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PWF Interview: Shawn Wilson on the IIJA at Three

Shawn Wilson was Louisiana’s Secretary of the Department of Transportation and Development (DOTD) from 2016 to 2023. In that role he created the agency’s Office of Innovative Procurement and initiated the first public-private partnership procurements in the state’s history, including the Calcasieu River Bridge Project, which just reached financial close last month. In 2020, he […]

Reforming Environmental Litigation

The transportation community is well aware that opponents of major projects use litigation to challenge Environmental Impact Statements after they are issued. While Congress in recent years has enacted modest reforms regarding the time frame and page count of EISs, it has not considered any reforms that would limit the delays and costs imposed by […]

Obstruction Pays? Big Federal Grant for I-83 Bridge Replacement in PA

When eight municipalities near the I-83 John Harris Memorial Bridge filed their lawsuit against the Major Bridge P3 Initiative, they could not possibly have imagined just how successful their attempt at obstruction would be. The 64-year-old I-83 bridge was one of nine bridges statewide that the initiative would replace, but their lawsuit won a temporary […]

On Reforming Environmental Litigation: A New Report from the Reason Foundation

In recent years, it seems that the United States has slowly awakened to the fact that it has a building problem. Namely, that we have a lot of trouble doing so. Infrastructure development in the United States has many challenges, but one of them is certainly the prevalence of litigation on major public works. In […]

Biden CEQ Finalizes New NEPA Rule, and States Sue

Uncertainty (and lawfare) over federal permitting for large public works is likely to continue in the coming months, as the Biden Administration and a coalition of mostly red states battle it out in court over a recent rulemaking. At the end of April, Biden Administration’s Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) finalized a major overhaul of […]

US Airport P3 Sector – Recent Progress, Fixing AIPP

The recent terminal redevelopment P3s that the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANYNJ) pioneered at LaGuardia and then JFK are not included in the All Clear for Takeoff study, except as publicly managed airports. This is in part because those P3s were still too recent to evaluate operationally and because getting operational […]

Build America Bureau Publishes Asset Concessions Technical Assistance NOFO

U.S. public sponsors considering concession contracts on their existing assets have a new opportunity to apply for federal funding to cover their transaction and planning costs. In March the Build America Bureau finally published the first Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) for the Innovative Finance and Asset Concession Grant Program (IFACGP). The program will distribute […]

The IIJA Turns Two

David Leonhardt’s recent essay in The New York Times titled Longer Commutes, Shorter Lives is, in parts, a thorough indictment of American transportation infrastructure progress over the last half century. Between the completion of the first transcontinental railroad in 1869 and the first transcontinental passenger flight in 1959, American transportation experienced one revolution after another. […]