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California High-Speed Rail Courts Private Finance (Again), Feds Pull Grants

For months, the California High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) has been flirting with ways to incorporate private investment into the struggling megaproject. The Authority held an industry forum in January on the topic, and in May it announced that it was preparing a Request for Expression of Interest (RFEI) to begin formally consulting with potential private […]

Trends in U.S. Airport Sector: A Conversation with WSP’s Lou Wolinetz

The U.S. airport sector is emerging from a period of many changes, induced by the pandemic-era bust and rebound in travel. The pandemic brought with it unprecedented levels of federal support for operations, and later for capex (via the IIJA). Airports have also embarked in a once-in-a-generation boom of capital expenditures over the last four […]

The Troubling Decline of Users-Pay/Users-Benefit

Some large-scale infrastructure has traditionally been paid for by taxpayers. But since World War II, commercial aviation infrastructure (airports and air traffic control) and highways have been largely paid for via user taxes. Customers (airlines, trucking companies, and motorists) understood that this infrastructure is costly, and they expected to pay for its use. The last […]

NEPA Implications of Uinta Basin Rail Win at the Supreme Court

When the public-private partnership (P3) to deliver the Uinta Basin rail project awarded a series of construction contracts in mid-2022, it appeared poised to do the impossible: actually start construction on the 88-mile freight rail line in Utah, which various sponsors had been trying to build since at least the 1980’s. In May, the project […]

Sepulveda Transit Corridor Releases Details on Alternatives, Draft EIR

After years of a two-pronged predevelopment process, the Sepulveda Transit Corridor Project is nearly ready to select a design for rail transit between the San Fernando Valley and Los Angeles. In May, LA Metro, the project’s public sponsor, released details on the five remaining project alternatives under consideration, and followed up with a Draft Environmental […]

On the Brink: UK Water Commission Report in, and KKR Out at Thames Water

On June 3rd, the Cunliffe Commission in the United Kingdom published its widely anticipated interim findings on how to fix the nation’s beleaguered water industry. Almost as if on cue, that very same day KKR announced that it would be walking away from a planned rescue investment in Thames Water, the largest and most financially […]

Divergent Pathways: PPP Developments in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland

Original study by Gail Sheppard & Matthias P. Beck This paper examines the different trajectories of PPP usage in Ireland and the UK.  Both countries started with similar policies of PPP-based infrastructure procurement, with Ireland largely duplicating UK policy.  However, since Covid-19 Ireland expanded the use of PPP whereas PPP in the UK stalled in […]

A Public‐Private Partnership Could Still Redevelop Penn Station

A new front in the battle between the Trump administration and New York’s transportation agencies opened up in April, when the Department of Transportation announced that,  together with Amtrak, it would be taking over the $7 billion project to redevelop Penn Station. The move sidelined New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), which was leading the […]

Campus Energy P3s on the Rise — Interview with Meridiam’s Omri Gainsburg

The view from the ivory tower isn’t great these days. Headlines are dominated by a select few clashes between some ivy league schools and the Trump administration. Other policy changes, such as reductions to indirect cost rates on federal research grants, could have much broader, and deeper, economic impacts on higher education. These are acute […]

Expanding Congested Highways: Revisiting “Induced Demand”

I get tired of major media repeatedly publishing feature articles claiming that it’s futile to add capacity to urban expressways. Yet they keep appearing, not just in niche publications but in major media such as: – “Widening Highways Doesn’t Fix Traffic. So Why Do We Keep Doing It?” New York Times, January 6, 2023 – […]