Indiana Department of Transportation Commissioner Kurt Wiley said Monday that he and other state officials are appealing to the federal government to “buy out” the Chicago Skyway to eliminate its toll fees, which now cause Indiana drivers to turn to the ragged and already-overburdened Borman Expressway.
At the same time, Wiley said he and others see the idea for what it is: a long shot.
“It obviously would be a difficult undertaking,” Wiley said, pointing out that cash-strapped federal transportation officials are not likely to rush to pay off the $179 million in outstanding bonds on the 7.8-mile Skyway, which links the Indiana toll road to Chicago.
Predictably, Wiley said, Chicago officials are “interested in knowing what’s being proposed but not at all interested in jumping into any serious discussions about it.”
In October, Mayor Richard Daley stood on a Skyway overpass to announce that after years of being a white elephant, the roadway now is making money for the city. Skyway revenue is so high, in fact, that last year city officials used $50 million of it to offset the cost of planned improvements in city viaducts, bridges and streets.
But in pushing for the takeover, Wiley and others, including Indiana Gov. Frank O’Bannon, contend that the Skyway is relatively underused while the Borman is overburdened with traffic.
“Just last Thursday, I was on there and a semi (truck) lost its load. Another semi caught fire. And that was before the real traffic troubles began,” Wiley said. Over the last 25 years, he said, traffic on the roadway has increased by 100 percent and the weight of the trucks using it has gone up 500 percent.
Likewise, Walter Knorr, Chicago’s chief financial officer, said that over the last year, passenger and commercial traffic on the Skyway rose 15 percent and 21 percent, respectively.
“Right now, the Skyway is a revenue-producing instrument for the city,” Knorr said. “Toll costs do more than pay the debt service on bonds. They pay for capital improvements as well as operating and maintenance of the Skyway. We’re talking a $700 million value.”
Knorr said that he did talk to Wiley on Monday to find out if Indiana officials had a formal proposal and they did not. Although he was skeptical of the notion the city might sell the Skyway, he did not completely rule it out.
`It is not a current consideration,” he said. “There are a lot of ways to look at this. There is no simple way to look at it.”
Wiley and Knorr agreed they are not aware of any previous situation in which the federal government agreed to pay off local bonds on a toll road to ease traffic on another roadway and eliminate toll costs to drivers.
The idea of the federal government taking over the Skyway to help ease traffic woes on the Borman has been batted about for years. It bounced back into the spotlight this week, when O’Bannon, in announcing the start of yet another, multimillion-dollar traffic-snarling repair project on the Borman, wished out loud that federal officials would come to Indiana’s rescue by taking over the Skyway.
