Rendell expected to announce successful turnpike bidder

Gov. Rendell is expected to announce today the successful bidder for the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

Rendell proposes to lease the turnpike to a private operator for 75 years and use the income to fund highway, bridge and transit projects around the state. The top bid for the turnpike is expected to be around $12 billion.

Any proposal to lease the turnpike will require legislative approval, and legislative leaders have said the proposal faces an uphill battle with lawmakers.

The final teams vying to operate the turnpike are said to include a consortium of New York investment bank Goldman, Sachs & Co. and Australian toll road operator Transurban Group, and a consortium of Spanish toll road operator Abertis Infraestructuras, Australian investment and advisory firm Babcock and Brown, and New York-based Citigroup Inc.

A third would-be bidder, the team of Macquarie Infrastructure Group, of Australia, and Cintra Concesiones de Infraestructuras de Transporte, of Spain, was reported to be having difficulty with financing.

Macquarie-Cintra is the private operator of the Indiana Toll Road and the Chicago Skyway.