Infra Insight Blog

On December 9, the DC Chapter of the Women’s Transportation Seminar (WTS) held its annual holiday party and awards ceremony at the Goethe-Institut in Washington, DC.  Attending the event was U.S. Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx who received the Rosa Parks Diversity Leadership Award for his advocacy of the White House’s Ladders of Opportunity initiative.  In accepting the award, Secretary Foxx emphasized the importance of infrastructure to connect communities together and improve the quality of life for all Americans.

Receiving the first Man of the Year Award ...

On November 17, 2014, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS), the largest U.S. public pension fund with approximately $300 billion in assets, conducted its annual real assets program review. CalPERS’ real assets program includes real estate, infrastructure and forestland. According to the presentation by its investment staff, real assets’ 13.4% return outperformed the policy benchmark by 160 bps in 2013-2014 fiscal year. CalPERS’ infrastructure program has focused on both public and private infrastructure primarily in transportation ...

As part of its continuing effort to help inform and contribute to the design-build and P3 industry in the U.S., Nossaman is launching an on-going series of blog posts on Emerging Trends in Project Delivery.

Our blog posts for the industry generally are geared toward keeping our readers up to date on current developments regarding projects, programs, laws and regulations.  The Emerging Trends series will add another dimension – a look just over the horizon at what we and our guest bloggers predict may be coming, informed by prior patterns, opinions and results.  If by doing this we can ...

In the Reason Foundation’s recent Surface Transportation News #132, Robert Poole authored a blog post that discusses a report by Andrew Owen and David Levinson of the University of Minnesota Civil Engineering Department called Access Across America: Transit 2014. Their report is concerned with data on how many jobs are accessible by transit within certain time periods in 46 of the 50 largest metropolitan areas in the US.

Poole’s post analyzes both the percentage of jobs in a metropolitan area that one can reach within a given travel time, as well as the percentage of commuters ...

The Performance Based Building Coalition (PBBC) and the National Council for Public-Private Partnerships (NCPPP) together hosted the P3s for Public Buildings Summit in Miami on November 17 and 18, 2014.

One of the panels formed for the Summit reviewed Best Practices for Public Building P3 Projects: What Works and What Doesn’t? The panel was skillfully moderated by Mark Romoff, President & CEO of the Canadian Council for Public-Private Partnerships.  The panelists were  Orion Fulton, Senior Manager at Arup, Bill Maginas, Vice President at Honeywell, Douglas Scott, Senior ...

Despite perceived uncertainty as to the future of two, prominent transportation P3 projects, it appears that jurisdictions within Maryland are looking to P3 structures to solve a wider array of infrastructure issues in the state.

Prince George’s County, one of Washington, D.C.’s Maryland suburbs, recently entered into a first-of-its-kind stormwater P3 with a subsidiary to Corvias, a private company with P3 experience in housing social infrastructure.  The partnership entity, called the Clean Water Partnership will tackle regulatory requirements for stormwater ...

On November 12, during a keynote address at the annual convention of the American Association of Port Authorities in Houston, Vice President Biden issued a call to action for greater investment in U.S. port facilities.

We are investing less than one percent of our GDP in transportation infrastructure . . . ranking 28^th in the world among advanced nations.  That is simply unacceptable.

The Vice President stated that after years of underinvestment, more than $90 billion in port improvements are needed by 2020.  In part, these improvements are needed to prepare for a significant increase ...

The San Joaquin Hills Transportation Corridor Agency today successfully refinanced $1.4 billion of its $2.2 billion in outstanding debt issued to fund construction of the 73 Toll Road. "This is great news for drivers and the communities that surround the 73 Toll Road," said Scott Schoeffel, Chairman of the San Joaquin Hills Transportation Corridor Agency, the joint powers authority responsible for financing the 73 Toll Road. "Refinancing improves the agency's long-term financial health by lowering the annual debt service payments and improving financial flexibility."

The ...

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is currently holding a roadshow of listening sessions across the US to provide information on the Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (WIFIA) and its proposed five-year pilot program to provide an alternative funding source for a variety of water infrastructure projects.

The EPA presented in Los Angeles on October 17, 2014 where attendees included representatives from public and private finance, contractors, water operators, state and local government entities and legal and financial advisers from across southern ...

The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) recently released an updated version of its popular roadmap of US transportation funding options, Matrix of Illustrative Surface Transportation Revenue Options, which may be accessed here.

The tool examines the five surface transportation revenue sources currently in place and considers 33 other potential sources of revenue. Updates to the tool include a bubble display and bar chart that allow users to see how much revenue the funding sources considered might generate. The tool is intended to ...