State's highway plan excluded private sector
Robert W. Poole Jr.

Fifty years ago this week, President Dwight Eisenhower signed a bill creating our nation's Interstate highway system. Today, that system is aging and in desperate need of repair and expansion. And nowhere are those needs more evident than in California.

In terms of time wasted in traffic delays, the San Francisco-Oakland area ranks second-worst in the country, with the average traveler losing 72 hours a year -- nearly two full work weeks spent sitting in traffic. Only in Los Angeles do commuters suffer worse delays. And San Jose's annual backups now rank 11th-worst.

For more than two years, experts on the state's transportation crisis have urged California to join the nationwide trend of tapping into private capital for needed highway improvements. And the legislative compromise that got the $37 billion infrastructure bond measure ($20 billion of it for transportation) onto the November ballot included a provision that would allow four such public-private partnership...

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Posted by rjorr at June 25, 2006 9:23 AM