Posts from July 2014
Posted in P3s

During the Use of WIFIA breakout session at the NCPPP P3 Connect conference this week in Denver, Elizabeth Corr, Associate Division Director for the EPA, confirmed that the agency will not need to complete the formal federal rulemaking process to implement the Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act.  The Act, or WIFIA, was recently enacted by Congress to make low cost loans and loan guarantees available to public and private sponsors of water projects and is based on the highly successful TIFIA program for transportation projects.  Ms. Corr mentioned that EPA conducted its ...

Posted in P3s

After a re-boot, the National Conference for Public-Private Partnerships (NCPPP) concluded a three day summit July 30 in Denver, Colorado on all things P3.

NCPPP’s P3 Connect annual meeting held programs addressing P3 project delivery in the water/waste water, federal and state disaster recovery, U.S. Department of Defense/U.S. General Service Administration (GSA) and emerging social infrastructure spaces, in addition to the more traditional transportation/transit spaces that has seen recent sustained growth in the United States.

Nossaman’s Barney Allison ...

Posted in Design-Build, P3s

The Arizona Department of Transportation announced today its decision to deliver the $1.9 billion South Mountain Freeway Project under a single design-build-maintain public-private partnership.  While there will be a long-term maintenance component, ADOT, in collaboration with the Maricopa Association of Governments and the Arizona Division of the Federal Highway Administration, has decided to use available public funds together with public financing to pay for the project.

 

ADOT received an unsolicited proposal for the project more than a year ago.  Under its P3 ...

On July 28, 2014, the Maryland Transit Administration (MTA) and Maryland Department of Transportation (MDOT) issued the final request for proposals for a public-private partnership to design, build, finance, operate and maintain the Purple Line light rail transit project using an availability payment approach.  The Purple Line is a 16-mile route extending from New Carrollton in Prince George’s County to Bethesda in Montgomery County, with 21 stations and three links to the Washington DC, Metro and MARC commuter train systems.  The Purple Line has estimated project value of ...

The U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx and the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) today released a much-anticipated Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) to improve the safe rail transportation of flammable liquids, including petroleum crude oil and ethanol. 

PHMSA also released a companion Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM) on oil spill response plans, seeking comments on current thresholds and their applicability to rail and a summary of a study finding that crude oil from the Bakken field presents greater ...

On June 23rd, the U.S. Supreme Court granted the government’s Writ of Certiorari to review the decision of the D.C. Circuit that many believe may be hampering Amtrak’s leverage with freight railroads and its on-time performance.

According to Amtrak’s most recent issued Monthly Performance Report (May 2014), end station on-time performance (OTP) is approximately 74 percent so far this fiscal year (which started October 2013) down 12 percent from FY 2013, when the same performance measure finished at 85 percent.

While the particularly harsh winter weather may have been a ...

As speculation over the federal government’s forthcoming rule on rail shipments of crude oil grows, two items hit the press last week increasing speculation over the details of the reforms.

On July 15, 2014, Bloomberg reported that representatives from the American Petroleum Institute (API) and the Association of American Railroads (AAR) met with the Transportation Department at the Office of Management and Budget on July 11 to present a joint plan for the phase-out of older tank cars.  According to Bloomberg, two people familiar with the proposal, who were not identified, said ...

Posted in Financing, P3s, Policy

President Barak Obama today announced the Build America Investment Initiative (the Initiative).  According to the Fact Sheet released by the White House in advance of the announcement, the purpose of the Initiative is to increase infrastructure investment and economic growth by engaging with state and local governments and private sector investors to encourage collaboration, expand the market for public-private partnerships (PPPs) and put federal credit programs to greater use.

The transportation industry will be the first to benefit from the Initiative.

The Fact Sheet lays ...

The 141-year-old Baltimore and Potomac (B&P) Tunnel is a major bottleneck on the Northeast Corridor, but Amtrak, the Maryland Department of Transportation (MDOT) and Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) are conducting a study to examine alternatives to improve or replace the tunnel. 

The two-track B&P Tunnel is used by Amtrak, Maryland's MARC Commuter Rail trains and Norfolk Southern freight trains. The track geometry of the outdated tunnel creates a low-speed bottleneck impacting approximately 85 Amtrak trains, 57 MARC commuter trains and one to two freight trains each day.

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