BY KEITH BENMAN, Times of Northwest Indiana
kbenman@nwitimes.com
By 2010, the Indiana Toll Road could play host to a 157-mile, fiber-optic corridor that officials say would be a key attraction for businesses thinking of locating in northern Indiana.
The Indiana Department of Transportation is soliciting proposals from private companies to build and operate the corridor under a 25-year licensing agreement, INDOT Deputy Commissioner Carl Bruhn said Tuesday.
"It's really all about enabling economic development," Bruhn said. "We want to enable the private sector to serve, at lower cost, businesses and communities all along the Toll Road."
The corridor could serve any businesses or communities needing advanced broadband for it communications systems or transmitting data, Bruhn said.
The winning bidder will design, build and then operate the corridor, all at its expense. Building it could cost up to $15 million, Bruhn said.
In exchange for those services, and paying a yearly licensing fee to the state, the winning bidder would have the right to collect fees from users for 25 years.
"That's one of the beauties of the approach we've built," said Leigh Morris, chairman of the state's Toll Road Oversight Committee. "This can be done with no investment or risk on the part of the state of Indiana."
By getting a private company to build and operate the Toll Road fiber-optic corridor, Indiana would avoid the politics that often come into play when states or communities try to do such projects themselves, said Steven Titch, a telecom policy analyst with the Reason Foundation.
"It's basically a form of public/private partnership, much like the Toll Road itself," Titch said. "This is the type of infrastructure thinking that stands to be the most productive and produce the best results."
ITR Concession Co. operates the Indiana Toll Road and collects tolls there under a 75-year lease agreement with the state. Its parent company paid the state $3.8 billion for that privilege two years ago.
Under the terms of the fiber-optic corridor lease, the operator would have to administer the corridor in a nondiscriminatory, neutral manner in which it would be open to any business or community that paid the fee, Bruhn said.
Licensing fees collected by the state would establish other fiber-optic corridors on other major roadways, Bruhn said.
Under the plan, the corridor could eventually be expanded into a complete fiber-optic loop running south on Interstate 69, west on U.S. 30 and back to the Indiana Toll Road by way of Interstate 65, according to a briefing memo on the project.