Tag: U.S. 460
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Closing the Books on the U.S. 460 Fiasco
The state will recover $46 million from US 460 Mobility Partners for work never performed on a 55-mile highway between Petersburg and Suffolk, reports the Virginian-Pilot. Under the settlement negotiated with the McAuliffe administration, US 460 will keep about $210 million of the payments it received under former Governor Bob McDonnell but waive an additional…
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Coping with Risk in Highway Megaprojects
by James A. Bacon As Transportation Secretary Aubrey Layne has had more time to dig into his job, he has developed an ever more nuanced appreciation of how things went wrong with the U.S. 460 Connector. There was more to the fiasco, which could cost the Commonwealth up to $300 million, than a simple failure to acquire…
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Injecting the “Public” Back into Public-Private Partnerships
We haven’t heard much about Public-Private Partnerships since the days of the McDonnell administration, which touted P3s as a tool for leveraging limited state transportation funding into more road and rail construction. The problem with the McDonnell team’s reliance on P3s wasn’t the grand strategy but the execution. The tolling of the Downtown-Midtown Tunnel in…
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Injecting the "Public" Back into Public-Private Partnerships
We haven’t heard much about Public-Private Partnerships since the days of the McDonnell administration, which touted P3s as a tool for leveraging limited state transportation funding into more road and rail construction. The problem with the McDonnell team’s reliance on P3s wasn’t the grand strategy but the execution. The tolling of the Downtown-Midtown Tunnel in…
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More Tidbits on the U.S. 460 Story…
Aubrey Layne was acutely aware of the wetlands permitting issues afflicting the U.S. 460 highway project before assuming his position as Secretary of Transportation in January 2014. As chairman of the funding corporation that sold bonds to investors, he had had to disclose in September 2013 that the Virginia Department of Transportation had not yet acquired…
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Inching Closer to Accountability on the U.S. 460 Fiasco
by James A. Bacon In the year that he’s served as Secretary of Transportation, Aubrey J. Layne Jr. has been reluctant to blame any individual or group of individuals for the U.S. 460 toll road fiasco. But he abandoned that reticence yesterday during a hearing of the House Appropriations Committee. “All of the information was funneled through…
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Back to the Drawing Boards on U.S. 460
A new environmental impact study (EIS) concludes that it will cost $1.8 billion — $400 million more than estimated by the McDonnell administration — to rebuild U.S. 460 between Petersburg and Suffolk as a tolled, high-speed expressway. Upgrading the highway probably will have to be centered on the existing corridor, Transportation Secretary Aubrey Layne said yesterday.…
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The Great U.S. 460 Swamp
VDOT had loads of warning that wetlands could kill the U.S. 460 project but the state charged ahead with a design-build contract that everyone knew could explode.
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Some Answers, More Questions about the 460 Fiasco
by James A. Bacon If you’re new to the U.S. 460 Connector controversy and need a primer to bring you up to speed, I’d recommend you read the new Virginia Business cover story written by Paula Squires. She provides an digestible overview of a complex story and advances public understanding with some fresh reporting. In particular,…
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Public-Private Partnerships and the Allocation of Risk
by James A. Bacon It’s easy to whack Virginia’s public-private partnership law for failing to meet expectations for transparency and public involvement. (I have done so repeatedly.) There are important issues that the legislature needs to deal with, as the controversy over the U.S. 460 Connector has made abundantly clear. But there are virtues to public-private partnerships…
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More Transparency, Please, Asks CTB
by James A. Bacon Overlooked in the hoopla over the $1.4 billion Route 460 controversy, it appears that the Commonwealth Transportation Board has made an important bid to inject more transparency into decision-making affecting public-private partnerships (P3s). Desiring a “more robust discussion” of such projects, the board has asked the director of the Office of Transportation Public Private Partnerships…
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U.S. 460: Peeling Back the Onion
by James A. Bacon Structuring the U.S. 460 Connector as a public-private partnership (P3) shielded the $1.4 billion project from much of the oversight required for conventional Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) projects, found a confidential report by VDOT’s Assurance Compliance Division and the Office of the State Inspector General. As a consequence, the McDonnell administration…
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McAuliffe Team Continues Transportation House Cleaning
by James A. Bacon I’ve been out of town attending a conference so I wasn’t able to cover the Commonwealth Transportation Board (CTB) meeting this month. But based on press coverage and press releases, it sounds like Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s transportation team is getting a good handle on things, correcting some of the more grievous policy decisions…
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U.S. 460: Now We Know What Happened, We Just Don’t Know Who Was Responsible
by James A. Bacon Transportation Secretary Aubrey Layne gave yesterday a detailed timeline of the events leading up to the suspension of work on the U.S. 460 Connector after the expenditure of nearly $300 million. “From a taxpayer standpoint, there is no good explanation for why we are here today,” he told the Commonwealth Transportation…
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Feet-to-the-Fire Time for Layne, Kilpatrick
by James A. Bacon Virginia taxpayers will have to suck up a $400 million to $500 million loss if the U.S. 460 upgrade between Petersburg and Suffolk never gets built, Transportation Secretary Aubrey Layne told the House Appropriations Committee yesterday. “If everything totally went south, we … may end up with $500 [million] left of the…