Infra Insight Blog

We all know how hard it is to change federal statutes these days—you need an Act of Congress and the President to sign the bill.  Last week, a group of the top public finance lawyers in the US offered an approach relating to the use of tax exempt bonds that wouldn’t require a change in tax statutes but instead could be accomplished through a change in the regulations relating to the so-called private use test.  As the group pointed out in its letter to high ranking US Treasury officials, Congress itself has made it clear that Treasury had the authority to adopt other, more flexible rules.

The ...

Posted by guest blogger Billy Moore.

Billy Moore of Vianovo works with the Transportation Transformation Group, a consortia of public and private entities that looks at ways of improving the funding and financing of the nation’s transportation infrastructure, which is co-chaired by Nossaman Partner Geoffrey Yarema.

The House and Senate conferees have agreed on a compromise $305 billion five-year surface transportation authorization: the Fixing America's Surface Transportation (FAST) Act. The bill should be headed to the White House in the next few days. It would ...

The Regents of the University of California (the Regents) approved the commercial terms of the P3 agreement for the UC Merced 2020 Project (the Project) on Thursday, November 19, 2015 at the Regents meeting held in San Francisco, contingent on a not to exceed limit on financial proposals.

The Regents’ approval authorizes the university to move forward with the Request for Proposals (RFP) phase of the Project with the three proposing teams that were shortlisted in January.  The equity members for these teams are:

• E3 2020:  Balfour Beatty Investments, Inc., Star America E3 2020 ...

Los Angeles World Airports (LAWA) staff today briefed its Board of Airport Commissioners on its plans to deliver and finance the estimated $5 billion Landside Access Modernization Program (LAMP) at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX).  LAMP includes several elements, including an elevated 2.25-mile automated people mover (APM), a consolidated rent-a-car facility (ConRAC), parking garages, pedestrian bridges to airport terminals and roadway improvements.  The APM will have several stops between LAX’s Central Terminal Area and the new ConRAC, including a stop at a ...

Some recent events, taken together, provide evidence that policy-makers in the United States are growing more comfortable with public-private partnerships as a vehicle for project delivery, in particular with respect to the nation’s decaying infrastructure and bridging the resultant financing challenges.

Following President Obama’s Build America Investment Initiative early this summer, the U.S. Department of Transportation established the Build America Transportation Investment Center (or BATIC) that would, among other things, enable non-federal but still ...

A crucial highway improvement for the growing Phoenix region reached an important milestone November 2 when the Arizona Department of Transportation received proposals from all three short-listed teams vying to develop the Loop 202 South Mountain Freeway Project.  The three multidiscipline teams are identified in our March 2015 blog.

This $1.9 billion megaproject includes the design, construction and 30-year maintenance of the last section of the Loop 202 Freeway – a route which will stretch 22 miles from the Maricopa Freeway segment of I-10 to the Papago Freeway segment of I-10 ...

In a number of recent conversations regarding using Public-Private Partnerships (P3s) to deliver large infrastructure projects under an availability payment structure, I’ve heard a lot of angst by public owners over the cost of private finance and that AP’s may be viewed as debt by the rating agencies.  It’s true the rating agencies have indicated that AP’s can be considered debt for purposes of assessing an agency’s debt capacity but that’s only one aspect of the delivery method to consider.

S&P has issued several reports/FAQs regarding P3’s in the last couple of ...

Last month, the United States Department of Transportation (USDOT) formally unveiled its Build America Transportation Investment Center (BATIC). BATIC’s mission is to:

• Expand the use of federal transportation credit programs;

• Innovate new approaches to project development processes and funding challenges and institutionalize technology and best practice across credit programs and modal teams; and

• Deliver streamlined technical and financial assistance to accelerate project delivery

BATIC is intended to serve as a single point of contact for project sponsors to obtain ...

California has long been a transportation innovator, whether battery powered cars, high speed rail or the home of the first managed lanes facility in the United States—the SR91 Express Lanes.  The SR91 Express Lanes opened in 1995; the 10 mile project with two managed lanes in each direction connecting Orange County and Riverside County was originally developed as a P3 toll concession and acquired in 2003 by the Orange County Transportation Authority (and also featured the first fully electronic toll collection system in the world).  Additional managed lanes projects have been ...

This is the second of two posts about the recent Infrastructure Ontario 2015 Track Record Report.

As mentioned in the earlier post about Infrastructure Ontario’s 2015 Track Record Report, 98% of the infrastructure projects procured through the agency’s Alternative Financing and Procurement (AFP) program have been delivered on budget.

The report considers a project on budget if its final project cost (awarded contract amount plus utilized post contract contingency) was less than or equal to the awarded contract amount plus the budgeted post contract contingency set at ...