Truck Tolls Increase on Indiana Toll Road

All vehicles started paying higher toll rates on July 1 on the Indiana Toll Road, just days after Gov. Mitch Daniels celebrated the fifth anniversary of the lease he signed with a private investment consortium to operate the roadway.

Tolls for trucks rose about 3%, meaning a five-axle truck must now pay $36.20 — or 23 cents a mile — to run the full length of the 157-mile road.

Before the toll increase the same truck paid $35.20 or about 22.4 cents per mile for that trip.

The toll road carries Interstate 80 and Interstate 90 traffic across Indiana between Illinois and Ohio.

“Who wants to pay more money when times are already tough?” said Gary Langston, president of the Indiana Motor Truck Association. “But there are no surprises there,” Langston said of the latest increase.

The 75-year-lease, which netted the state $3.8 billion in upfront cash, allows the consortium of Spanish and Australian investors that operate the road to raise truck toll rates each year.

Depending on which exits a driver uses, the tolls are double and triple what they were before the lease was signed, said Randy Nace, an independent Indiana trucker, who in 2006 went to court in an attempt to stop the contract from being signed.

Nace, who has been driving for 15 years, said he used to be able to run the road in his 5-axle truck for just under $13.

The rate increases do not surprise him “be-cause it’s going to go up every year by 3% to 7% for the rest of our lives,” Nace said.

Despite the governor’s claims that the lease agreement is a great deal for Indiana, a recent analysis by Bloomberg News showed that not all of the consortium members involved in the agreement are doing well financially.

Cintra Concesiones de Infraestructuras de Transporte, a unit of Madrid-based Ferrovial SA, and Macquarie Infrastructure Partners, an investment fund managed by Macquarie Group Ltd. of Australia, leased the toll road.

Macquarie last year combined its holdings in several toll roads, including the Indiana road, into a newly created firm called Macquarie Atlas Roads Group. Some investment analysts told Bloomberg News that the group is borrowing money to meet its debt obligations.

Will Wingfield, spokesman for the Indiana Department of Transportation, said that the lease is written in such a way that taxpayers are fully protected, no matter what happens to the investment group.

And should that initial group sell the lease to another company, Indiana has to approve the new firm, Wingfield said.

Under the terms of the lease,  the upfront $3.8 billion cash payment to the state never has to be repaid to anyone, Wingfield said, and that payment is “directly financing 413 miles of new or widened highway corridors [in other parts of the state] without raising fuel taxes,” he added.

Nace said he would rather pay at the pump for taxes that support the nation’s highway system.

“It affects everything,” he said of the road system. “It’s critical infrastructure for the country. To lease it out is un-American.”

Despite steep toll increases for truckers since the lease was signed, cars with transponders for the highway’s electronic tolling system continue to pay the same $4.65 or 3 cents a mile they have been paying since the signing.

Under the terms of the lease, those car tolls cannot rise until 2016.

With the latest increase, though, cars without transponders will pay a cash rate of $9, up from $8.80 before July 1.

Amber Kettring, spokeswoman for the toll road, said that since the signing of the lease, the operators have been playing “catch-up” on the toll rates.

“Prior to 2006, all rates had remained the same since 1985 for the full-length trip,” Kettring said.

The disparity between what cars and trucks are paying in tolls is particularly irritating to the trucking industry, however.

“It drives me crazy,” said Langston. “Every time I have talked with a regulator or a legislator I have brought that up and I will acknowledge that studies . . . show that trucks probably wear roads more quickly and cause more damage,” he said.

“But to say that cars should not have to incur any additional obligation, I think is unreasonable and unfair,” he added.

The governor established a seven-member toll road oversight committee in response to complaints that the state’s citizens would lose transparency surrounding toll road operations.

However, no one from the trucking industry is among the current members.