Despite a rising tide of opposition on both coasts, Florida is plowing ahead with a plan to lease Alligator Alley to a private contract for 50 to 75 years to raise short-term cash for other transportation needs. The 78-mile toll road could be in the hands of private interests by this time next year.

Six firms -- most of them foreign-owned that specialize in large infrastructure asset investments -- have been short-listed. Final bids are due by Dec. 15.

If a deal is reached, the winning firm would collect tolls and take on all maintenance, construction and toll collection for 50 to 75 years.

The state, which would continue to set toll rates, would receive a lump-sum payment upfront that supposedly would be used for transportation projects in other counties, plus a cut of future excess toll revenues.

The proposal has drawn heavy criticism from elected leaders and residents on both coasts. They view the lease as giving away a valuable state asset that currently generates $23 million a year in revenue.

The state insists that the excess revenue would stay in South Florida, pushing forward projects in Broward and Collier -- like the widening of Interstate 75 in the southwest suburbs or Interstate 95 from Commercial Boulevard to the Palm Beach County line -- that will be needed soon but might not have enough funding for decades.

Kevin Thibault, the assistant secretary for finance, said the state -- not the profit-minded private vendor -- will control the toll rates.

Cars currently pay $2.50 cash or $2 with SunPass to cross the Alley. Those rates will likely rise to $3 cash in the next year or so. And then the state, not the vendor, will adjust the rates every one to five years based on an inflationary index.

(These numbers, by the way, are markedly lower than the earlier consultant estimates of tolls ranging between $6.75 and $10 within a decade that caused a furor.)

POLICY QUESTIONS

A number of serious public-policy questions need to be addressed before this deal is close to being inked:

• Thibault said the state, not the vendor, will still control enough right of way in the event that sometime over the next 50 to 75 years, a bullet train could be built that connects Miami and Fort Lauderdale with Naples and Fort Myers.

Thibault said the concessionaires will not be able to block a train that might ''steal'' toll-paying customers from the Alley.

• What becomes of Everglades restoration if the roadbed is in the hands of a profit-minded private venture? The state insists that it will continue to meet its obligations to share a piece of its revenue with the South Florida Water Management District for the Everglades.

• While the state is insisting today that the lump-sum payment and excess tolls will remain in the communities where it is generated, what's to prevent future governors or state legislatures to pull another Florida Lottery style bait-and-switch with the public?

''You know the old saying: When the Legislature's in session, nobody's safe,'' said Lauderhill Mayor and longtime Broward transportation advocate Richard Kaplan.

Kaplan was one of a dozen local elected leaders or their appointees who were invited by U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Weston, to grill Thibault and other DOT managers about the privatization plans last week.

Wasserman Schultz, who spent 12 years in the state Legislature before winning her congressional seat, remembers all too well Florida's less-than-stellar experience of privatizing government services like prisons.

The potential lease of Alligator Alley is part of a larger trend toward privatizing major infrastructure assets in the United States.

The federal highway trust fund, which pays for roads, bridge repairs and mass transit, is running multi-billion dollar deficits and on the verge of bankruptcy.

The orgy of Congressional earmarking politics has drained billions from needed construction and maintenance jobs toward lesser priority pork.

Gas taxes haven't kept pace with inflation. Nobody in Washington was willing to raise taxes when gas was $1.50 or $2 a gallon; they certainly won't do it when prices are closer to $4.

But $4 a gallon gas has actually accelerated the funding issues. People are driving less. Less gas consumption equals less money for highway construction and mass transit.

''Our approach to funding transportation is broken,'' U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters said during a recent visit to South Florida. ``It is time for a better approach.''

FUNDING GAP

In Florida, the DOT is already facing a multibillion dollar funding gap between what it has and what it needs.

So the state DOT looks to alternatives -- like leasing Alligator Alley, or asking a private vendor to help finance, design, build, operate and maintain the Port of Miami Tunnel or the elevated reversible variably priced toll lanes that will be built in the middle of Interstate 595.

Thibault insists the DOT could reject all of the proposals if proposed lease payments aren't lucrative enough.

But make no mistake: given the current state of transportation financing and the tanking economy, these privatization plans are not going away.

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