(Photo credit: John Luke, The Times)

Lake and LaPorte counties are working on a joint bid to buy the bankrupt Indiana Toll Road. The effort made it through the first round of the process on Tuesday, Feb. 10, and the next step for the two counties is to form a board of directors for the project in order to proceed.

Reports show that the toll road could produce roughly $38 to $53 million per year to be used by the counties, after maintenance and operating costs. The plan is to fund the purchase bid with non-recourse bonds, which would be paid back from toll road revenues.

At a bankruptcy hearing last month, lawyers for the current operators of the toll road expressed that there were many interested parties looking to purchase the 157 mile expressway. Final offers are expected in the next several months, with an anticipated sale price that may exceed $4.5 billion.

“We are hoping we will be successful and prevail,” Lake county commissioner Roosevelt Allen told the Northwestern Indiana Regional Planning Commission committee yesterday. “There is no point in that money going to a foreign consortium, when it could come back to the two counties and supplement our income for infrastructure.”

Source: The Times of Munster