ALBANY – Faced with a giant projected budget gap and a wobbly credit rating, the city of Chicago decided to pull the trigger last year on a plan it had been contemplating for nearly a decade: the privatization of an eight mile toll road known as the Skyway.

A Spanish-Australian consortium paid Chicago $1.83 billion to operate the road and collect tolls on it for 99 years. It was the largest cash transaction in city history, easily closing the projected $220 million budget shortfall.

It has not gone unnoticed by states and cities in similar straits.

In New York, where health-care costs eat up a larger and larger share of tax revenue each year, state officials have followed the Skyway project with interest. As a sign that Governor Pataki liked what he saw, the executive budget he issued last month included a proposal allowing for the privatization of toll roads, bridges, and tunnels.

The governor’s proposal is thought to be a potential cure-all for two areas where giant sums of money are urgently sought: the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which is projecting a budget gap next year more than twice the size of the one that sent Chicago into privatization talks, and public education, where billions are needed to satisfy a recent court order in the lawsuit brought by the Campaign for Fiscal Equity.

Straphangers and school officials, however, should not count on bridges and tunnels as cash cows just yet. Despite reports that the Triborough Bridge and the Queens Midtown Tunnel may be on the auction block, aides to Mr. Pataki said the governor has not yet identified specific assets for privatization. And, unlike Chicago, where often the only thing needed to effect a major policy change is the will of Mayor Richard Daley, serious privatization talks in New York could still be years away.

“There are a lot of political challenges in New York,” an official with the firm behind the Skyway deal, Chris Leslie, said.

Mr. Leslie, executive director at Macquarie Securities, a Manhattan-based subsidiary of the Australian firm, said: “Our stance is that we are very well placed to handle something like this, but it’s difficult for us to push because it’s so complicated. We would certainly be interested in a transaction, but New York will be making the decision, not us.”

Mr. Leslie said he has had one or two discussions with New York officials in recent months about the potential transfer of state assets to Macquarie, and none since the governor’s January 18 budget address. He characterized discussions so far as “not intense” but cited the New York State Thruway as an asset Macquarie might want to lease. Preliminary estimates suggest the state could fetch $6 billion for rights to run the 641-mile highway.

Not counting on possible state financing plans, MTA officials have moved forward with privatization plans of their own. The most prominent of these is a deal to lease air rights over the Long Island Railroad’s 13-acre rail yard on the West Side. Katherine Lapp, the MTA chief executive, has said board members are also eyeing other assets for private use as a way to cover a deficit next year of $586 million.

Legislators who are supportive of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity suit have been silent on the privatization of bridges, tunnels, and roads as a potential source of cash.

At a recent meeting with leaders of the United Federation of Teachers, the Senate majority leader, Joe Bruno, a Republican, suggested using proceeds from the proposed privatization of the state-run Health Insurance Plan of New York toward state spending to resolve the school-financing lawsuit. Mr. Bruno, who insists that the state will not raise taxes to cover the more than $20 billion extra that New York City schools are to get in the next five years for the purpose of fiscal equity, also wants the state to consider using revenue from proposed video lottery terminal sites in the state. Mr. Bruno said the two sources represent roughly $8 billion a year in additional revenue to the state.

The president of the UFT, Randi Weingarten, declined to say whether she approves of using the new gambling proceeds to cover the gap.

Notwithstanding Mr. Bruno’s HIP comments, the general silence over privatization plans may be wise. With a number of recent polls showing the governor’s approval rating at an all-time low, legislators and interest groups may not want to embrace a proposal that originated with a man many believe would face an uphill re-election battle in 2006. And Mr. Pataki, who has not said whether he will seek a fourth term, has himself not pushed aggressively for privatization.

Commenting on privatization last week, Mr. Pataki told The New York Sun his proposal is at an early stage.

“There are no plans in place to lease bridges, highways, or other facilities to private operators or to allow tolls where they are not already in place,” the governor said through an aide. “The executive budget contemplates the exploration of public-private partnerships in future years but specific projects have not been identified.”

Those who promote privatization of public assets warn that such deals are fraught with potential pitfalls. In Illinois, officials with the Civic Federation of Chicago, a nonprofit government watchdog that pushed privatizing the Skyway, complained when Mr. Daley said he would use $100 million from the deal to cover operating costs in the city. Proceeds would be better spent on debt and pension obligations, the group said.

But even the Civic Federation’s president, Lawrence Msall, said few people in Chicago complain about the overall impact of the Skyway deal. He said that Chicago got far more money than he and others had anticipated, and that the infusion was not only desperately needed as a source or revenue but also helpful in freeing the city from an asset that is better operated by a private entity.

“The city had a mounting long-term debt problem, and the credit agencies were warning them about it,” Mr. Msall said. “Ninety percent of our property taxes were going to debt and pensions. I think Governor Pataki in New York could share the same kind of financial benefit most rational people would say we got from the Skyway deal.”

A recent report from the New York State comptroller, Alan Hevesi, painted a grim picture of the state’s financial situation. It said that despite legislative efforts to control debt in recent years, the state’s total debt has grown to an estimated $49 billion today from $14.4 billion five years ago.

Mr. Hevesi noted in his report that only 8% of state borrowing today has been approved by voters, even though the state’s constitution requires that voters approve all general-obligation borrowing. Mr. Hevesi is proposing changes that would control borrowing in the state by, among other measures, increasing the comptroller’s oversight of the public authorities that borrow money without voter approval.

Meanwhile, Mr. Leslie at Macquarie said those contemplating privatization should not be overly optimistic about the its potential impact. He said such a deal would generate revenue, but that he could not make promises about whether the transfer would make the state’s transportation infrastructure more efficient. “I don’t know that we’d be more efficient at running the Thruway,” Mr. Leslie said. “I don’t think there’s any discussion about efficiency. That’s not any part of the story as far as we’re concerned.”

Citing a proposed East Side expansion of the subway system, Mr. Leslie said some projects do not lend themselves to privatization. He said the enormous cost of putting a subway line beneath Second Avenue – it’s estimated to cost more than $16 billion – and the eventuality of cost overruns make it unlikely any private interest could profit from it. “Subway construction is not as straightforward as toll roads and might be better handled by the state. Subways are inherently subsidized businesses.”