The case against concession fees for greenfield projects

In this issue:

• Concession fees for greenfield projects?
• Why do we have MPOs?
• Who should pay for the Key Bridge replacement?
• Congress battles over electric vehicle user fees
• How much will Congress borrow for transportation?
• Spirit Airlines’ gift to bus companies
• Whatever happened to the national MBUF pilot project?
• How Via is re-inventing urban transit
• News Notes
• Quotable Quotes

The Case Against Concession Fees for Greenfield Projects

In major “brownfield” transportation projects, in which companies compete for a long-term lease to improve and manage an existing facility, it is widely accepted that in exchange for a long-term concession, the winning team pays a “concession fee” to obtain the right not only to improve the existing facility but also to operate and maintain it for an agreed-upon time period.

Until very recently, however, such an up-front payment has not been required for “greenfield” projects, such as adding express toll lanes to an existing freeway. It was generally accepted that the winning team would finance the improvements and collect the toll revenue as a way to recover its costs to build, operate, and maintain this new infrastructure. In other words, the winning team would cover the capital and operating costs of the greenfield project and would, if their projections were on-target, both recover their costs and make a profit.

The past few years have seen a change in this model. In at least three greenfield cases that I’m aware of, the winning team paid a sizeable concession fee to the state department of transportation (DOT). The two largest examples are the I-66 Outside the Beltway express lanes project in Virginia and the SR-400 express toll lanes project getting underway in the Atlanta metro area. In the former, the concession fee was $1.5 billion, while the Georgia project includes a $3.8 billion concession fee, over and above the SR-400 engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) cost of $4.6 billion.

I think these greenfield concession fees are a serious mistake for express toll lanes projects. The company that will design, build, operate, and maintain the express toll lanes (ETLs) is not giving the state DOT, by paying a concession fee, a free gift of several billion dollars. It will obviously have to recoup that cost, and the only feasible way to do that is by charging higher tolls than would otherwise be the case. Friends and colleagues who live in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., tell me that the tolls on I-66 Outside the Beltway (OTB) are a lot higher than on the ETLs on I-495 (the Beltway) and I-95. They observe significantly less traffic on the I-66 OTB lanes than they see on the Beltway and I-95 ETLs.

Artificially high toll rates on ETLs that must recover a multi-billion-dollar concession fee will mean that fewer motorists will shift from the general purpose lanes to those express lanes, resulting in less congestion reduction than would otherwise occur. And the higher toll rates will energize ETL critics who will resume calling them “Lexus Lanes,” because the higher tolls will attract fewer Honda and Toyota drivers to use those lanes.

As the person who “invented” express toll lanes in a 1988 Reason Foundation policy paper, I’m dismayed by this turn of events. Gaining acceptance of ETLs took years. After the first project (on SR-91 in Orange County, California) opened in Dec. 1995, it took more than a decade for the next ones to open, on the I-495 Beltway in northern Virginia. Since then, ETLs have gradually proliferated to the point where ETLs are operational today in 11 states, and with projects in the planning stages in South Carolina and Tennessee. Evidence that new ones, such as on SR-400 in Atlanta, are going to be Lexus Lanes in the worst sense is a risk factor for every new ETL project being considered.

Adding “concession fees” to greenfield projects such as express toll lanes is a serious mistake. It’s too late for I-66 OTB, but I hope that the proposed $3.8 billion concession fee for Atlanta’s SR-400 can be stopped. Georgia DOT should recognize that going forward with this could seriously jeopardize that project by turning it into true Lexus Lanes.

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Why Do We Have Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs)?

Those of us who have been following the fate of the planned express toll lanes on I-77 between Charlotte and the South Carolina border have witnessed the Charlotte Regional Transportation Planning Organization (CRTPO) abruptly shift from supporting the project to opposing it (and thereby canceling it). The North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) responded by saying it will remove the project from the state transportation plan. CRTPO is the metropolitan planning organization (MPO) for the greater Charlotte metro area. The CRTPO board voted to approve the project in Oct. 2024. Its reversal this year occurred shortly after the Charlotte City Council voted to withdraw its support for the project.

Congress mandated the creation of MPOs in the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1962, and it has several times expanded their powers and scope. The original rationale was to give local government a say in planning highways in urbanized areas. In 1973 Congress gave MPOs increased emphasis on environmental and community issues, and in the 1991 reauthorization bill it increased federal funding of MPOs and gave them more decision-making authority over how federal transportation dollars are spent in urban areas.

CRTPO’s action on I-77 was bizarre. As Michael Bennon reported in Public Works Financing, NCDOT had made it clear to CRTPO that it could rescind support for the project only until the state issued its Request for Qualifications (RFQ) to begin the procurement process. NCDOT issued its RFQ in Aug. 2025, long after CRTPO had approved the project in late 2024. In Feb. 2026, CRTPO’s board requested a legal review of whether it could withdraw its support for the project—but the board’s attorney concluded that it could not. The attorney also noted that a CRTPO vote to rescind the project might be considered “acting despite legal advice.”

Public Works Financing also reports that during CRTPO board discussions about withdrawing support for the project, the mayor of Waxhaw, N.C., said that “If we’re going to vote on this again, then we need to go over all the alternatives. When this was presented to us more than a year ago when it was originally voted on, and nobody was in the audience, mind you, nobody cared about this a year and a half ago when it was actually voted on.” But there was no serious discussion about the implications of withdrawing support.

This episode raises questions about the role of MPOs. I-77 is an Interstate highway, meaning it is owned by the state as part of a nationwide Interstate highway system. The project was in NCDOT’s plans for years, as part of the state transportation improvement plan. Does it make sense that a local political organization can veto a key portion of the state highway system? Bennon raises an additional point, arguing that “[T]he cancellation vote makes a mockery of the ‘metropolitan’ governance envisioned for MPOs, because several of the deciding votes to cancel the project were led by cities and suburbs on the opposite side of the city. It isn’t surprising that towns on the east side of Charlotte are happy to veto a multi-billion-dollar transportation investment on the west side of Charlotte—but should they be able to?”

This episode should call into question the role of MPOs in transportation planning. The ability to veto an  improvement of an Interstate highway should not be legal. Bennon points out that MPOs are “political institutions operating under the guise of long-term planning.” He also notes that “There are very many ways to block infrastructure projects in the United States, but it is clear by now that MPOs are one of them.”

I think it’s wrong that local MPOs can have veto power over state highway system projects that have been approved by the legislature and included in the state’s long-range transportation plan. There are sound reasons for a state highway system to be developed and managed by the state DOT, as spelled out in state legislation. Frankly, I think it’s time to think over whether inherently political MPOs should continue to exist.

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Who Should Pay for Maryland’s Key Bridge Replacement?

A recent article in ENR reported that the replacement of the Key Bridge, at a total cost of $5 billion, will be 100% federally funded (which, of course, brings along Buy America and other cost-increasing requirements). But why are state and federal transportation bodies still assuming that all U.S. taxpayers should pay for this project?

The first of what will likely be several major insurance settlements over the ship collision that destroyed the Key Bridge was announced recently. In May, the state of Maryland finalized a $2.25 billion settlement with the owner/operator of the cargo ship (M/V Dali) that collided with and destroyed the Key Bridge. Still to be negotiated are the state’s claims against the shipbuilder, Hyundai Heavy Industries. Shipping insurance pools have policies in place to provide up to $3.1 billion per ship disaster; how much will Maryland get from that? Maryland itself had a $350 million insurance policy on the bridge. These potential sources add up to over $5 billion.

Moreover, Maryland Transportation Authority leaders are well aware that the now-defunct Key Bridge was a toll bridge. There is no reason not to use toll financing to cover a sizeable chunk of the construction cost of the replacement bridge.

With all these funding sources available, it makes no sense for taxpayers from all 50 states to have to pay for this $5 billion project. And by the way, the federal government is broke and does not have $5 billion sitting there waiting for something it can be spent on.

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Proposed EV User Fees Generate Heated Battle in Congress

The draft House surface transportation bill includes the first-ever federal highway user fees for electric vehicles, and that has triggered a fierce war of words.

The bipartisan House bill calls for an annual federal highway user fee of $130 for electric vehicles (EVs) and $35 for plug-in hybrids; both would gradually increase to keep pace with inflation (which should have been built into federal gasoline and diesel taxes). But environmental groups have dubbed this proposal an unfair attack on those virtuous drivers who have bought and use EVs and hybrids.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) slammed the bipartisan House proposal, saying, “This is another right-wing ideological trophy. They just don’t want to have renewable energy in the future, and they think these ideas up pretty regularly. As far as I’m concerned, this is off the table.” By contrast, his House counterpart, Rep. Rick Larsen (D-WA), supports EV fees because he supports “having all users of federal roads contribute to their maintenance, regardless of the kind of car they drive,” reported Politico (May 18).

Politico (May 19) reported, “Environmental groups assailed the provision as an unfair attack on Americans who have chosen to drive more fuel-efficient vehicles.” That article quoted NRDC’s federal/state transportation advocate, Shruti Vaidyanathan saying, “This legislation is a punch in the gut to millions of Americans struggling to pay higher prices at the pump.”

Essentially, some environmental groups and their legislative allies envision electric vehicles as something sacred. Asking those virtuous pioneers to actually contribute to the capital and operating costs of the roads they drive on is sacrilegious. Evidently, they should be exempt because they are doing something very virtuous.

The underlying truth is that highways cost a lot of money to build and a lot more to maintain. The average EV is heavier than a comparable internal combustion engine vehicle, so it does marginally more damage to the pavement. So drivers of EVs should pay at least as much to use highways as drivers of conventional motor vehicles. There should be no religious exemptions from highway user fees.

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How Much Will Congress Borrow for the Five-Year Transportation Bill?

Members of Congress and surface transportation industry groups are aiming for Congress to enact a new five-year surface transportation bill authorizing $580 billion. A bill to do so (the BUILD America 250 Act) was approved 62 to 2 by the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee on May 22. But where will the money come from?

Jeff Davis of the Eno Center for Transportation crunched the numbers for us. The Build America 250 Act is the House vehicle for the new five-year program. Of the $580 billion total, $474.4 billion is to be drawn from the Highway Trust Fund, and hence the remaining $106 billion is to come from the General Fund (meaning it will be borrowed from future generations, increasing the annual budget deficit and the national debt). This budget includes the revenue from proposed federal user fees on electric and hybrid vehicles, which Davis estimates will bring in only about $10 billion over the five-year period.

In a June 5 follow-up, Davis provides additional context on federal bailouts of the Trust Fund. Over the next five years, there will need to be a general fund transfer of $152 to $155 billion. That would bring the total federal bailouts since 2008 to $425 billion (up from the current total of $272 billion).

This is a perversion of the users-pay principle. Ever since the first gasoline tax to pay for highways was approved in Oregon in 1919, state and federal highway programs were paid for by their users—motor vehicles paying federal (and state) fuel taxes. That was the case all the way up to 2008, when Congress found out that its aggressive highway budget was beyond what federal fuel taxes would generate. So instead of increasing the federal gasoline and diesel tax rates, they decided to cover the (by now ever-increasing) shortfall with borrowed federal general-fund money.

Even worse, with the federal budget facing the upcoming insolvency of both Social Security and a major component of Medicare within six years, now should not be the time for increasing the size of federal highway and transit programs. The responsible policy at this juncture would be to start preparing for divesting the revenue and spending on highways and transit to the state DOTs and metro-area transit systems. An orderly transition would be far less disruptive than a sudden, unplanned 2032 demise of traditional federal highway and transit funding.

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Spirit Airlines Demise Gives Boost to Bus Travel

On June 22, the Wall Street Journal reported that within the first week of Spirit Airlines’ shutdown, Flix North America bus lines experienced a 30% increase in passengers on routes that overlapped Spirit’s network. The article also reported that the motor-coach industry (intercity buses and charter coaches) recorded 43.9 billion passenger miles in 2025, a 9% increase from 2024. But that was still below the all-time high of 69.6 billion passenger miles in 2015.

You can learn a lot more about the growth of intercity bus service via the latest annual report from Prof. Joseph Schwieterman of the Chaddick Institute at DePaul University, Stepping Up Service, released in Feb. 2025. It’s the latest in a series of annual reports on intercity bus service in the United States. So far, there is no 2026 report, and the 2025 report’s focus is on the significant expansion of intercity bus service in 2024. The report analyzed bus trends in eight regions of the United States. FlixBus grew sharply, with a priority on densely traveled routes in the Northeast and in warm-weather regions. PeterPan, RedCoach and Trailways also achieved sizable growth, some of it coming from routes formerly served by Megabus before its near bankruptcy.

Schwieterman has been publishing annual reports on commercial bus service in the United States for many years, so I’m looking forward to a 2026 edition.

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Will a National MBUF Pilot Ever Materialize?
By Marc Scribner

The five-year surface transportation reauthorization contained in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) of 2021 expires in September. That thousand-page law contained a provision establishing a National Motor Vehicle Per-Mile User Fee Pilot to examine a mileage-based user fee (MBUF) as a replacement of the federal gas tax and to inform Congress on its viability in time for the 2026 reauthorization. But the national MBUF pilot never happened and the reauthorization process is barreling toward record-setting bailouts of the Highway Trust Fund. The current House bill, the BUILD America 250 Act, would renew the national MBUF pilot. But understanding why the IIJA pilot failed to materialize shows why merely calling for its renewal is bound to fail.

Congress authorized the National Motor Vehicle Per-Mile User Fee Pilot in Section 13002 of IIJA, which became law on Nov. 15, 2021. In doing so, Congress laid out a number of parameters on pilot program design, such as participant inclusion, collection mechanisms, privacy and data security protections, rate structure, and payment. It also contained a number of implementation deadlines.

Here is the timeline of relevant national pilot program deadlines that Congress provided in IIJA:

• Nov. 15, 2021: IIJA becomes law.
• Feb. 14, 2022: The U.S. Department of Transportation establishes the Federal System Funding Alternative Advisory Board.
• Feb. 15, 2023: The Advisory Board provides implementation recommendations to U.S. DOT.

After receiving the Advisory Board’s recommendations, U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) was directed to implement the pilot. Once participants are enrolled, U.S. DOT would then report to Congress within one year on its progress. IIJA also established the Strategic Innovation for Revenue Collection (SIRC) technical assistance grant program for state and local mileage-based user fee pilots, replacing the Surface Transportation System Funding Alternatives (STSFA) grant program established by the 2015 FAST Act reauthorization. The SIRC program contains an additional deadline for U.S. DOT to report to Congress by Nov. 15, 2024, on the results of both the national pilot and SIRC-funded state pilots.

These deadlines were imposed to ensure Congress had ample time to analyze MBUF pilot results and—it was hoped—begin phasing in MBUFs as an alternative to fuel taxes as part of the 2026 surface transportation reauthorization. Unfortunately, U.S. DOT missed all of these deadlines, including the critical first step of establishing the Advisory Board. The Advisory Board was not chartered until Sept. 2023, did not solicit nominations for Advisory Board members until Oct. 2023, and then did not approve Advisory Board membership until Dec. 2024 in the final weeks of the Biden administration.

The Advisory Board never met. According to the FY 2025 Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) Committee Level Report, the new Trump administration placed the Advisory Board on administrative hold in Feb. 2025. In Aug. 2025, previously selected Advisory Board members were terminated and the U.S. DOT employee overseeing the Advisory Board was instructed to develop a new charter and draft a solicitation for new members. The new charter and member solicitation have yet to be published, so the Advisory Board is currently administratively inactive.

Sec. 6004 of the House’s BUILD America 250 Act would renew the national MBUF pilot. The current language makes some modest improvements, such as encouraging coordination with state departments of motor vehicles, and data collection through vehicle inspection stations and odometers. With respect to the Advisory Board, though, the BUILD America 250 Act would merely make a more stringent deadline for establishing the Advisory Board—which U.S. DOT could then ignore—and require that the report from the Advisory Board submitted to the Secretary of Transportation also be submitted to relevant committees in Congress simultaneously.

The problem left unaddressed is that the national MBUF pilot will again fail to materialize if U.S. DOT fails to establish the Advisory Board. To get the National Motor Vehicle Per-Mile User Fee Pilot off the ground and capable of providing actionable information to Congress in time for the reauthorization bill due in the early 2030s, a different approach is needed.

Instead of tasking U.S. DOT with establishing a FACA committee, Congress should instead establish the Advisory Board as a congressional commission. This would allow Congress to appoint the Advisory Board’s members promptly and receive timely reports on pilot program design and results.

Administering the physical functions of a real-world national MBUF pilot would still require U.S. DOT and Treasury Department compliance, but a congressional commission could provide valuable information to Congress even if the Executive Branch fails to fulfill its duties. Indeed, the National Surface Transportation Infrastructure Financing Commission that recommended a national MBUF pilot in its 2009 final report was itself a congressional commission created by Sec. 11142 of the 2005 SAFETEA-LU reauthorization.

There is no silver bullet for political dysfunction in Washington, D.C., but if Congress wishes to see a national MBUF pilot get further than nowhere over the next several years, it should avoid making the same mistake twice.

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How Via Is Re-Inventing Urban Transit
By Baruch Feigenbaum

Since the Reagan administration made changes to transit regulations in the 1980s, contracting has been a pragmatic tool for improving transit service quality, particularly in small and midsize communities. But over the last decade, as higher labor costs have led to the dwindling of contracting’s cost advantages, its use among U.S. transit agencies has stagnated.

According to the National Transit Database (NTD), purchased transportation (the industry term for contracting) accounts for about 15.5% of transit operating expenses and 28% of vehicle revenue hours in urban systems, a share that has held roughly steady even as total operating costs have climbed and ridership has failed to recover from the pandemic. A Transit Cooperative Research Program analysis of 15 years of NTD data found that only about 32% of agencies operating fixed-route bus service contract out any of it. As Reason Foundation documented in 2021, the first wave of fixed-route contracting in the 1980s and 1990s produced cost savings of 30% to 60%, but the practice then stalled among most large legacy transit agencies.

While traditional contracting has plateaued, a different model of outsourcing is growing quickly. Via Transportation went public in Sept. 2025, raising $493 million at a $3.65 billion valuation in one of the largest transportation technology offerings on record. Via reported a 35.6% year-over-year revenue increase in 2024, and its contract pipeline reached $650 million in the first quarter of 2026.

Via’s model isn’t the same as a traditional transit contractor’s model. Similar to transit service providers such as Transdev and Keolis, it runs buses under contract. It works directly with cities, transit agencies, school districts, universities, and healthcare providers and offers services for microtransit, Americans with Disabilities Act paratransit, student transportation, non-emergency medical transportation, and fixed-route bus service. Via’s microtransit operations started in 2017 when Arlington, Texas, replaced its city bus service with Via’s on-demand vans. Currently, Via runs on-demand services for King County Metro in Seattle, Miami-Dade County, and Transport for London, among others.

Via’s contract with Sioux Falls, South Dakota, shows how the company integrates its suite of services. The city partnered with Via in Jan. 2024, letting Via handle the city’s entire transit network. When Via assumed control of the system, it expanded on-demand coverage and integrated the previously separate paratransit system; it also redesigned the bus network. This change led to a 25% reduction in cost per ride, a 37% increase in fixed-route ridership, and doubled the number of jobs residents could access within one hour. Since then, Via has won four more whole-network contracts with more than $40 million in annual contract value.

Via also provides transit technology services. Similar to Optibus and Trapeze Group, Via is a software company. It acquired Remix, a planning and scheduling software company, for $100 million in 2021. Via then acquired Citymapper, a planning app that lets riders book across modes, in 2023. In 2025, Via launched Via Intelligence, an AI platform for transit agencies. These tools allow Via to handle operational needs, ranging from planning routes to delivering information to riders and agencies. For example, its routing software is also used for New York City’s school buses.

This combo of services is what makes Via unique in the market. Software companies sell their specific planning and scheduling tools but don’t operate service directly. Operators run service but rely on third-party vendors they need for technology. A transit operator such as Transdev and a software company such as RideCo partner together, so that they can offer similar service. But their costs to transit agencies can be higher. Via is the most prominent one-stop shop. Smaller and mid-size transit agencies are a large percentage of Via’s clients since they don’t have the in-house staff and benefit from Via’s management of vendors and contracts.

Via started as a ridesharing company but shifted away from that approach in 2021. Via’s IPO prospectus says that service contracting and technology now account for more than 90% of the company’s revenue.

Higher labor costs seem likely to remain, at least in the short-term. The Via model seems like a way to offer cost-effective, customizable solutions to transit agencies. What could government do to encourage companies similar to Via? What actions would encourage more contracting?

The simplest change would be for Congress and state legislatures to tie a significant portion of transit operating support to performance metrics that directly affect customers, like cost per rider, on-time performance, and ridership growth. A share of Section 5307 funding already flows to small, urbanized areas based on service performance. That set of funds only applies to urbanized areas under 200,000 in population, amounts to roughly 1.5% of program funds, and adds money for agencies that perform above average, so it functions more as a bonus. This proposal would apply performance criteria to a larger share of funding and agencies of all size. Congress could make the change in this year’s surface transportation reauthorization.

Many of the largest-population states that supply transit operating funds could also make this change. Virginia, for example, has allocated its transit operating assistance through a performance-based formula since fiscal year 2020, but many states do not.

Agencies already report those metrics to the National Transit Database, so this change wouldn’t add any additional reporting burden. Agencies that meet targets would receive full funding, and agencies that don’t would need to explain why, or to consider alternative delivery methods like contracting. This seems like a small ask to improve transit service quality.

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News Notes

PennDOT Studying I-279/579 Express Toll Lanes
Caitlin Devitt reported in The Bond Buyer that Pennsylvania DOT is using a $1.25 million federal grant to explore a public-private partnership (P3) to convert existing HOV lanes on I-279 and I-579 into express toll lanes. The aim of the project, if approved, would be to improve traffic flow into and out of Pittsburgh. PennDOT’s office “is already in the midst of a detailed analysis of this project.”

North Carolina Lawmakers May Claw Back $60 Million for Cancelled I-77 Project
Business North Carolina reported that Republican state senator Vickie Sawyer has drafted legislation that would penalize any regional organization that cancels any project that is part of the State Transportation Improvement Program. Triggering this legislation was the cancellation of I-77 widening by the Charlotte Regional Transportation Planning Organization (CRTPO). State Senate leader Phil Berger estimates the amount spent by the state as $60 million.

Transurban and VDOT Plan Would Add 120 Lane-Miles to I-95 Express Lanes
On June 28, Transurban announced that it had entered into a development framework agreement with Virginia DOT to add 120 lane-miles to the I-95 express toll lanes. The project would make these lanes bi-directional at all times of day, rather than the current operation that is northbound-only in the AM period and southbound-only in the PM period. Transurban reports that the capacity expansion would be 140%. If the project is approved, financial close would likely occur in 2029.

Brightline Florida Close to Bankruptcy
June articles in The Bond Buyer and Infralogic documented modest growth in ridership on both short-distance and long-distance routes, but also increasingly dire finances. Kunal Kamal reported for Infralogic that Brightline has been in discussions with creditors for “potential incurrence of additional debt, debt amendments, refinancing transactions, and other strategic transactions to extend maturities and optimize value while providing additional liquidity and cash flow.” Brightline Florida has been unable to increase ticket prices, and its revenue has declined in recent months.

Spain Considers New Metro Area P3 Toll Projects
“New road PPPs in Spain Could Reignite Investors’ Hopes.” That was the headline on a report by Antonio Fabrizio and Brendan Malkin in Infralogic, June 15. Metro area agencies in Spain are looking into P3 concessions as a way to finance planned motorway additions. In the Madrid region, the regional government late last year announced that 41 km of the planned Autopista del Suroeste motorway will be procured as an availability-pay P3 concession. Another is in Extremadura, from Moraleja to the Portuguese border. A third project is the Requejada-Suances motorway in Cantabria, near the city of Santander. Both Spanish and other European companies are expected to be interested in these P3 projects.

Tolled Inland Waterways in Argentina
Infralogic (June 22) reported that Argentina’s government has awarded a P3 concession for the Via Navegable Troncal project to the Jan de Nul-Servimagnus consortium. The government’s objective is to privatize the toll-based inland waterway system. The concession will replace state management of the waterway system, which handles about 80% of Argentina’s foreign trade.

Smart Corridor on SH 130 near Austin
TxDOT announced the debut of the SH 130 Smart Corridor on May 21. This four-mile stretch of SH 130 has been equipped with technology to alert TxDOT’s Traffic Management Center with real-time hazard alerts, incident verification, and corridor status. The project provider is Cavnue. Company president Tyler Duval points out that emergency responders typically are dispatched to an incident with little knowledge of what to expect. The data provided to the Traffic Management Center will give the responders specifics on the incident while en route to the location.

Vinci Highways Seeks Partner for India Project
Rouhan Sharma reported for Infralogic (June 17) that Vinci Highways is seeking an equity investor for the Safeway Concessions (nine highway concessions it acquired in March from Macquarie Asset Management). Vinci valued the portfolio at 15 times its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA), a reasonable metric for the highway sector.

Oregon, Washington Officials Discuss Toll Policy
Last month officials from the Oregon and Washington DOTs met in Portland to discuss policies for the forthcoming tolls that will apply to the planned replacement of the I-5 bridges across the Columbia River. Tolls will begin on the existing bridges when construction of the replacement bridges gets under way. The Interstate Bridge Replacement Program’s tolling subcommittee held these discussions during the first week of June.

Passenger Rail Competition in Europe
Passenger rail service in Europe has been deregulated in stages, beginning in 2001. In 2020, this came into operation for domestic passenger rail, ending all state monopolies and opening all domestic routes to competition. The May 23, 2026, issue of The Economist discussed the move of investor-owned Italian high-speed rail operator Italo into Germany. Its aim is to link 18 German cities along two main routes by 2028. When it challenged Italy’s public-sector passenger rail provider, competition led to ticket price reductions of 40%—and Italo hopes to accomplish similar change as it moves into Germany.

Pepsi Launches Driverless Trucks in Arizona
The Wall Street Journal reported that PepsiCo is now operating 35 driverless trucks on roadways in Arizona, delivering Doritos and Frito-Lay potato chips from distribution centers to retail outlets. The company is also testing driverless trucks in Texas and Arkansas. The trucks are from a joint venture of Isuzu Motors and Gatik. There is no one in the cab as these trucks go about their journeys.

Northwest Arkansas Planners Are Looking into Tolling
KNWA reported that the Northwest Arkansas Regional Planning Commission is looking into the feasibility of implementing tolls on new highways in that region. They are looking into similar projects in the Kansas City metro area. where optional express toll lanes have been added to an urban thoroughfare. But there are no plans to convert any existing freeways to tollways.

Pennsylvania Bill Would Expand P3 Authority
In the Bond Buyer’s June 10 edition, Caitlin Devitt reported on a pending bill in the Legislature that would expand the usage of transportation P3s in that state. That bill would allow counties and the two biggest cities to have P3 authority for transportation projects. At the same time, the state’s P3 office is considering four unsolicited proposals, the largest of which (proposed by Cintra) would add express toll lanes to a 17-mile stretch of I-76, at an estimated cost of $5 billion.

Is Remote Work Here to Stay?
The Wall Street Journal reported that work-from-home “appears here to stay.” While work-at-home has declined from the 60% observed during the pandemic, it appears to be bottoming out at around 28% as a percentage of days worked at home. Among other things, this finding suggests that the morning traffic peak is likely to remain below historical levels in most metro areas. University of Virginia economist Emma Harrington has found that work-from-home has enabled women with children to remain on the job, but also that younger employees benefit from working in proximity to more-experienced colleagues.

Canada’s 2nd-Largest Pension Fund Acquires A25 Toll Road
CDPQ (commonly referred to as La Caisse) has acquired the 50% of the A25 toll road/bridge concession in Montreal that it did not already own. Following this acquisition, Plenary Americas (owned by La Caisse) will take over operating and management of the A25.

Adding a Sixth Axle to Big Rigs Would Support Increased Loads
Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-SD) has introduced legislation that would increase the maximum gross weight of heavy trucks to 91,000 lbs. from the current 80,000 lb. limit. The key change would be adding a sixth axle to handle the additional weight. Johnson’s bill calls for a pilot project to get real data about the impact of the change. Since there would likely be opposition to simply making this change, a serious pilot project seems like a good idea. Independent truck-operator organization OOIDA has opposed various state-level changes in truck size and weight.

Baltimore Key Bridge Replacement to be Split into Four Contracts
The Maryland Transportation Authority has announced that replacing the Key Bridge will be done via four contracts. The first will be for demolition. The second will build the approach from the south, and another will build the approach from the north. For the main span and marine approaches, the plan calls for a cable-stayed bridge costing between $4 billion and $5 billion. The announcement said nothing about whether the replacement bridge will be tolled.

$4 Billion Brent Spence Bridge Breaks Ground
ENR reported that construction on the new Brent Spence Bridge linking Ohio and Kentucky has begun. The project will add a second bridge to convey I-71 and I-75 across the Ohio River. The project will add a double-deck cable-stayed companion bridge, thereby increasing capacity for the two Interstates crossing the river. The prime design-build contractor will be a Walsh-Kokosing joint venture.

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Quotable Quotes

“There may be a better, but necessarily bipartisan, approach to bring American transport policy out of its modal partisanship: just agree to let the states make their transportation investment decisions and make it easier for them to build whatever they want. . . . For [surface] transportation policy, the key question is where that locus of decision-making should sit, and it has a pretty clear answer: states. Large transportation planning decisions are very obviously regional. Directing them from Washington or distributing decision-making to mayors or local agencies will both produce sub-optimal investments. There is nothing new here, which is why transportation investment decisions in the United States have historically been made by governors and state DOTs.”
—Michael Bennon, “Modal Angst on the DC Beltway,” Public Works Financing, April 2026

“The reason that American transit agencies have not retrofitted their systems to full automation is a sixty-year-old labor-certification rule [Section 13-C]. That rule was drafted to solve a real problem, but one that was solved by the end of the decade. It wasn’t removed, and not only remained permanent, but became supercharged in the 1970s as the national government became a major funder of transit operations. The result is that while the rest of the world automated its rail transit, the USA largely has not. Rectifying that failure would save hundreds of millions in operating costs, each and every year.”
—Andrew Miller, “The Wrong Kind of Careful,” Changing Lanes Newsletter, June 23, 2026

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