Tag: Public private partnerships
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Horse Gone, Search Ensues to Find Out Who Should Have Closed the Door
by James A. Bacon A new question has arisen about the proposed $1.4 billion upgrade to U.S. 460 between Petersburg and Suffolk. Once the McDonnell administration ascertained that none of the three public-private partnership proposals on the table were viable and that the state would operate the road instead, why didn’t the Virginia Department of…
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How North Carolina Halted a Bridge Boondoggle
by James A. Bacon Many Virginians know the agony of driving to vacation in the Outer Banks at the peak of the summer season. Heading south between Chesapeake and Kitty Hawk, you follow four-lane roads jammed with as many as 50,000 cars on Saturdays. Then, if you’re staying in Duck, Whalehead or Corolla, you have…
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Picking up the Pieces of the U.S. 460 Fiasco
by James A. Bacon Transportation Secretary Aubrey Layne said today he suspended work on the U.S. 460 Connector project because he didn’t want to run the risk of paying the contractor millions of dollars for work on a project that might be radically revised. The state of Virginia has spent $300 million already on the proposed…
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The Statewide Importance of the 495 Express Lanes
by James A. Bacon Traffic and revenues on Northern Virginia’s 495 Express Lanes increased steadily in 2013, generating a record 47,000 trips and toll revenue of $124,000 on December 19, according to data the company released yesterday. Whether that’s enough to meet expectations of parent company Transurban Holdings Ltd., headquartered in Australia, or to encourage…
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Investors Take their Licks from Toll Road Projects
by James A. Bacon Private investors have pumped about $27 billion into toll-road deals in the United States since 2003, estimates the Wall Street Journal in an article today. Many of them have gone bust. The root problem: Not enough drivers. During the go-go years of the 2000s when traffic counts were soaring and real estate…
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Testing the Limits
With 22 projects in the pipeline, Tony Kinn and his team are garnering national recognition for their work on public-private partnerships. They’re just getting started.
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McDonnell Solicits Ideas for “Air Rights” Development
The McDonnell administration is soliciting “innovative ideas” from the private sector to develop air rights at the Rosslyn Metro station in Arlington and the East Falls Church Metro station on Interstate 66. In administrative parlance, this solicitation is a “request for information,” which will gather feedback on the feasibility and types of development that could…
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The Back Story on the Transurban “Relocation”
by James A. Bacon The governor’s office issued a press release yesterday touting the fact that Transurban, operator of the 495 Express Lanes and 95 Express Lanes, has relocated its U.S. headquarters from New York City to Fairfax County. The two express lane projects have been highly beneficial to Virginia, said McDonnell, supporting 16,000 jobs,…
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Higher Speed Limit Could Give Express Lanes a Lift
by James A. Bacon 495 Express Lanes has increased the speed limit on the I-495 express lanes in Northern Virginia from 55 miles per hour to 65, giving riders a significant new time-saving inducement to use the tolled lanes. The change took effect after the Virginia Department of Transportation released a study confirming that raising…
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Six-Year Improvement Program: a Blueprint for Failure
by James A. Bacon With the adoption of the new Six-Year Improvement Program, the details of Governor Bob McDonnell’s transportation priorities plan are coming into clearer focus. There are some worthy elements to the plan but glaring deficiencies guarantee that Virginia will see minimal benefit from the billions of dollars dedicated to new construction. On…
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Express Lanes! Express Lanes! Get Yer Express Lanes While They’re Still Cheap!
The 495 Expressways on Northern Virginia’s capital beltway generated an average of nearly 18,600 daily trips and $828,000 total revenue in December 2012, reports concessionaire Transurban. That’s a drop in the bucket for the $2 billion project, which opened November, but the private-sector operator anticipated a long, slow ramp-up. As congestion increased, demand for the…
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The Beltway’s Brain
To get a taste of Virginia’s transportation future, take a spin on the 495 Express Lanes project where sensors, artificial intelligence and dynamic pricing combine to optimize scarce capacity on the Capital Beltway.
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U.S. 460 Upgrade a Done Deal
The McDonnell administration has closed on a deal to finance, design and build a new U.S. 460 between Suffolk and Petersburg, providing the Hampton Roads region an interstate-quality alternative to Interstate 64 to connect with the interstate highway system. The $1.4 billion project has been justified as a cost-effective way to promote the competitiveness of…
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McDonnell to Propose $500 Million in New Transportation Revenue
Governor Bob McDonnell announced today that his administration is working on a plan to raise $500 million yearly by 2019 in new transportation revenues to fund roads, bridges, transit and passenger rail. He provided no specifics in his keynote address to the 2012 Governor’s Transportation Conference in Tysons Corner but said details would be announced…
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Public-Private Transportation Act Needs Reform
Virginia’s reliance upon the Public-Private Partnership (P3) process to build large bridge, rail and highway projects has led to the centralization of decision making in the hands of the governor’s office with little effective oversight, contends James J. Regimbal Jr. with Fiscal Analytics, Ltd., in a report sponsored by the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC).…