Taking their toll.

• Author: Gillespie, Nick
• Position: Privately built and operated roads

Privately built and operated roads stage a comeback.

DULLES GREENWAY, A 14-MILE toll road currently under construction between Washington's Dulles Airport and Leesburg, Virginia, is not just the first private toll road in the Old Dominion since 1816. It is the latest venture to join a growing list of road and bridge projects funded exclusively by private investors. Private toll projects are under way or seriously being considered in 10 states and Puerto Rico.

California has OK'd four privately funded road projects with estimated completion dates between 1994 and 1997, and the Dulles Greenway should be open to traffic in 1996. Puerto Rico has identified $325 million of roads it wants to develop; the company Dragados y Construcciones has already begun work on a toll bridge linking San Juan and its nearby airport. Similar toll projects, all of which rely on private-sector investment, are in various stages of development in Texas, Colorado, Illinois, Missouri, Arizona, Florida, Minnesota, and Mississippi.

Robert W. Poole Jr., president of the Reason Foundation and a former adviser to the United States and California Departments of Transportation, believes that private toll roads are the means by which financially strapped state governments can build...