concession

2013-03-08: Legislators in Maryland have filed bills to privatize via longterm P3 concession the Intercounty Connector (ICC) and the I-95 toll express lanes.

2013-03-05: Tollways are now being developed on several approaches to Austin Bergstrom Airport. TxDOT has said it will sponsor a short 2 mile tollway outside the Airport in the median of Texas State Highway 71 (TX71) to complete expressway standard connections to the 130 tollroad.

By mid-November motorists will have a new highspeed route between San Antonio and Dallas bypassing the I-35 congestion in the Austin area. Segments 5 and 6 of Texas SH130 will open late in the fall making a direct connection between I-35 at Georgetown on the northern end of the Austin area and I-10 near Seguin.

2012-08-14: Texas DOT has a request for qualifications from teams interested in a toll concession for upgrading another 9 miles of SH183 Airport Freeway in Dallas County from SH161 near the airport east nearly to I-35E. To start with there is a modest single toll lanes each direction but that is to grow to 2x3 and 2x2 toll express or managed lanes.

2012-07-21: Since July 13 Elizabeth River Crossings OPCO LLC (ERC) has been running the Downtown and Midtown Tunnels under the estuarial Elizabeth River on the westside of downtown Norfolk Virginia. The tunnels are the Norfolk business district's connection to the city of Portsmouth and suburbs to the west in the Hampton Roads metro area.

Colorado DOT and a so called High Performance Transportation Enterprise of the state are seeking private sector proposals for improving travel in the I-70 Mountain Corridor west of Denver toward Silverthorne, Vail and Eagle.  They are looking for competitive proposals to an unsolicited proposal from transit specialist Parsons.

Colorado DOT's tolling arm HPTE has issued an RFQ for a toll concession on 23 miles, 37km of I-25 and US36 Denver-Boulder. The concession is to toll and operate a mix of existing HOT lanes (carpoolers, buses and toll payers), HOT lanes starting construction, and HOT lanes to be constructed under the 50-year concession.

The project involves:

Texas DOT has announced it is dropping the toll concession approach for the next stage of the Grand Parkway (TX99) north of Houston in favor of taking the traffic and revenue risk itself and using a design-build (DB) contract. In the usual brisk Texan fashion the decision came about a week after TxDOT had listed groups qualified for both concessions and DB on around 38 miles, 61km (segments F1, F2, and G of an eventual 180 mile, 290km circumferential road.

The board of directors of Maryland Transportation Authority (MdTA) operator of the I-95 Kennedy Highway Toll Road has approved signing of a 35 year concession on its two service plazas. The selected concessionaire Areas USA is a local subsidiary of a large established international company Grupo Areas SA head-officed in Barcelona Spain with major food concessions in 70 airports and 160 other toll and travel service plazas mostly in Europe and Latin America.

S1230 "Protecting Taxpayers in Transportation Asset Transfers Act" is being pushed by Democrats in the US Senate. It's a bill that seems likely to seriously handicap any state efforts to concession out government owned tollroads. It would give the US SEcretary of Transportation broad powers to approve or disallow any state or local road concession where there some US Government funding in its past.