Indiana Toll Road
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| Image:Indiana Toll Road logo 1968.png Image:Interstate 80 (Indiana).svgImage:I-90.svg | |
| Indiana Toll Road | |
| Length: | 156.9 mi (252.5 km) |
|---|---|
| Formed: | 1956 |
| Direction: | East-west |
| From: | Illinois state line with Chicago at the Chicago Skyway |
| To: | Ohio state line at the Ohio Turnpike |
| Major cities: | Gary, South Bend |
| System: | Interstate Highway system |
The Indiana Toll Road, officially the Indiana East-West Toll Road, is a tolled freeway running east-west across the northernmost part of Indiana; the furthest it gets from the Michigan state line or Lake Michigan is about 10 miles (15 km). It is owned by the Indiana Finance Authority and operated by the Indiana Toll Road Concession Company, a Spanish-Australian joint-venture between Cintra Concesiones de Infraestructuras de Transporte and Macquarie Infrastructure Group. The Toll Road has been advertised as the Main Street of the Midwest, as it forms a major link, connecting Chicago and the West with Ohio and the Northeast.
The Toll Road forms part of a longer continuous pre-Interstate Highway System toll road from Chicago to New Jersey, part of the informal New York-Chicago Toll Road system. At its west end, the Chicago Skyway continues northwest towards downtown Chicago. To the east, the Ohio Turnpike continues through Ohio towards the Pennsylvania Turnpike and New Jersey Turnpike. The full length of the Toll Road is designated as part of the cross-country Interstate 90. Interstate 80 is concurrently routed on the Toll Road east of the interchange at Burns Harbor (exit 21); it leaves to bypass Chicago to the south.
Between the Westpoint barrier toll, near the Illinois state line, and the Portage barrier, tolls are collected by fixed-amount tolls as exit and entrance ramps. The rest of the Toll Road, from Portage to the Eastpoint barrier, near the Ohio state line, is operated as a closed ticket system toll road, where one receives a ticket upon entering and pays a pre-calculated amount based on distance traveled when exiting. Standard passenger cars are charged a toll of $4.15 along the section from Portage to Eastpoint, with an extra $0.50 at the Westpoint barrier. Originally the entire highway was on a closed ticket system, with Westpoint at current Exit 5, roughly under the East 141st Street overpass. This changed in the years after the INDOT takeover (see the History section).
Control cities on guide signs are Chicago and Toledo. Originally they were "Chicago and West" and "Ohio and East".
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[edit] History
The Toll Road was privately financed and constructed during the 1950s. It opened in stages, east to west, between August and November, 1956[1], with user tolls paying for its capital costs and maintenance. A "north-south" toll road was planned in addition to the ultimately-built east-west one, roughly along the path of today's Interstate 65, but the plan was dropped after the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 was passed.[2]
Originally the Interstate 94 designation was applied to the highway west of the Burns Harbor interchange, with I-90 following I-80 to the west as I-94 does now. The current arrangement was applied around 1965, and the results of this are that a stretch of I-94 actually runs further south of I-90, and that I-90 in Indiana and the Indiana Toll Road are one and the same (thus having the same mileposts).
The Indiana Toll Road Commission ran the Toll Road until 1981, when it was transferred to the Indiana Department of Transportation.
In 2005, a plan was introduced to privatize the Toll Road. [3] On January 23 2006, it was announced that a partnership between Cintra Concesiones de Infraestructuras de Transporte SA and Macquarie Infrastructure Group was the top bidder for a 75-year lease to operate and maintain the toll road, offering US $3.85 billion for the concession.[4] The same partnership already operates and maintains the adjoining Chicago Skyway in Illinois. The Cintra-Macquarie joint-venture assumed operation of the Toll Road from INDOT on June 30, 2006, after the Indiana Supreme Court dismissed a legal challenge by opponents attempting to derail the deal.
[edit] Exit list
[edit] Future Activities
Part of the agreement to privatize operations of the Indiana E-W Toll Road is to implement over $770 million in planned upgrades to the expressway. Included is adding a lane in each direction from the Illinois State Line to the I-80/I-94 interchange (MP 21), the reconstruction of existing pavement and bridge structures, and implementation of electronic toll collection system at all mainline and interchange toll plazas.
[edit] External links
- Indiana Toll Road for Sale - Special collection compiled by The Times of Northwest Indiana (Munster), the South Bend Tribune, and the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette.
