pr

The CongestionPric List recently carried discussions of the rocky startup of the Georgia I-85 HOT lanes northeast of Atlanta several weeks back, and comment on how the news media is inclined to pass judgment on just a few days operation. And if the tolling startup doesn't work perfectly on those early days when the cameras are out on the overpasses then the reporters are inclined to report the whole project as a "failure" and a "fiasco."

Representing the Ambassador Bridge company in Detroit to the media has to be one of the toughest PR jobs around the north American continent. Owner Matty Moroun, his son Manuel and company president Dan Stamper are probably the subjects of more passionate vilification - by no means entirely unearned - than all the rest of the toll execs in north America combined.

In most of the english speaking world there are toll roads, or tollroads to use the composite word preferred here. The term 'toll' is used more generally as a synonym for cost - and usually it is used in the context of a major burdensome cost.

A statement today issued by Pennsylvania Transportation Partners (PTP)  the Abertis-Citi concessionaire group calls on the Turnpike Commission to engage in a series of debates on a lease versus Act 44 - the state law tolling I-80 and keeping the mainline in the hands of the Commission.

Type 'Maine Turnpike' and 'Vienna' in a Google search box and you'll see that the Turnpike delegation of five attending the IBTTA annual conference in Vienna is big news back home. The list of stories goes on for several pages. Most of them are variants of an AP story by Francis X Quinn though one or two others picked up on it separately.