Infrastructure for Sale!

If you believe this post, I can sell you a bridge.

As reported [1] by the (Murdochian) New York Post:

Warning of an approaching economic calamity, [New York] Gov. Paterson yesterday called an emergency session of the state Legislature - and raised the specter that New York may have to sell off roads, bridges and tunnels to close a massive budget deficit.

A fellow 'Poster' columnist, Fredric U. Dicker (No. I'm not making up the name) describes Paterson's proposal as a:

fire-sale leasing of such core state assets as roads, bridges and tunnels - just the sort of thing near-bankrupt Third World nations used to do under pressure from the colonial powers.

So believe it: New York might sell off its bridges --or, to use the CC (corporately-correct) phrasing, the State will enter into a 'private-public' partnership.

What's the price tag on, say, the Brooklyn Bridge? I'm not in the privatization Biz, but here are some helpful numbers:
2 years ago, Australian-Spanish consortium Cintra-Macquarie leased [2] the Indiana Toll road for 3.8 billion.

According [3] to Macquarie, each day the toll road processes 'over 155,00' transactions'

According [4] to the New York City Department of Transportation, 126,805 people cross the Bridge each day.

Slap a toll of 6 bucks (the bridge is free now, but this is privatization, baby) and you got a daily revenue of 760,830 bucks. Yearly revenue: 277,702,950

Of course, I have no idea how must it costs to run the bridge. Costs can be cut. Sure, the Brooklyn Bridge is structurally deficient. [5] But costs can be cut.

78 years ago, Hart Crane wrote an ode [6]to the Brooklyn Bridge. Read the whole thing. Even better, read it aloud. Here is the last stanza.

O Sleepless as the river under thee,

Vaulting the sea, the prairies' dreaming sod,

Unto us lowliest sometime sweep, descend

And of the curveship lend a myth to God.