Skip to main content

Infrastructure investors line up for Indiana toll road

According to a report by Reuters, some of the world's largest pension funds and infrastructure investors are forming consortia to bid for the operator of an Indiana toll road that filed for bankruptcy last month. Indiana agreed in 2006 to lease the 253 kilometre highway, billed as the Main Street of the Midwest, for 75 years in return for US$3.8 billion. It stretches across the northernmost part of Indiana from Ohio to Illinois, linking Chicago with the largest cities on the eastern seaboard. While f
October 16, 2014 Read time: 2 mins
According to a report by Reuters, some of the world's largest pension funds and infrastructure investors are forming consortia to bid for the operator of an Indiana toll road that filed for bankruptcy last month.

Indiana agreed in 2006 to lease the 253 kilometre highway, billed as the Main Street of the Midwest, for 75 years in return for US$3.8 billion. It stretches across the northernmost part of Indiana from Ohio to Illinois, linking Chicago with the largest cities on the eastern seaboard.

While former Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels described it as the deal of a lifetime, opponents fought the agreement all the way to the state's Supreme Court, arguing the state was surrendering an important revenue stream.

However, almost as soon as the deal closed, the US slid into a deep recession and has been slow to recover from a financial crisis in 2008. Traffic volume on the toll road in 2013 was 10.7 per cent below the 2007 level, according to documents filed with the US Bankruptcy Court in Chicago.

Among the players cited in the report are 5428 Cintra, 4419 Ferrovial, 1813 Autostrade Meridionali and 6605 Abertis Infraestructuras. An auction is expected to kick off next month and a deal will probably value the road at $4 billion to $5 billion.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Growth in traffic volumes to drive European toll roads and airports in 2016, says report
    May 3, 2016
    In the wake of low inflation and competitive pressure constraining tariffs, Moody's Investors Service expects that European toll roads and airports will benefit from healthy growth in traffic volumes in 2016, albeit lower than in 2015. Traffic volume growth remains critical to the credit quality and financial performance of toll road operators and airports.
  • Uganda toll road secures funding
    February 27, 2017
    The European Union, International Finance Corporation, France’s AFD and African Development Bank have committed to funding of up to US$400 million for the US$1.1-billion project to construct the 77-kilometre tolled highway in Uganda, according to Engineering News-Record. The private sector will provide an additional US$300 million. The road will link the capital Kampala to the industrial eastern city of Jinja and is designed to speed up freight flow to landlocked Rwanda, eastern Democratic Republic of Co
  • Tolling expected to be fastest growing application of ALPR, says report
    February 12, 2014
    According to global information company, the growing adoption of automatic license plate recognition (ALPR) technology is having an adverse impact on the vehicle entrance control industry, specifically the vehicle barrier and off-street parking systems markets, according to IHS. The presence of ALPR technology is increasing the most for toll ways and off-street parking garages, which is negatively impacting the growth of vehicle barriers, the research firm reports. In ALPR mature markets such as the Amer
  • Road user charging potential solution to transportation problems
    December 14, 2012
    A number of new and highly significant open road tolling schemes have just been launched or are soon to ‘go live’. Systems of road user charging are flexing their muscles as the means to solve politically sensitive transportation problems, reports Jon Masters. Gothenburg, January 2013, will be the time and place for the launch of the next city congestion charging scheme in Europe. In a separate development, Los Angeles County’s tolled Metro ExpressLanes began operating in November 2012 – the latest in a ser