The Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission's implicit bid in the state's lease concession procurement is $5.3b, versus a likely top bid by private sector bidders in the range $9b to $13b. The $5.3b implicit bid is cited by the Commonwealth Foundation thinktank in Harrisburg today.
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The Port Authority of New York New Jersey (PANYNJ) is hiring help in planning the move to cashless all-electronic tolling (AET). They recently chose consulting firms for two multi-year contracts to design and plan the radical change in the way tolls are collected, and a senior officer is about to be appointed as AET project manager.
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Florida Turnpike Enterprise has abandoned velcro attachment for transponders in favor of suction cups. There was too high an incidence of the velcro adhesive "melting in the fierce Florida sun," according to spokesman Christa Deason. The problem came to notice starting about two years ago when customers who'd had SunPass transponders a while complained they were falling off the windshield with both parts of the velcro left on the transponder.
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5am Saturday morning (2008-05-03 05:00) Washington state DOT and their hired help from Jacobs, IBI and ETC are due to fire up America's and the world's third dynamically priced toll lanes on Washington State Route 167 (WA167), a commuter expressway on the southeast side of the Seattle metro area.  read more »

A leading New Jersey legislator Senator Ray Lesniak says he's pushing a plan to boost toll revenues in the state to support what he calls "absolutely necessary" transport improvements. The plan involves two 50% hikes in tolls, one immediately and the other in five years time.
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Florida DOT have put the Jacksonville outer beltway concession procurement on hold, they've announced. FDOT District 2 secretary Charles Baldwin says state lawyers told him yesterday morning they were no longer sure that he could tell bidders on the First Coast Outer Beltway concession that they would be exempt from property tax.
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Oregon DOT's Mileage Fee report is the most useful report on surface transportation in many years. By contrast, two "national commissions" on US surface transportation policy that reported recently were useless - proposing more of the same mishmash of corrupt favor trading and brain-dead 'planning' that has got our transportation into the mess it is today.  read more »

New York's loss in rejecting congestion pricing is Los Angeles potential gain. $213.6m of federal transit funds previously set aside New York City is now committed to supporting an ambitious variable tolls project on HOV lanes on some of the busiest freeways in the Los Angeles (LA) area.  read more »

Bay Area Toll Authority (BATA) are upgrading their video enforcement camera system (VES) and also planning a test of video tolling. Advised by Traffic Technologies Inc BATA began a procurement last October to install a new VES in 67 toll lanes at the authority's seven bridge toll plazas, training of staff, and maintenance for three years.
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A bombastic and one-sided opinion by an appeals court judge has got toll authorities in central Florida some hellish publicity in the local media. Judge John D Galluzo of the 18th Circuit (Seminole and Brevard counties) has dismissed all sixteen unpaid tolls and violation penalties against a firefighter Christopher Baird.  read more »

After months of rancorous arguments TxDOT has backed down agreeing to NTTA terms, reaching a kind of agreement on the value of the toll concession on State Highway 161 (TX161) in the south central part of the Dallas-Ft Worth metro area. Agreement on the "market valuation" of the concession with NTTA allowed construction of the road to begin today.
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All-electronic tolling has been picked up by protesters in the fight over the rebuild of the York mainline toll plaza in southern Maine. Using pictures of 407ETR in Toronto, they produced a one-page flyer headed The Better Way: All-Electronic Tolling. (DISCLOSURE: those involved picked up some of the information from TOLLROADSnews and we had some emails back and forth. But the flyer is their work.)
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North Texas Tollway Authority (NTTA) continues a protracted effort to gain a toll concession on State Highway 161 (TX161) for about $500m less than investors are willing to advance. NTTA says the project is worth $1200m or about $300m more than the $900m that the 18km (11 mile) highway will cost to build.  read more »

North Carolina Turnpike Authority (NCTA) announced its first toll rates - a base toll of 13.5c/mile (8.4c/km) for cars using transponders. The tolling on the Triangle Expressway in the western area of Raleigh is due to begin in December 2010.
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A prominent Wall Streeter told us this morning that TOLLROADSnews was wrong to report that the HOT Lanes on the Capital Beltway in Virginia had achieved financial close. We wrote that last December - see http://www.tollroadsnews.com/node/3315 He emailed: "Not true, nothing has been funded. It's actually a very good example of how the credit crunch has impacted concession finance."
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By October or November "America's First Superhighway" over 800km (500 miles) of storied tollroad and the one of the big four state tollroad networks in the US (the others: NY, NJ, IL) could be under day by day business management - IF the Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell gets the authorizing legislation needed.  read more »

Timothy Carson vice chairman of the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission says that they are producing a "very robust plan" including detailed commitments to plow toll revenues on I-80 back into the road in order to persuade the Feds to give the green light to tolling the presently free interstate.  read more »

The Puerto Rico toll authority ACT (in its Spanish initials) says in a court filling in San Juan PR that United Toll Systems (UTS) is offering a cash toll system that stands to save them at least $20m/year in theft of revenues.

"None of the other proposals... put an end to this chilling depletion of public funds," the ACT says in a filing with the state Court of Appeals to deny a TransCore motion to quash the contract award to UTS and transfer it to TransCore.  read more »

A Reason Foundation report on the Pennsylvania Turnpike by Robert Poole (Bob) and myself (Peter Samuel) has got some attention. Bob did all the work and I got all the controversy!  read more »

Fitch raters say the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission's financial plan under Act 44 may fail and higher than the promised toll increases may be needed:
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