Posts from July 2013
Posted in P3s

Earlier this year the SHRP 2 Program and the Transportation Research Board issued a report entitled The Effect of Public-Private Partnerships and Non-Traditional Procurement Processes on Highway Planning, Environmental Review and Collaborative Decision Making, which is available on the TRB website.

Public-private partnerships (P3s) have become an important tool in developing and financing infrastructure improvements, and are being used by transportation agencies across the nation.  One issue faced by agencies wishing to explore the use of P3s concerns how P3 strategies ...

Posted in P3s

Last week the Nevada Department of Transportation (NDOT) conducted a two-day industry workshop at the Golden Nugget Conference Center in Las Vegas, Nevada, for Project Neon, a freeway improvement project on the west side of Las Vegas. More than 200 attendees, including major international developers and local contracting firms, learned about NDOT’s plans to procure the first phase of the project (the P3 Phase) under an availability payment approach where the winning bidder would design, build, finance, operate and maintain the project for approximately a 35-year term. This ...

Posted in P3s

On July 26, the American Road & Transportation Builders Association (ARTBA) held its awards dinner for the 25th Annual P3s in Transportation Conference.   Each year during this dinner, the ARTBA P3 Division honors projects that exemplify the value of P3s in the United States and also recognizes two individuals, one public sector and one private sector, for their exemplary contributions to the development, growth and public education of P3s.  

This year, the Ohio River Bridges – East End Crossing and its public and private participants swept the awards dinner.  The project won Project ...

Posted in Design-Build

State agencies have increasingly turned to alternative contracting methods such as design-build and public-private partnerships to deliver highway construction projects.  As a result, the use of performance-based specifications has also increased.

To provide a better understanding of how these specifications function, the Transportation Research Board (TRB) recently released Legal Research Digest 61, which provides an overview of performance-based specifications, explores how they differ from traditional design or method-based specifications, and explains the ...

Posted in Policy

Following up on our previous post regarding the uncertainty surrounding the application of Buy America requirements to utility relocations, the United States Department of Transportation (USDOT) has recently released two documents that provide further clarification on the matter.

On July 11, 2013, USDOT circulated an internal memorandum to Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) Division Administrators and the Directors of Field Services acknowledging that the broadened application of Buy America has created implementation issues for the utility industry and caused ...

Posted in P3s

On July 23, the Georgia State Transportation Board (STB) voted to accept the selection of Northwest Express Roadbuilders (NWER) as the apparent best value proposer for the $840 million Northwest Corridor managed lanes P3 project located in Cobb and Cherokee Counties.  The project is the largest transportation infrastructure project in the history of the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT).  It includes two reversible tolled managed lanes along the west side of I-75 between its interchanges with I-285 and I-575.  Also, above the I-575 interchange, one reversible tolled ...

Posted in Policy

Showing concern for the TIFIA JPO’s slow pace of credit approvals for major US transportation, on July 24, 2013, the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works conducted an oversight hearing on the implementation of the TIFIA Program following MAP 21’s expansion of the program almost a year ago.  We are aware of only one project that has received credit approval in that time frame.

Geoff Yarema, a partner in the Infrastructure Practice Group and a member of the National Surface Transportation Infrastructure Financing Commission, provided testimony today at the hearing.

In ...

Posted in Policy

In addition to taking testimony from public agency project sponsors and industry leaders during the July 24, 2013 oversight hearing on TIFIA conducted by the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, the Committee heard from the Secretary of Transportation, Anthony Foxx, regarding the U.S. Department of Transportation’s (USDOT) implementation of the TIFIA Program since the July 6, 2012 enactment of MAP-21. 

While touting the overall success of the TIFIA program and detailing USDOT’s efforts to move projects through the TIFIA pipeline, Secretary Foxx also announced ...

Posted in Policy

In other TIFIA news . . .  

Yesterday, the TIFIA Program Office released updated TIFIA program guidance and loan document templates that purport to reflect the July 6, 2012 enactment of MAP-21.  Among other revisions, the TIFIA Program Guide has been updated to reflect MAP-21’s endorsement of a rolling application process and the imposition of specific statutory deadlines on processing applications.

While the updated TIFIA guidance documents offer welcome support to current and prospective TIFIA applicants, there appears to be at least some additional work to be done to update the ...

Commuters using the heavily congested SR-91 corridor between Riverside and Orange County in Southern California can enjoy an early July 4th celebration—on July 3, 2013, the Riverside County Transportation Commission closed on a billion dollars of financing for the SR-91 project which will provide needed relief of congestion in the corridor when the project is completed in May of 2017.  RCTC achieved financial close on the project less than 60 days after awarding the design-build contract for the project to a joint venture of Atkinson/Walsh.  The SR-91 corridor improvement ...

Posted in Policy

As we have previously reported,  the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and Federal Transit Administration (FTA) recently adopted policies requiring Buy America compliance for utility relocations for federally funded transportation projects in cases where the utility performs relocation work.  On June 28, 2013, the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), American Public Transportation Association (APTA), streetcar project sponsors, and associations representing electric, gas and broadband utilities sent a joint letter to the ...

Posted in P3s

After achieving several P3 project milestones and awards in 2012, Virginia’s Office of Transportation Public-Private Partnerships (OTP3) on behalf of the Commonwealth of Virginia released a draft document entitled 2013 Virginia PPTA Project Pipeline for public comment.  The document identified the following 10 projects as potential P3 projects to be procured under Virginia’s Public-Private Transportation Act:

  • I-66 Corridor Improvements
  • Air Rights Development
  • I-64 HOV to HOT Lane Conversion
  • I-64 Peninsula Improvements
  • Hampton Roads Crossing Improvements
  • I-73 ...

Nossaman’s 30-plus infrastructure attorneys offer clients, colleagues, strategic partners and industry media a wealth of practical experience, insider insight and thoughtful analysis here on Infra Insight. We blog about what we know best, from industry-leading procurements to local and national policy developments that affect the market and our clients.

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