Toll road rates nearly double today for motorists paying cash

HAMMOND, Ind.– Motorists who pay cash to drive on the Indiana Toll Road will see their rates increase starting today.\nThe highway’s private operator is authorized under its contract with the state to increase tolls as it starts operating an electronic toll transponder system on the full length of the 157-mile highway.\nThe toll for the full length of the toll road will rise to $8 from the current $4.65 for car drivers paying cash. Drivers who use a transponder won’t see a toll hike until 2016.\nAll drivers of vehicles with three axles or more automatically will pay toll increases, regardless of whether they use the electronic tolling system known as I-Zoom.\n“The spirit of the toll freeze is for local users,” said Matt Pierce, a spokesman for the Indiana Toll Road Concession Company the highway operator. “This is the first time tolls are going to increase for a two-axle vehicle since 1985, and those individuals continuing to pay with their electronic transponder are going to pay that 1985 rate of $4.65 for the next eight years.”\nThe provision for increasing the toll rate was included in the 2006 deal Gov. Mitch Daniels’ administration made agreeing to a 75-year lease of the toll road to a consortium of Spanish company Cintra and Australia’s Macquarie Infrastructure Group. The consortium, which formed ITR Concession, has paid the state $3.8 billion and will collect all the highway’s toll revenue over the term of the lease.\nToll booths on a 23-mile section of the highway from Portage to the Illinois state line have had electronic tolling for about a year. During peak times on that stretch, 60 percent of drivers use the electronic transponders.\n“Northwest Indiana was pretty covered, so where we’re picking up our new I-Zoom users is in places like South Bend and Elkhart,” Pierce said. “We’ve seen about 10,000 of those folks come on line with the electronic tolling, and we expect to have 20,000 to 30,000 before the end of 2008.”\nIndiana drivers who frequently use the toll road will be able to keep the lower rates for eight more years, Daniels said.\n“It means out-of-state traffic, most of it out-of-state trucks and commercial, is paying to build Indiana’s future,” he said.\nJohn Hennessy of Crown Point, who has worked in downtown Chicago for 25 years, said he’ll probably break down and get the I-Zoom to avoid the new rates –especially since his daughter knows how to go online and order one.\nToll rates also will go up for trucks, with the charge for six-axle vehicles driving the full highway going from $26.50 to $32 and seven-axle vehicles rising from $49.25 to $59.60.\nKenneth Cragen, president of the Indiana Motor Truck Association, said the industry has felt the effects of a slumping economy.