North Carolina

North Carolina Turnpike Authority (NCTA) have slimmed down their planned Garden Parkway on the westside of the Charlotte NC metro area to reduce its costs and make it fly financially. What was a $1280m project early 2009 has a year later been cut by 27% to $928m. Construction cost is dropped 35% from $1021m to $662m and right of way cost 7% from $191m to $179m.

North Carolina Turnpike Authority (NCTA) people say they have signed well priced contracts for all-electronic toll systems for the new Triangle Expressway. Overall cost of three of four toll procurements was $37.6m v $46.5 engineers' prior estimate - a 19% saving.

A route has been selected for a Gaston East-West Connector, a tollroad planned on the western edge of the greater Charlotte NC area. This is an important step toward completing environmental and planning clearances. The road is also known as Garden Parkway.

ACS State & Local have won two of the three major toll systems contracts just announced for the Triangle Expressway in North Carolina - Roadside Toll Collection and Back Office Systems. Washington Division of URS won Operations Services.

Rarely do grown men look as ridiculous in public as when dressed in suits and ties, name plates on their lapels, they don hardhats and stand in a line along some artificial mound of freshly dug soil with glitzily painted shovels to throw a ritual shovelful in a "groundbreaking ceremony." But the ole boys some call 'dignitaries' did it again this week, Aug 12.

North Carolina Turnpike Authority are planning to offer bonds to finance the Triangle Expressway July 1 hoping to start work a couple of weeks later on the billion dollar tollroad on the west of Raleigh. Their bonds were only rated BBB- which means they could pay a couple of percentage points higher than A-rated bonds. But they have legislative approval  (SB750) to do a refinancing whenever market conditions make that advantageous.

TOLLROADSnews 2009-05-28

North Carolina Turnpike Authority (NCTA) signed a project development agreement today with an ACS-led group that gives them a right of first refusal on building the Outer Banks' Mid-Currituck bridge as a longterm toll concession. Environmental permitting is under way. The development group will bear the bulk of the costs of remaining project development including:

North Carolina Turnpike Authority (NCTA) has a new financing strategy to move the Triangle Expressway project that has been stalled the past seven months by the financial meltdown - doing revenue bonds and gap-bond sales separately. Chief executive of the Turnpike David Joyner told us today: "We've got a new plan of finance that we're hopeful will get us out of the impasse. It's a bifurcation of the revenue into two streams to service two separate sets of bonds."

ACS, IBM and TransCore bid for all three components of toll collection in North Carolina. Two companies Kapsch, and Telvent/Caseta bid on two components: front-end roadside toll collection system (RTCS) and back office systems (BOS) leaving operations to someone else. Seven companies bid for just one of the three components.

North Carolina Turnpike Authority have received bids totaling $584m for design-build of  the three-part Triangle Expressway project in the western part of Raleigh. That's well within preliminary cost estimates of around $645m. The Triangle Expressway work consists of:

- Triangle Parkway 5.5km (3.4 miles) a connector road to NC147 and I-40 West

Jim Eden chief operating officer at the North Carolina Turnpike says after two weeks of vendor demonstrations of their license plate reading cameras that he's impressed by the diversity of different systems on offer. May 5 to 15 North Carolina Turnpike Authority hosted eight license plate reading vendors demonstrating their abilities in an open road setting.

Nine companies are demonstrating their camera systems in North Carolina over ten days starting this week. The companies are:

North Carolina Turnpike Authority is enlisting vendors of toll camera equipment and license plate readers to demonstrate their wares from a bridge over I-40 from May 5 through May 23. The Authority is committed to cashless all-electronic tolling on several toll facilities in the pipeline so they have a major interest in video - which is the replacement for cash toll collection.

In addition to the cashless tolling decision (previous report), North Carolina Turnpike's (NCTA) board this week made two other major decisions:

- to proceed now to procure a design-build civil contract for the 29km (18 mile) six lane approx $850m Triangle Expressway tollroad west of Raleigh

- to begin a toll concession procurement (P3) for the Mid Currituck Sound Bridge

North Carolina Turnpike Authority's board of directors has approved a staff recommendation that they do all electronic tolling (AET). This enables them to save $60m in capital costs on their first project, the $850m Triangle Expressway in Raleigh due to begin construction next year. The staff report also said there are safety advantages in not having some motorists peel off to stop and pay cash, then have to accelerate and merge back into the highway speed traffic.

Toll booth manufacturers: the trend looks grim. Another toll agency looks like going cashless. North Carolina Turnpike Authority is rethinking conceptual designs providing the modern US standard toll format of open road electronic tolling down the middle and cash toll booths at the sides (mainline plazas) with separate coin machine and cash lanes at the ramp toll points. But they are now wondering whether they should collect cash at all - and go all electronic.

North Carolina Turnpike Authority (NCTA) has issued a Request for Expressions of Interest in subordinated loans to fill a gap in financing of the Triangle Expressway project. Earlier the Turnpike said it needed support from the state to cover the difference between the debt service costs of prudent financing and the prospective revenue.

The North Carolina Turnpike Authority's (NCTA) big plans for toll projects are stalled by the failure of the lower house to provide revenue to cover what the Turnpike calls "gap financing" - the difference between the estimated cost and the bonds the Turnpike estimates it can float.