PPP

We wrote January 26 that toll financing was never discussed for the $1,045m Presideo Parkway, one of the approaches to the Golden Gate Bridge. That's because an official at Caltrans emailed us in response to a query about why tolls hadn't been discussed: "No discussion about tolls and none anticipated." We were misled.

Phil Russell who was involved for more than a decade in developing toll projects - public and private - at Texas DOT has been recruited by Lochner of Chicago to be their director of Public Private Partnerships (P3s). He will be based in their newly opened central Texas office in Austin.

USDOT's TIFIA office is short of money and has announced it is closing the open door to loan applications that it has operated back to passage of the original Transportation Infrastructure Finance Innovation Act (TIFIA) of 1998.

Regardless of party, state governors are opposing moves in the US Congress to second guess their arrangements for privatization of roads, toll concessions, or public private partnerships.

Puerto Rico's Public Private Partnerships Authority has hired Macquarie Capital to assist them developing a P3 program. Carlos M Garcia, chairman of the authority is quoted in the announcement as saying that private investment is needed to improve the island territory's infrastructure in high priority areas.

Allen & Overy, a major international law firm say in a commentary that US Senate bills 884 and 885 would "compound the capital starvation of the US transportation network" and could "end the US market for tollroad P3s" (public private partnerships, also known as longterm leases, or concessions). They say S884 titled the "Transportation Equity for All Americans Act" (S.

Florida DOT is rebidding financial advisory services for public private partnerships. They have issued an Invitation to Negotiate (ITN) with a May 28 deadline for replies.

The ITN is posted to the Florida Vendor Bid System (VBS) as Public-Private Partnership (P3) Financial Expertise; ITN-DOT-08/09-9056-DC.

Spokesman for the Georgia Department of Transportation, Crystal Paulk-Buchanan tells us her boss the new commissioner of transportation Gena Abraham is certainly reviewing toll projects in the state, along with non-toll projects. But she says a report quoting the Commissioner as saying "she might scrap the whole list of (toll) projects and start over" is flat wrong.

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a national organization of state legislators has issued an unusually sharp rebuke to Congressmen James Oberstar and Peter Defazio saying it "strongly opposes" their efforts to dissuade states from using public private partnerships for new road projects.

In a statement just issued ALEC says that the 10th Amerndment of the US Constitution makes it clear the states have the right to fund roads "as they see fit."

ARTBA CONFERENCE:

Public/private ventures — great opportunity & great danger