As Ramesh noted, in the Wall Street Journal today, liberal columnist Thomas Frank makes the case against “public-private partnerships” in transportation–that is, the leasing of transportation infrastructure to private companies, which then maintain and improve the roads and collect tolls. Frank claims that when a private company leases a road, the tolls rise to “whatever the desperate commuter will bear,” which hurts the poor and drives traffic to free roads.

However, as I detailed in National Review several months ago, there is no reason whatsoever for toll roads to impose increased costs on the poor. Modern toll payments take place electronically–either drivers install transmitters on their cars, or machines read license plates and bill the cars’ owners. Lawmakers concerned about tolls’ effects on the poor can simply create a program to give the poor a break, or include a mandate for such a program in partnership contracts with companies that lease roads.

Also, Frank provides not a single example of a privately leased toll road on which prices rose so much that significant amounts of traffic went elsewhere. In fact, toll increases are normally limited in the partnership agreement, such as they were in the Indiana Toll Road contract. There is no option for “charging whatever the desperate commuter will bear.” To be fair, the year after the Toll Road opened, traffic dipped a bit, but this was due to the implementation of the new system, coupled with actual improvements in competing free roads–not to people leaving the Toll Road for the free roads that had been there all along.

Further, when tolls do increase, it’s often because they long needed to but politicians were unwilling–the Indiana Toll Road’s increase last year was the first since 1985 (the rates didn’t even change to reflect inflation), and those who pay their tolls electronically will keep paying the 1985 rate until 2016.

And remember that in exchange for the tolls, the private companies must maintain and improve the roads. The contracts often mandate they do so better than the government had.

Are public-private partnerships perfect? No. By giving governments a huge amount of cash up front in exchange for toll revenue over many decades, they let officials spend tomorrow’s money today. But Frank’s objections are specious, and in many cases these partnerships are better than the alternatives.