You can also thank the prohibition on tolling existing interstate lanes for this fiasco. If that prohibition didn’t exist, the road could simply have had a lane or two in each direction added, with all the lanes being tolled, perhaps at a more modest rate than the almost completed “express lanes” will be.
Then again, the PPP could have been arranged so that the state would simply give an annual payment to the company over 30 or 40 years, so that the highway could have simply been widened without tolls on commuters.
Maybe...but I doubt it. The politicians would use the tolling as a ‘revenue engine’, as they call it (not me) for who the hell knows what (just look at the PA Turnpike and what they’re doing with their tolls, Tol). I’m glad they never got that chance.
As to PPPs, I agree, lots of other options than tying down a Right of Way for multiple generations...and I wouldn’t mind a FEDERAL LAW to require use of those options, if politicians still insist on PPPs.