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Shifting Gears on Federal Infrastructure Funding

The landmark Infrastructure Investment & Jobs Act (IIJA) has provided huge increases in federal funding for transportation infrastructure over the past four years. As we approach the last year of IIJA funding, coalitions have formed to enact something similar in the forthcoming surface transportation reauthorization (2026) and FAA reauthorization (2028-29). The first of these groups […]

Transportation Advisory Board Recommends New Federal P3 Office

The Department of Transportation Advisory Board introduced a set of draft recommendations at its second meeting with Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy in December. The very first idea raised was to create a new federal P3 task force or office to help state and local projects sponsors push projects forward and navigate federal development processes and […]

SPEED Act Out of Committee: How it Would Change Permitting

The House Natural Resources Committee finally passed H.R. 4776 out of committee in November. The bill is the Standardizing Permitting and Expediting Economic Development (SPEED) Act, and is the latest attempt at bipartisan permitting reform legislation from Congress. The legislation was first introduced by Natural Resources Chairman Bruce Westerman (R-Arkansas) and Representative Jared Golden (D-Maine) […]

Build America Bureau Publishes Final Asset Concessions Grant NOFO

The Build America Bureau (BAB) released its second and final Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) for the Innovative Finance and Asset Concession (IFAC) grant program in August. The program will award up to $45.98 million in technical assistance grants to public agencies considering asset concession projects or programs to enhance existing public assets. The new […]

PWF’s 3‐Step Guide to Getting More American Capital into American Transport Infrastructure

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy joined the inaugural meeting of the Department of Transportation Advisory Board earlier this summer at the White House. Overall, the meeting was extraordinarily promising for American transportation P3s. Again and again, Secretary Duffy mentioned the need to find ways to leverage private investment and create projects that attract private capital, and […]

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 […]

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 […]

PWF Book Review: Why Nothing Works

When New York City implemented its new congestion pricing program earlier this year, opponents tried to block it in court citing violations of a law familiar to American infrastructure practitioners: the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). As in many other NEPA lawsuits against infrastructure projects, those opponents claimed that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) didn’t […]

Lessons from the IIJA: Inflation and Federal Infrastructure Legislation

There is still more than a year and a half of spending remaining on the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), but it is already time to start considering what comes after. On Capitol Hill, hearings are already underway to start crafting the next major surface transportation bill. Debates over what the IIJA got right, […]

Muni Bond Tax Exemption — Back to the Chopping Block?

Advocates for the muni bond industry have mobilized to protect tax exemption for state and local municipal bonds, as Republicans advance their “big beautiful” reconciliation bill this spring. Is muni tax exemption on the chopping block? Again?