Really? PA had the first toll road...back in the late 1700's and it was privately owned. Indiana "sold" the Turnpike recently (actually, a 75 year lease), and did so with a Republican governor. The $4 billion brought in by the deal has already staved off one projected tax hike. The State also retains oversight on tolls.
It seems to me this guys has no clue what he's talking about. Check the FL arrangement and I'll bet you any amount of money that the State oversees the levying of tolls. Besides, if the company gets out of line with tolls, people will drive on the "free" highways. (Interesting: Something that costs $100,000/foot to build is called a freeway. My guess is that a liberal coined the term.)
The Indiana law is also openly fascist.
Giving a private corporation monopoly ownership of the publicly funded transportation system that provides medicine, food, fuel and marketable goods to urban centers is a dereliction of the duties of elected representatives. The fair exchange of currency, as a basis of value for labor, will be depreciated by the Transport surcharge imposed by the private corporation. The size of, and rate of the depreciation is only restrained by the lobbying savvy of the private road management company in the state halls of power.
There is no way to rationalize the up front cash through future value estimations since no government can be assumed to hold the upfront payment in any investment approaching optimal returns. The state will simply disappear the money through incompetence and increased bureaucracy.
Read the story closely -- look at the "no-compete" clause about the State's committing to deny traffic-congestion relief by refraining from building other viable routes.
That is a cardinal rule of toll-road operation.
Texas's DoT enshrined it as a bullet point on their website presentation on their own toll-road proposal presentation, and it was pounced on and preserved by Texans opposed to what the Governor of Texas is doing (converting existing public highways to toll roads, selling toll roads to private companies [this was called "publicanism" under the Roman Empire; publicans were among the most hated people in the world], and doling out secret contracts to foreign firms to build giant toll-arteries through the State).
The arch-tollroader of the Texas DoT has made his motto,
TOLL ROADS OR SLOW ROADS OR NO ROADS!!
Get the idea? They're selling the public infrastructure to cash-flow opportunity guys.
The impetus for this stuff is coming from investment banks in New York and Europe who are very eager to tap into public revenue flows so their clients can "participate".
Of course, the forward look for an arrangment like that is congestion, poor/no maintenance (ever see an apartment complex that was managed for cash flow keep up the property?), and constant lobbying by the toll-road operators behind the scenes against construction/maintenance bills for remaining public roads. Interstate routes that are even remotely viable alternatives to toll roads will be allowed to crumble and fall by the wayside -- watch, see if I'm wrong.
IMHO they can go "participate themselves".
So the state sold a future revenue stream for $4 billion. May look good on today's cash flow, but the money the state no longer gets from tolls will have to come from someplace else.