Briefs

"Here's the New York Times headline on the CPAC conference"

'GOP Divisions Fester at Conservative Retreat'

"Festering, an infected wound, it's awful.

"I guarantee, if there were a liberal conclave comparable to this, and there were vigorous debates going on there, the New York Times headline would be:

'Healthy Diversity Flourishes at Liberal Conclave'

Mark Compton CEO of the Pennsylvania Turnpike says his Office of Compliance has been directed to launch a "thorough review" of every professional-services contract that was cited in the Attorney General’s presentment and "those contracts awarded during the timeframe of the OAG's (Office of the Attorney General's) investigation that currently remain active."

He is also contacting all service providers to the Turnpike and sending them copies of the reformed procurement policy of April 2012.

Richmond Metropolitan Authority chairman Carlos Brown is moving to reconstitute the Virginia capital toller supporting legislation to split control between the city and the two major suburban counties it serves - Chesterfield and Henrico. At present the board comprises six City representatives to two each from the two counties (plus a state representative.)

The Authority was constituted in 1966 when the suburbs were a much lesser proportion of the metro area and the main project was the Downtown Expressway.

David S Smith NHDOT bureau of turnpikes engineer in charge of the Hookset toll upgrade project on NH/I-93 says the open road lanes are on track to open  on-schedule mid-June. The approx $30m project will convert an old 14 lane toll plaza into a 4/2/2/4 lane arrangement with the 2x2 open road lanes in the center flanked by four staffed or roll-through E-ZPass lanes each direction.

The big story in Detroit and Windsor the past week has been large piles of coke rising on the waterfront not far from the Ambassador Bridge. It's what they call 'petcoke' or petroleum coke, a byproduct of oil refining. The stuff comes from a Marathon oil refinery and will be shipped out for fuel in coal power plants and other boilers and furnaces.

It is a routine by-product of refining Canada's tar sands crude oil into gasoline and diesel, and is a harmless coke.

Suddenly  for the local scribes however is a horrible environmental hazard and menace!

Cintra, Meridiam and Dallas cops and firemen's pension system through their joint venture NTE Mobility Partners Segments 3 LLC have done the commercial close with TxDOT on the $1.38 billion project to design, build, finance, operate, maintain and toll an extension of the North Tarrant Express in Fort Worth TX.
 
The 10-mile project includes segments:

- 3A of 6.5 miles along I-35W from Fort Worth to I-820, with the interchange between I-35W and I-820; and

- 3B 3.6 miles from the interchange with I-820 to US287.
 

They're calling it the Mouth, a piece of "permanent art" installed by Metro Washington Airports Authority at Dulles Airport's AeroTrain station.

An announcement by MWAA says: "Passengers traveling through the airport will be able to touch the unique work and develop their own interpretation of the pieces on display."

The piece is called Wonder of Wonders.

The Wall Street Journal launched a new mini-magazine WSJ.MONEY with a lead article under the promising headline "How to buy a toll road".

Turns out however to be nothing much about investing in tollroads at all.

The first project it mentions is the Presidio Parkway for which the Golden Gate Bridge has an RFP for a P3. But that parkway is not even to be a tollroad, just an availability payments design-build-finance-operate deal.

Central Texas RMA has a neat new map of the status of various tollroads in the Austin area. We say neat because it is drawn in minimalist style, attempting to give you the general shape and orientation but omitting the superfluous twists and turns, and all but the most important routes and features.

They use the term "tolled expressway."

TxDOT has four in operation (solid purple):

I was traveling last month in Austin, Dallas, and Orlando  and they have a lot of traffic. Instead of whining about traffic as we do here in the northeast they are doing something about it.