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Indiana Takes the Lead on Interstate Tolling

Given the advanced age of most of America’s Interstate highways, it was inevitable that one state would eventually volunteer to be the first-mover on toll-financed Interstate reconstruction. Indiana has now stepped forward. Legislation authorizing the state DOT to use toll financing to rebuild all six of the state’s long-distance Interstates passed via a large, bipartisan […]

TIFIA Loan Program Expanded, Increasing Cap for All Projects

On July 7, the Build America Bureau and U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced that government loans under the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFIA) would be significantly expanded for all project types. The policy change will allow all projects to receive TIFIA loans up to 49% of project costs, an increase from the […]

Concession Agreement Delayed for Aloha Stadium P3

When Hawaii’s New Aloha Stadium and Entertainment District (NASED) P3 began making significant planning progress more than four years ago, it was a novel approach to a recurring problem for many American cities: how to develop large stadium venues and entertainment districts without significant public funding or other subsidies. In Hawaii’s case, Aloha Stadium in […]

Maryland Releases Freight Rail RFQ

The Maryland Department of Transportation (MDOT) has released an RFQ for a novel contract to transition the operations of a small freight rail network on the state’s east coast into a public-private partnership concession. The 92-mile network is currently overseen by the state directly via an operating contract, which is set to expire this year. […]

The Case for Public-Private Partnerships in South Africa: Is South Africa Ready?

Original Study by Daniel Nugent  & Johan Burger. South Africa’s National Infrastructure Plan 2050 indicates an intention to augment the financial capacity and technical expertise of its delivery agencies by engaging in strategic partnerships with the private sector through public-private partnerships (PPPs). The objective of this paper is to identify, measure and critically consider the […]

Humber Health Hospital P3 Gets $100 million Lawsuit

An award-winning hospital P3 in Canada is now the subject of a $100 million lawsuit. Humber River Hospital, the project’s public sponsor, recently filed the lawsuit against the project’s concessionaire, Plenary Health Care Partnerships Humber (PHCP) in Ontario Superior Court, alleging that some of the hospital’s floors are not flat and that some of the […]

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 […]