Indiana Toll Road

File:ITRLogo Color.jpg
Route information
Length	156.9 mi (252.5 km)
Existed	August 1956[citation needed]–present
Major junctions
West end	I-90 at Illinois state line
	US 41 in Hammond; I-65 / US 20 / US 12 in Gary; I-80 / I-94 / US 6 in Lake Station; US 421 near Michigan City; US 31 in South Bend; US 131 near Middlebury; I-69 near Angola
East end	I-90 at Ohio state line
Location
Country	United States
State	Indiana
Highway system
	Indiana State Highway System; Interstate; US; State; Scenic;

The Indiana Toll Road, officially the Indiana East-West Toll Road, is a tolled highway running east-west across the northernmost part of Indiana. It is a part of the New York-Chicago Toll Road system, and has been advertised as the "Main Street of the Midwest".

To the west, it leads directly to Chicago, Illinois via the Chicago Skyway; to the east it leads toward Toledo, Ohio and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania via the Ohio Turnpike, and Pennsylvania Turnpike.

It is owned by the Indiana Finance Authority and operated by the Indiana Toll Road Concession Company, a Spanish-Australian joint-venture between Cintra Concesiones de Infraestructuras de Transporte and Macquarie Infrastructure Group.

Route Numbers

The entire Indiana Toll Road is part of the U.S. Interstate Highway System. It provides a direct connection to the Chicago Skyway to the west, and the Ohio Turnpike to the east.

The toll road is signed with the following route numbers:

Interstate 80. Interstate 80 joins the toll road at the Lake Station exit, number 21, and continues east to the toll road's eastern terminus at the Ohio state line.

Interstate 90. Interstate 90 runs the entire length of the toll road, joining at the western terminus at the Illinois state line, and continuing east to the Ohio state line.

Tolls

Between the Westpoint barrier toll, near the Illinois state line, and the Portage barrier at mile post 23, tolls are collected by fixed-amount tolls at exit and entrance ramps.

Between the Portage barrier, east to the Eastpoint barrier toll, near the Ohio state line, it is operated as a closed ticket system toll road, where one receives a ticket upon entering and pays a pre-calculated amount based on distance traveled when exiting. Standard passenger cars are charged a toll of $4.15 along the section from Portage to Eastpoint, with an extra $0.50 at the Westpoint barrier.

Originally the entire toll road was on a closed ticket system, with Westpoint at current Exit 5, roughly under the East 141st Street overpass. This changed after the INDOT takeover in 1981. (see the History section).

Effective June 25, 2007, the Indiana Toll Road began electronic toll collection with the i-Zoom system. The system is currently only operational for tolls from the Illinois state line to the Portage toll barrier at mile post 23. The remainder of the toll road will have electronic toll collection operational later in the year. i-Zoom is fully compatible with the E-Z Pass and I-Pass electronic toll collection systems. Indiana becomes the 12th state using the E-Z Pass system.

Facts

In what may serve as a "test case" for the privatization of other major highways in the United States, on June 29th, 2006 Indiana received $3.8 billion from a foreign consortium made up of the Spanish construction firm Cintra and the Macquarie Infrastructure Group (MIG) of Australia, and in exchange the state ceded operation of the 157-mile Indiana Toll Road for the next 75 years to these outside corporations. The consortium would collect all the tolls. ^[1]

Exit points are based on the mile-post system, with exits starting at 0 at the Illinois state line, and increasing to exit 153 at the Eastpoint toll barrier near the Ohio state line (technically, not an exit, as the only access from there is to the Ohio Turnpike, but toll tickets issued at the barrier are marked "Entry 153"). The Toll Road opened in 1956 with sequential exit numbering, which was converted to the current mileage-based scheme in 1981. The original number sequence was amended slightly in 1964 with the opening of the then-Burns Harbor, now Lake Station exit.

The farthest it gets from the Michigan state line or Lake Michigan is about 10 miles (15 km).

Although it never enters Michigan, the toll road lies within ten miles (16.1 km) of the Michigan state line between La Porte, Indiana and the Ohio state line. Looking north at exit 121, the State Road 9-Howe/LaGrange, the "Welcome to Michigan" sign is visible in the distance. At one point in northern Indiana, the toll road comes within about 200 yards (meters) of the Michigan border^[2].

Control cities on guide signs are Chicago and Toledo. Originally they were "Chicago and West" and "Ohio and East".

In December 2006, ITR Concession Company announced that a South Bend student, Andrea Hebster, will receive $5,000 towards her educational expenses for being selected as the grand prizewinner of the Indiana Toll Road logo design contest. The new ITRCC logo rollout is scheduled for the spring of 2007.^[3].

History

The Indiana Toll Road was publicly financed and constructed during the 1950s. It opened in stages, east to west, between August and November, 1956^[4]. The formal dedication ceremony was held on September 17, 1956.

In addition to the "east-west" toll road, a "north-south" toll road was planned, roughly along the path of today's Interstate 65, but the plan was dropped after the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 was passed.^[5]

Originally the Interstate 94 designation was applied to the highway west of where the current interchange with I-94 was eventually built, with I-90 following I-80 to the west along the Borman Expressway as I-94 does now, the completed portions of the Borman being designated as I-80, 90, and 294. The current arrangement was applied around 1965, to avoid confusion, resulting in a stretch of I-94 actually being farther south than I-90, and I-90 running the entire length of the Indiana Toll Road. I-294 was cut back to the Tri-State Tollway at that time.

Service Areas

Like all other toll highways built in the 1950s, the Indiana Toll Road has had service areas(called travel plazas[1])ever since it opened. Originally, there were eight pairs of travel plazas located approximately every 18 miles. Of these, five featured sit-down restaurants operated by the Host Restaurant chain while the other three had only snack bars. Each travel plaza was named after a prominent Indiana native or resident. Gasoline and other auto services were available at all travel plazas. Originally, various oil companies including Standard Oil, Sinclair, Pure, Gulf, Texaco and Citgo operated each of the travel plazas. Later, Standard Oil, later Amoco and now BP Amoco, assumed operations at all travel plazas. Currently BP Amoco operates the three western travel plazas while Mobil operates the two easternmost pairs. The westernmost snack bar at milepost 37.5 remained open until the mid-70s and is now used as a "Truck Only Parking" rest area[2] with no facilities. The other two at mileposts 72.9 and 108 were closed in 1972. All were demolished except for one, the former Benjamin Harrison snack bar on the eastbound side at milepost 72.9. It serves as a state police station and has no public facilities. The restaurant interiors were remodeled into short-order cafeterias in the late 70s when the Gladieux chain took over operations and have since been remodeled once again for fast food service. However, the original buildings remain little changed from the outside.

Ownership

The Indiana Toll Road Commission operated the toll road from its inception until 1981.

The Indiana Department of Transportation operated the toll road between 1981 and 2006.

The Cintra-Macquarie joint-venture assumed operation of the Toll Road from INDOT on June 30, 2006, after the Indiana Supreme Court dismissed a legal challenge by opponents attempting to derail the deal following the failure of the opponents to post a bond.

The same partnership already operates and maintains the adjoining Chicago Skyway in Illinois.

The Toll Road has been owned by the Indiana Finance Authority since 2005.

Future Activities

Part of the agreement to privatize operations of the Indiana E-W Toll Road is to implement over $770 million in planned upgrades to the Toll Road. Included is adding a lane in each direction from the Illinois State Line to the I-80/I-94 interchange (MP 21), the reconstruction of existing pavement and bridge structures, and implementation of electronic toll collection system at all mainline and interchange toll plazas. The lease agreement also requires the ITRCC to maintain and/or improve the condition of the Toll Road to standards set forth by state and federal law.

Exit list

County	Location	Mile ^{[citation needed]}	#			Destinations	Notes
County	Location	Mile ^{[citation needed]}	Older	Old		Destinations	Notes
Lake	Hammond	0.0	0	0		US 12 / US 20 / US 41	Westbound exit and eastbound entrance
		Westpoint Toll Barrier
					3	SR 912 (Cline Avenue)	Eastbound exit and westbound entrance
		4.7	1	1	5	US 41 (Calumet Avenue) – Hammond
	Gary				10	SR 912 (Cline Avenue) – Gary
		13.5	1A	2	14A	Grant Street
					14B	SR 53 – Broadway
		16.7	2	3	17	I-65 / US 12 / US 20 – Indianapolis
	Lake Station	20.8		4	21	I-80 / I-94 / US 6 – Detroit, Des Moines.	West end of I-80 overlap
Porter	Portage				23	Portage
	Portage	Portage Toll Barrier
	Chesterton	30.9	3	5	31	SR 49 – Chesterton, Valparaiso	Serves Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore and Indiana Dunes State Park
LaPorte		38.9	4	6	39	US 421 – Michigan City, Westville
LaPorte		49.2	5	7	49	SR 39 – La Porte
St. Joseph	South Bend				72	US 31 – Niles, South Bend, Plymouth
	South Bend	76.6	6	8	77	US 31 Bus. / SR 933 – South Bend	Serves University of Notre Dame
	Mishawaka				83	Capital Avenue – Mishawaka
Elkhart	Elkhart	91.8	7	9	92	SR 19 – Elkhart
	Elkhart				96	County Road 17
	Bristol				101	SR 15 – Bristol, Goshen
		107.1	8	10	107	US 131 / SR 13 – Middlebury, Constantine
LaGrange	Howe	120.5	9	11	121	SR 9 – Howe, LaGrange, Sturgis
Steuben	Fremont	143.9	10	12	144	I-69 – Angola, Fort Wayne, Lansing	Serves Pokagon State Park
		153.0	Eastpoint Toll Barrier