ITS corrupted: intelligent racketeering slowly unravels over traveler data monopoly

That's the title of the piece that my old friend Peter Samuel and I wrote for Peter's newsletter, tollroadsnews.com. (Read it here.)

We were motivated to write it after the U.S. Dept. of Transportation's Office of Inspector General (OIG) finally issued their final report about what I call (in my forthcoming book) the 'Smart Road' Scam.

The OIG took the easy way out, coming down hard on the Federal Highway Administration's Office of Operations (my old bosses) about the FHWA's flawed oversight. (Read our piece for more details. As you'll see, we pull no punches.)

There's no other way to say it, the OIG's findings were simply a cop out. As we concluded in our piece:

The FHWA was an easy target, but was just doing what it was told to do by corrupt legislators. The OIG at USDOT clearly decided the legislative shenanigans - the real story behind the Traffic.com racket - were too hot to touch.

As I detail in my new book, the corrupt legislators include Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter, Alaska Congressman Don Young, and former Pennsylvania Congressman (and Young's predecessor as Chairman of the House Transportation Committee) Bud Shuster. Corrupt Executive Branch officials include former Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta and former DOT and DHS Deputy Secretary Michael P. Jackson.