in compound interest, long after Gov. Daniels is gone.”

   In 2007 Colorado leased its Northwest Highway to a Portuguese/Brazilian company for 99 years. The company raised tolls 50% and taxpayers have to pay the company if too many carpoolers use the high-occupancy lanes. The contract includes a “non-compete” clause that “requires payments to the foreign corporation if certain roads or facilities are built in the area that would compete with the toll road.” In other words, if traffic gets really bad Colorado is not allowed to do anything to solve the problem for its citizens – mass transit, congestion-relief arteries, etc. — instead forcing citizens to use that highway and pay whatever the toll is. For 99 years.

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2. Shirley Collins says:

   September 18, 2014 at 4:25 pm

   We should not allow foreign companies to own any of our critical public functions—no roads, bridges, utilities, food or water sources—-just as a matter of principal.

   The I-77 project is a bad business deal–I am a corporate accountant so I recognize a bad deal when I see it. One cannot help but suspect that “officials” involved with the contract must be getting personal benefit. It is obvious that the Public will Not benefit. All the future capacity for that right-a-way will be gone for 50 Years!

   We should spend the $88 million that we have as the down-payment on this deal and build as much road as we can for that money rather than get on the hook for millions more in guaranties. At least that way we own the road and have free use of it.

   I will definitely vote against and try to defeat any elected official that approved this deal…..others should do the same.

   I hope WidenI77 can sue to stop the process dead in its tracks and citizens can actually vote on the project in the future.

   SJC

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3. Tim Ho says:

   February 19, 2015 at 1:12 pm

   How does the “Private” profit? Getting their money first!
   A “Model” Scheme? by By Randy Salzman, in “Thinking Highways”

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4. lucinda says:

   February 12, 2016 at 11:03 pm

   Since the North Carolina TAXPAYERS DO NOT KNOW ALL THE INTRICATE DETAILS AND THE convulted language of the contract between the Charlotte Transportation and the foreign based companies, we have no clear picture of what this may mean for the N.C. taxpayer his grandchildren and possibly his great grandchildren will possibly be paying this foreign corporation for the building and continued use of the I – 77 toll road.

   Stop the Widening of Highway I – 77
   Questions;
   1. Did the N.C.Dept or Charlotte Regional Transportation Authority ever request the N.C. Attorney General to complete a thorough background check for any previous illegal activities of the companies that they intended to consider a contractual agreememnt?

   2. Did the N.C. Department of Transportation or Charlotte Transportation Authority check with other U.S. state goverments or that these companies have contractual agreements with.

   3. Are these contractual documents available online to the North Carolina Taxpayer.
   After all, the majority of the North Carolina taxpayers can understand a contract. Many of us are smart enough to catch something that may not be right.

   4. Where are the records of background checks for the general public to read online.

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