Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority board have voted to eliminate cash toll collection on their 183A toll road northwest of Austin by the end of 2008. The decision is expected to save the agency more than $1 million annually in operating costs.
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The example-de-jour among the Washington highway lobbyists is the "China model." The Chinese are spending big on highways and we need to too, is the gist of their message.
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The AP is reporting that Massachusetts state police are charging ten current and former toll collectors of the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority with theft of tolls. A Suffolk District Attorney is quoted as saying that the charges are the result of a seven month long investigation. The toll collectors were taking anything between $20 and $150 per shift. 1129 words  read more »

The government of Puerto Rico has a major public-private partnership (P3) procurement under way for the island state's major toll road - PR22 - but investors are asking what it is: a real toll concession or just a longterm operations contract?
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Our report on the proposal for a tollroad between the Wiregrass region of southeast Alabama and I-10 in the Panhandle of Florida - we dubbed it the Wiregrass Turnpike - has been picked up by local critics based on a short comment at the end on the history of Not-For-Profit (NFP) tollroads. They are quoting TOLLROADSnews as saying it has been a disaster.

Ed Holman a Washington County FL commissioner is one who misinterpreted our comment.
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Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission (PTC) lead spokesman Timothy Carson and finance professors supporting the Commission have said repeatedly that the Turnpike Commission can borrow at significantly lower interest rates than a private concessionaire. Carson was quoted in a press release April 21 as claiming that $245m of Act 44 bonds sold at especially good interest rates.
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Turnpike Commission supporters in the Pennsylvania legislature made an odd move Wednesday - introducing a measure which if passed would have instructed the Governor and state ("Commonwealth") officials to execute the Concession and Lease Agreement announced May 19th. The move was easily defeated by 185 to 12.

See a text nearby.
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In a further retreat before anti-road activists and a hostile legislature Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) has abandoned Trans Texas Corridor 69, acknowledged there will be no significant toll financing, and abandoned consideration of any new routing. Only existing surface arterial roads will be upgraded.
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Mark IV is well positioned to win the E-ZPass recompete. Close analysis of the Request For Proposals (RFP) from the E-ZPass Inter Agency Group (IAG) indicates it will be difficult for competitors to put up competitive bids. Indeed implementing any new technology from the existing Mark IV transponders will be tough.
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The Indiana Toll Road Concession Company (ITRCC) has got a slew of bad press for offering politicians free i-Zoom transponders. i-Zoom is the local brandname for the transponders which are part of the interoperable E-ZPass system which now encompasses Illinois as well as that bunch of northeast and mid-Atlantic coast states.
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It's hard slogging for promoters of a spur tollroad off I-10 in the Florida panhandle to the Wiregrass region of southeast Alabama. This week in Washington County Florida where it was planned to connect with I-10, county commissioners voted 3 to 2 against support for the project.

There's much sound and fury surrounding the proposed road and finger wagging about the secrecy of the promoters, and the "lack of information."
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A Supreme Court ruling this week in a patent case on mobile telephone chipsets - Quanta vs LG Electronics - deals with many of the same issues raised by TransCore in their litigation against ETC, and touches indirectly on the value of IBM's patent claim to variable pricing tolls.
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We asked a senior official in the Rendell Administration recently: "Why does the Governor put up with having his plan to lease the Turnpike trashed every day by the Turnpike Commission? Why did he appoint these guys only to let them stomp all over him?"

There was a silence on the line and then he said: "I'm tempted, I'm tempted...If I answered that question however..." and that was about it.
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Brenda Znachko, chief financial officer and deputy exec-director at Mississippi DOT says the Jackson Airport Parkway is a financially "strong" project. She says a traffic and revenue study by URS is being finalized, and will be released at an industry workshop, compulsory for bidders, in Jackson July 1.

RFQ's will be due August 1.
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Eight firms submitted qualifications in the first stage of a longterm lease of the 125km (78 mile) I-75 east-west tollroad from the Miami area to Naples Florida.

The eight are:

- OHL-Carlyle

- Abertis

- Atlantia (formerly Autostada) & ETC

- Brisa-CCR-JPMorgan

- Macquarie
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Support for a lease of the Pennsylvania Turnpike has surfaced with the announcement that two influential politicians are sponsoring enabling legislation - House Appropriations Chairman Dwight Evans, a long serving Democrat representative from the northern part of Philadlephia, and Republican Appropriations Committee member Steve Cappelli, who represents the Williamsport area just north of I-80.
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New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) - of which the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel toll authority is a division - is reversing its stance defending free toll transponders (and transit passes) for current and former board members. They announced May 29 that they would, after all, comply with state Attorney-General Andrew Cuomo's May 25 demand that the program be discontinued immediately.
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Pennsylvania Governor Rendell has accepted that the state legislature won't consider enabling legislation in time to accept the legally binding Abertis-Citi bid of $12.8b which expires June 20. He told reporters yesterday: "There isn't enough time (this month) to have the General Assembly review the Turnpike lease."
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The roadbuilders lobby ARTBA claim boldly on their website: "We Advance the Interests of the U.S. Transportation Construction Industry." They do nothing of the kind. They advance the interests of Washington DC transportation construction lobbyists (themselves) and they do a grave disservice to the construction industry and to the nation.
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Governor Ed Rendell said Monday that the Turnpike Commission "can't win this by stalling." In a memo to Turnpike CEO Joseph Brimmeier, as reported by Brad Bumstead in the Pittsburgh Tribune this morning, the Governor wrote: "I believe it is time for the Commonwealth (of Pennsylvania) to get an answer one way or the other from the US Department of Transportation regarding whether tolls on Interstate 80 will be allowed."
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