Ohio Gov. Moves Ahead With Turnpike Lease Plan
This story appears in the Aug. 22 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today.
Ohio Gov. John Kasich is moving ahead with his plan to lease the Ohio Turnpike to a private operator, telling a newspaper that he plans to hire a consultant to determine the road’s value.
Kasich sees the turnpike as an underutilized asset that could bring money to the state, and he’s looking to bring in “literally billions of dollars” through a lease, he told the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
But the state’s trucking association still has not warmed to the idea since Kasich started to mention it during his 2010 campaign for governor.
“We don’t think it’s a good idea,” Larry Davis, president of the Ohio Trucking Association, told Transport Topics.
Kasich hopes a consultant could help the state to collect bids for the highway and have a deal in place by spring 2013, he told the Plain Dealer.
The governor wants to get an immediate payment for the lease, in addition to a percentage of the yearly tolls. Though he did not tell the newspaper his target amount of money, he said in February that he wants at least $3 billion (2-21, p. 10).
If he does not get the price he wants, Kasich would scrap the lease idea and possibly transfer the road to the Ohio Department of Transportation, disbanding the Ohio Turnpike Commission, which operates it.
Among Davis’s objections to the lease idea is the fear that money from the lease would go to fund education or other programs instead of infrastructure of the turnpike itself, he said.
Neighboring Indiana leased the Indiana Toll Road, which meets Ohio’s turnpike at the border, to a private company in 2006 for $3.8 billion up front for a 75-year lease.
“In five years they doubled their tolls,” Davis said, adding that he doesn’t want that to happen in Ohio. “We think they’re already too high.”
Davis is also afraid of a “no-compete” clause, in which the lease would force the state to limit its improvements to nearby parallel roads that would seem attractive alternatives.
But Ohio would not agree to those clauses, ODOT Director Jerry Wray told the Plain Dealer.
“We are definitely concerned about what they’re going to do and how they’re going to do it,” Davis said.
Davis’s group is contacting legislators, the governor and ODOT, trying to prevent a lease that harms trucking, he said.
